Call the police. There's been a brand orthodoxy murder.
We’re well into 2025, and I think it’s time we take a chainsaw to something other than the federal government — to something that’s been rotting in the corner of every marketing team’s shared drive:
Stale brand orthodoxy. 💣
I’m talking about the bloated, over-intellectualized frameworks that still haunt pitch decks and agency workshops. The 4Ps. STP theory. Brand pyramids. Personas based on vibes and Spotify playlists. All of it.
🚨 There’s been a murder. And I did it. Gladly.
What actually happens when people buy stuff
Spoiler: it’s not what your favorite marketing textbook says.
Most buyers aren’t sitting around evaluating your carefully crafted archetype or brand differentiators. They aren’t meditating on your mission statement. They aren’t thinking about your tagline at all.
They're wondering:
🤞 Can I get it easily?
🔪 Can I justify the price — or will my partner unalive me?
🤤 Will I look stupid for buying this?
That’s it. That’s the game.
And now, thanks to my accomplices at the Ehrenberg-Bass institute, we've got the receipts in the form of a hefty new study on marketing science.
The myth of loyalty, differentiation, and segmentation
Here’s what the data says:
- Most people buy from multiple brands.
- They don’t perceive strong differences between them.
- Brand “loyalty” is rare and mostly irrelevant.
STP theory — the holy trinity of segmentation, targeting, and positioning — doesn’t hold up empirically. And yet marketers continue to build entire strategies around frameworks that assume people:
a) think deeply about brand values,
b) shop like they’re walking through a customer journey diagram,
c) stay loyal out of sheer emotional attachment.
🙅♀️ No, they don’t.
So what does work?
According to Ehrenberg-Bass (and, frankly, any founder who’s ever actually sold something), brands grow when they’re:
💡 Easy to notice
💡 Easy to buy
💡 Not asking buyers to overthink the decision
Mental and physical availability — not necessarily differentiation — drive growth. Which means if your brand isn’t easy to find, understand, and justify in the buyer’s mind right now, you lose.
What I help my clients build instead
I don’t do marketing theory. I do marketing that works.
I help small teams and founders build:
Content systems that scale without turning into a mess
Websites that prioritize user clarity, not cleverness
Messaging that’s built around buying behavior, not branding dogma
Custom GPTs and AI workflows that empower teams—not confuse them
Because you don’t need more content.
You need content that sells.
I'm not doing this because I have nothing better to do. I'm doing this because it works and the science backs me up.
What’s next? Probably more murder.
This is post one of a series. We’re burning the brand pyramid, one layer at a time.
Up next: Why most value props fail and how to write messaging that’s easy to understand, easy to buy, and hard to ignore.
Charts, heresy, and strategic clarity incoming. 🧙♀️🔥
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