{"id":10942,"date":"2026-04-10T18:42:49","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T00:42:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10942"},"modified":"2026-04-10T18:42:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T00:42:49","slug":"marketing-that-pleases-everyone-converts-no-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10942","title":{"rendered":"Marketing that pleases everyone converts no one"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/div>\n

There\u2019s a scene in the movie \u201cChef\u201d that I think about too often. The titular chef, Jon Favreau, is convinced by the restaurant owner, Dustin Hoffman, to play it safe and go with the crowd favorites when serving a prestigious food critic, rather than the special new menu the chef had planned. The critic is unimpressed and lambastes the chef, who then tears him apart on camera in a moment that goes viral. As a result, he\u2019s fired. Not because he took a risk but because he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

I see marketing teams make the same mistake over and over. They run copycat campaigns, choose the same colors as everyone else (every streaming app icon on your TV is white text on a blue background) and do marketing by agreement. When they fail to stand out, they get fired.<\/p>\n

Safe marketing fails not because of limited creativity or technique but because it avoids tension. When messaging is driven by approval rather than truth, it becomes invisible \u2014 and invisible marketing doesn\u2019t move customers or drive revenue.<\/p>\n

At the core, it\u2019s the same problem individuals face, which is what mental toughness experts call approval addiction \u2014 where individuals constantly avoid making risky decisions because they\u2019re worried it won\u2019t get the approval of others. This sends mixed messages to your audience, and mixed messages kill revenue because your customer doesn\u2019t know which message to act on. So they choose the safest option: not to engage.<\/p>\n

Approval addiction in action<\/h2>\n

I know this pattern because I\u2019ve lived it. In my religious tradition, members of the congregation deliver the sermons. I don\u2019t get asked very often, and a friend told me why. He said, \u201cZac, when you speak, most people like it. But some people get offended.\u201d I\u2019m very bold when I preach, so it wasn\u2019t surprising. But what was surprising is that they keep asking me to speak.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, my wife and I were commiserating about a sales slump. My wife said to me, \u201cI don\u2019t get it. You piss people off at church, but they love it when you teach. Why isn\u2019t that transferring to prospects?\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when it hit me. Right or wrong, I wasn\u2019t afraid to offend people at church. But I was terrified to offend a prospect. I was pulling my punches, and my prospects could sense it. That approval addiction was killing my sales.<\/p>\n

The most effective marketing teams I\u2019ve seen are the ones that don\u2019t strive to be offensive. But they aren\u2019t afraid of it either. They know that to do their job well, they have to risk being offensive. What does that actually look like?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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On being offensive<\/h2>\n

I was trained as a professional speaker by Steve Siebold. He\u2019s made millions of dollars as a speaker by making people feel bad about themselves \u2014 particularly business executives and decision-makers. Siebold taught me that you have to show people they have a headache, then convince them it\u2019s a migraine.<\/p>\n

Why? Because unless a buyer has a moment where they realize they\u2019re uncomfortable, they won\u2019t change. From what I\u2019m seeing out there now, most marketing relies on safe messages presented in an entertaining way, which, in my opinion, is the worst approach they could take.<\/p>\n

When you remove tension from your message, you remove the reason for a buyer to act. Entertaining marketing removes tension. It risks distracting your target customers away from where you most need them to be \u2014 realizing that their headache is actually a migraine and you\u2019ve got the pain reliever.<\/p>\n

Effective marketing must be risky to inspire the desired changes you want to see in your target audience. There are lots of ways you can create that tension \u2014 showing them they have a headache. You can expose a flawed belief or challenge a current solution.<\/p>\n

Airbnb and Apple do a good job with this. Airbnb\u2019s recent ad campaign comparing its listings to the traditional hotel experience challenges the belief that hotels are the best vacation option. Apple\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m a Mac\/PC\u201d commercial effectively challenged the belief in PC functional superiority.<\/p>\n

Where most marketing misses<\/h2>\n

I keep noticing soft marketing language. It doesn\u2019t matter which industry or geographic region. Marketing is toothless. These campaigns are clearly created through marketing by agreement, and it kills any edge they might have.<\/p>\n

A wizard on a unicorn telling me to check out your website isn\u2019t risky. It merely captures my attention. That\u2019s not enough to drive sales \u2014 and that\u2019s where most marketing misses.<\/p>\n

Although most marketers see themselves as risk-takers, the campaigns they\u2019re creating don\u2019t come out that way. Often, what starts as an edgy campaign is killed by committees too afraid to offend. With each cut, they shave off just a little bit of what would\u2019ve made the marketing stand out in the first place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The brief goes through legal, then brand, then the CMO, then the agency, and at each handoff, someone softens an edge. No one person killed the idea. The process did.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the danger of marketing by agreement. It creates marketing that pleases the room but doesn\u2019t move the market. No one person in the room is a coward on their own. Collectively, they are.<\/p>\n

Dancing with chaos<\/h2>\n

All this has me wondering about comedy and asking why some comedians make it while others don\u2019t. I recently heard a statement on a podcast that explains the difference between success and failure in comedy \u2014 and in marketing. They said that for something to be funny, it has to dance with chaos and the unknown. It\u2019s a comedian\u2019s job to find that line between appropriate and inappropriate and vibrate it until it sings, while avoiding going so far that it becomes cruel or staying so safe it\u2019s predictable.<\/p>\n

Marketing is the same way. When I say marketing has to be offensive, that doesn\u2019t mean marketing becomes Trey Parker and Matt Stone when they wrote \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d a musical that lampoons the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But they still have to dance on that line of appropriate and inappropriate within the context of the problem.<\/p>\n

Target customers should feel uncomfortable enough about their problem that they want to change, but not so uncomfortable that they\u2019re embarrassed.<\/p>\n

If you find yourself wondering whether your marketing is offensive enough, I want you to run your last five campaigns through this filter:<\/p>\n