Why being cautious isn’t a sustainable strategy

Y’know when you have a great idea and then something stops you from sharing it or putting the wheels into motion, or you’re just about ready to put it out to the world and something stops you. You’re cautious about it. You don’t know how it will be received. You worry it will be “too much.”

And then you change it into a much milder version of itself. It still does what you want it to but it’s not quite the same as the original idea you had.

I completely understand that caution. Even I do it sometimes. 

I distinctly remember my Auntie telling me, at the age of 10, that once you put something into writing it’s a lot harder to take back. And I’ve internalised that throughout my life.

And, every time I act on that feeling, the results are always mediocre. It’s time to stop being so cautious.*

*That’s not to say we should all live in controversy, just offending people left, right, and centre for the hell of it.

As an individual and a business person, this constant need to be cautious in what I say or how I act isn’t doing me any favours. In fact, it’s likely quite harmful to my own personal identity. Why? Because it means that anything I want to say aloud involves an extra step of consideration which, firstly, slows down communication and, secondly, I’m often not getting the most important message across. It means I’m not trusting my gut. It means I’m constantly shaping and reshaping endless versions of myself depending on the interaction, which can also make it more difficult for other people to trust me. 

99% of the time, it isn’t effective, and nobody involved feels good about it. The same applies when this caution gets into business marketing.

The hypocrisy 

When meeting a client, I’ll happily sit there and tell them that they need not be afraid and to just go for it. The “right” people will invest in you as long as you create a genuine connection, and are authentic in both your messaging and interactions.

I’m one of the most opinionated people I know – and those opinions have won me both business and friends. But if you ask me something that I feel I’m not fully informed on, I won’t offer an opinion. All because I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing and elicit an adverse reaction.

Which I think is pretty prevalent in company branding and marketing we see today.

So Kaytie, what does any of this have to do with marketing?

Gone are the fun and highly memorable adverts of before the 00s. No more secret lemonade drinkers, no Cadbury’s taking hazelnuts to cover in chocolate, no chimpanzees asking if you want a cuppa – though that’s likely more to do with increased cognisance of animal welfare. 

Instead, what we’re left with are companies that are terrified of getting it wrong, as if the Soviet Politburo is listening to everything they say. The outcome is most marketing is often a bizarre mix of trying to be clever combined with a load of jargon that nobody cares about and are decorated with soulless taglines that are easy to forget. 

Is it because we’ve all run out of unique ideas? Aren’t we trying to attract customers in a competitive market?

Are we all just so afraid to put our heads slightly above the parapet and get noticed for fear of upsetting someone who would never buy from you anyway?

We’re seeing a massive increase in sameness. The internet has given us everything we could possibly want to know and learn about from all around the world, at any moment, and we ignore almost all of it to look and sound like we all live in 1950s Russia.

Subgroups of people dressing based on their music choices are much fewer and far between. Influencer culture (looking specifically at you, Love Island) has encouraged people to indulge more in cosmetic treatments, with many falling into the uncanny valley. Social media especially paints pictures of lives we all so desperately want to lead, with many aiming to follow that path rather than look to build something of their own, with their own visual identity. 

Caution in business

When putting something out to the world, it’s fair to say you’re usually trying to impress as many people as possible (but maybe this is part of the problem; we’re all so busy trying to impress each other that we’ve forgotten that good marketing is supposed to be entertaining). The fear comes in when there’s a specific group or demographic that you don’t know how they’re going to react, so you’re probably more inclined just to play it safe and not alienate them.

However, this ‘playing it safe’ is what removes the memorability factor of what you’re trying to say.

We should consider the spread of people, i.e., our market, as a bell curve. The majority of people you’re targeting will sit in the middle of the curve, with the outliers at either end. 

On a bell curve, there are always outliers. It’s a natural distribution that shows both averages and extremes. As people, we are not always in the majority (the top of the bell curve). Often, we ourselves will be an extreme along this curve. That’s life, that’s just how it goes. 

We cannot reasonably expect that we will always be represented by the masses. We’re individuals with our own sense of identity. Life is not binary. It is nuanced. And this cannot be wholly explained by an arbitrary graph or simplified explanation.

The outliers will not always behave as you expect, either. There’s so much that goes into our personal motivations that isn’t constantly visible to everyone. Timing and happenstance can have a great effect on our reactions.

So, effectively, by approaching with caution you’re disregarding the chance that your message will appeal to the majority, in favour of not being unappealing to a minority of outliers.

Are you altering your best ideas because of the chance that a small handful of people won’t like them?

To use one of my favourite German words: quatsch. You don’t change the fundamentals of who you are as a person just to please a few – so why should marketing?

So what now?

The second you decide to choose caution over being bold and brave is the second you start to become homogeneous. You blend in with everyone else that has a sanitised approach to marketing. Can you even call that marketing anymore? You no longer have a clear differentiation from competitors. Instead of making the choice clear that you are the right partner for your consumers’ needs, you’re actually diluting the pool of choice. At that point, why bother marketing at all?

Let’s go with another analogy for the road. Fashion. You’ve hopefully seen fashion runways, such as London Fashion Week, or the very intentionally designed displays we get from the Met Gala. Fashion trends don’t start because these designer houses want their garments to look like everyone else. They start because they’re doing something different. Combining different concepts and pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable.

If Vivienne Westwood didn’t experiment with fetishwear, would the punk movement be as visually iconic as we know it today? If David Beckham didn’t want to piss off Fergie, would shaved heads have been as popular in the 00s?? Of course not. 

By choosing caution, rather than being brave, you’re implying you don’t trust your own instincts, that you don’t have complete faith in your idea. It’s time that we all, me included, started believing in ourselves a little bit more. It’s time that we choose to differentiate ourselves and embrace our own unique identities. 

It’s time to be bold and to put ourselves out there.