It’s everywhere. Whether you turn on the TV, on a website or on LinkedIn for instance. Stuff you either don’t care for or just raises your eyebrows. For instance, ever seen an ad on LinkedIn where they promote you to download this 50 page research deck? How often have you actually done this? In the last 3 months, or year, or maybe even this decade? Probably not a lot of times. Why? Most likely cause you couldn’t be bothered to download a gigantic stack of paper or even if you ambitiously have, actually read it. Hardly anyone has time for this.

But we keep on doing it. We keep on creating ads or content cause we have a goal and objectives, and are going to let the world know. Forcefully if needs be. Ram it down their throats. Cause it makes you feel better, or seen. At least for internal politics, tick the box. Does it move the needle? No, most likely not. But that’s not the point right, it looks great in a PowerPoint presentation where you can lay out this awareness – consideration – engagement flow. Couple of extra arrows and it all looks shiny.

I used to have a photo frame on my desk at the office featuring a lady. She wasn’t family or business wise related to me. No, she was a random lady who once participated in a consumer safari. At the end of the 2 days, everyone got a framed photo of their “consumer buddy” as a reminder every day who the audience was. These days, I would argue you could also put a small mirror next to that frame. Not only to remind you to not make stuff because you like it, and look at the framed picture as a reminder. You should also look at yourself and wonder, would I myself like this thrown at me? If the answer is no, the person in the frame probably also doesn’t want it thrown at them.

It’s a pitfall we need to keep on navigating around, time and time again. And every once in a while, we seem to fall for it, or get trapped. We make stuff that we wouldn’t want to be exposed to ourselves. So get out that mirror, and maybe run over to a store to buy one, instead of ripping it off your bathroom wall. That’d get messy. You wouldn’t want that.