The danger of overthinking it

We all care too much about our brands.  We’re obsessed with our products & services – how we talk about them, how we describe them, what we name them.  And that’s usually a good thing.

But we also have to be mindful of the gap between how much we care, and how much our clients care.

For example, many companies spent a ton of time fretting over brand strategy, architecture and naming issues.  They spend meetings and email strings and hours talking & thinking about what to name a new product or feature.  But does the customer care?  Or is it just the same to them if you call it what it is (or what it does) and get out of the way of their success?

The more you put yourselves in the shoes of your customers, or better yet stay close enough to them that you hear exactly what they’re thinking on a daily basis, the more you’ll know where that point is between what they care about, and what you care about. 

And if you avoid going past that point of diminishing returns more often, you’ll make things far simpler for your customers and yourself.