2024 Resolution: Kill Your Ego
The work we do as marketers isn’t about us.
As soon as a brand becomes public—with customers and fans—it belongs to them.
So free yourself this year and leave your ego in 2023.
2024 Resolution: Kill Your Ego
Here’s a New Year’s resolution for curious marketers:
KILL YOUR EGO
The marketing spectrum goes from creator/influencer to agency cog. All ego to no ego.
As an influencer, you are the product. You are the marketing. You are the message. All you, all the time.
On the opposite end, you are facilitating other people's products, messages and stories, which means there is no place for you in the telling
But no matter where you are on the spectrum, killing your ego will bring your work to life.
If you are the brand, it's like you’re playing a character. Creating space so your sense of self worth and individuality aren’t at the whim of the internet masses.
If you work in support of A Brand™, it’s...also like you're playing a character. You adapt the brand persona and let your personal opinions fall by the wayside.
Because no matter where you fall on the spectrum, it’s not about you.
It’s about the customer and their story.
The story they tell themselves and how that story can (or can't) adapt to incorporate your brand. The more work that takes, the less likely they are to become a fan.
Or even a customer.
So, marketing resolution for 2024: Kill Your Ego
The work we do as marketers isn’t about us. Even as influencers and creators, it isn’t about us.
As soon as a brand becomes public—with customers and fans—it belongs to them.
We pour our opinions, tastes, and beliefs into the creation of a brand, but as soon as we launch we enter a state of co-creation.
So free yourself this year and leave your ego in 2023.
The algorithms always know when I’m having a back flare-up, because I tell them
…
And I will reinforce those suggestions and results by interacting with them (and a dismissal is an interaction, always).Search engines, algorithmic recommendation engines, advertisers - they are able to serve up “relevant” things about us because their designers and engineers built them to (or in same cases, failed to build them not to) deliver certain outputs in response to certain kinds of prompts and signals, explicit and implicit
Andrew proves his point with the story of Overstock.
The O.co rebrand lasted less than a year because 30-40% of their traffic was getting lost.
He says because people tried going to O.com.
If you are anything except your exact brand match .com, you cannot or should not refer to yourself as your “raw brand.”
I’m not sure I totally agree with this. But I also know I don’t disagree.
The fun of contradictory thinking!
He does add that any other domain endings need to be part of the brand. For example, this project, which uses Club as part of the name and as a .club TLD (top-level domain).
Regardless, one of the first things you should do when dreaming up a new brand is check your domain registry of choice.