Today, I spent more time than usual in my car, listening to the radio the whole time. Because of this, I happened to hear a commercial for Tuscan Milk. I'm not sure I would have noticed this spot, but for the fact that the copy stressed the brand's newly designed packaging not once, not twice, but three times in 30 seconds. It turns out that their website (which is essentially a teaser for a new presence that will launch in 30 days) also makes note of their new package design. And let's be clear -- "new package design" refers not to some revolutionary new container for perishable dairy products but to a newly designed label (alas, the image adorning this post shows the old label.) Someone at Tuscan really loves their new label.
Pride in your own products is an important piece of any company's DNA, but I'm not sure that consumers really care. Should they? Milk is milk (give or take) and even then, what matters is what's inside the container, not what's pasted to the outside. So why would Tuscan waste their not inexpensive radio airtime and devote prominent website real estate to telling customers about something that, in all likelihood, they don't care about and really says nothing about the essence of the product?
I don't know the answer to this question -- we're talking about milk; who cares about the label? But I do know that this apparent self-obsession certainly isn't unique to Tuscan. We're all guilty of this type of behavior -- when we hype a name change (America Online to AOL), when we promote features instead of benefits, when we talk about what makes us different from our competitors rather than what makes us right for our customers. I'm sure you can think of a dozen examples -- and in each case, your advertising amounts to little more than an appeal to your own vanity.
Love your brand, have pride in the progress you make (no matter how trivial), but don't think that the inner workings of your company will interest regular people. Your advertising shouldn't be about you per se; it should be about your customers and how you meet a need or satisfy a want. You need to speak to your customers about the things that will really matter to them, not to yourself (your management team, employees or investors) about the things that matter only to you.
