Daily Archives: December 28, 2018

Cleaning My Memes

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I write frequently about Care-abouts and Good-ats, two fundamentals of my brand strategy practice. (Type the words into this blog search bar for more info.)  I’ve been working hard to create web memes out of the phrases but realize the bouncing these words around the ether is a little inside baseball. Even when I share them with brand people.

Care-abouts is actually shorthand for Consumer Care-abouts. And Good-ats refers to Brand Good-ats. Without those qualifying words the meanings are diluted. Or worse.  If Care-abouts are misunderstood to mean brand care-abouts, that’s certainly not good at all.  What brands cares about is making money. Making margin. Gaining share. Branding works best when it focused on consumer needs.  As for Good-ats, they are meant to refer to what a brand is good at. If construed as what the consumer is good at, that suggests a pandering brand strategy – one that blows smoke. Never a good idea.

Hence forth, I’ll be using the full terms of art: Consumer Care-abouts and Brand Good-ats. To do otherwise might sound nice, but confuse.

Peace.