Shhhh… The Easiest Brand Strategy Fix You’re Probably Ignoring.
“It’s amazing what you can do when you shut up and listen to your customers.”
— Overheard at a nerdfest conference (said with love)
We’ve all been in the room where everyone is talking and no one is actually saying anything real.
Marketing loves its words. Strategy loves its frameworks. Execs love their vision. And customers? They often don’t get the space — or the invitation — to have their voice heard. Which is a problem, because their voice is the one that matters most.
Like all brand strategy engagements, we start by talking to internal stakeholders. And when everyone seems aligned, marketing gets a well-deserved pat on the back. But then we talk to customers… and that’s when the plot twist hits.
There’s a disconnect more often than anyone wants to admit.
Not because anyone is wrong, but because everyone is speaking their own dialect. A benefit can make perfect sense inside the building… and sound nothing like what customers actually need.
It’s the classic inside-out story:
The internal delusion:
“Of course they care about our trademarked AI-powered blah-blah feature!”
vs.
The external reality:
“Please just help me eliminate this soul-sucking, error-prone task so I can go home without wanting to put a fork in my eye.”
And then there’s the “faster horse” crowd — the myth that listening to customers somehow kills innovation.
Cue the Henry Ford quote.
Cue the Steve Jobs mythologizing.
The reality? Visionaries are curious. They listen. They observe. They ground their decisions in real human behavior.
Listening isn’t the opposite of innovation.
It’s the fuel.
Spoiler: There’s No Magic Bullet
You can buy the fancy new ABM tool. You can say “agents” in every meeting. You can add more stacks on top of your martech stack. But brand strategy always comes back to the basics.
Listen to your organization.
Because what people believe internally matters. And those beliefs are rarely as unified as they look on the slide.
You learn:
- where teams are aligned
- where they’re wildly not
- what people wish the brand could be — and what marketing hopes it already is
- what customer-facing teams know but haven’t been asked (or are afraid to share)
- what assumptions are masquerading as truths
This becomes your roadmap for what to reinforce, reframe, or quietly retire.
Listen (like, really listen) to your customers.
They’ll tell you:
- what they actually need
- what they actually value
- what they actually understand
- what dialect they speak
And here’s the surprising part:
Customers often talk about your brand in ways that are more human, more inspiring, and more unexpected than what comes out of the conference room.
Bottom Line?
Shhhh.
Listen.
Everything you need to build a resonant, relevant, high-performing brand is already being said. You just have to listen.