People try to sell you something, every day. Whether it is the timid girl at the mall asking you to try the perfume, or the flooding mails in your Promotional Inbox. Your power to purchase is being pulled in a million directions, yet, ultimately deciding what you want to spend money on isn’t that hard. Why? Because, you either have a need or there are certain brands that just stand out. You see them, you want to be a part of their inner circle, and you fall for all they have to offer.

That’s the brilliance of marketing and brand building strategies – if done right, you have the masses decisions on your fingertips. But what fun is it to always talk about the right? So here’s 5 marketing and brand design fails that most companies make subconsciously.

Plain Jane: Many companies focus almost entirely on development/production. The go-to strategy for a lot of them is to push Production and Sales. Branding, Digital Marketing, Design or anything to give them an edge, is totally forgotten, which is why they blend in with the hordes of companies trying to make it.

MSN is a good example of a Plain Jane. Since they first established themselves in 1995 MSN did get some backlash on not evolving their brand with the times. Their answer to this was to take out the little color that was left, and brand themselves in all black. Anti-climactic, much?

Uncle Websites: That’s what we call it. Perfectly brilliant organizations, with a large workforce, articulate marketing budgets, and top-notch clients – but you log onto their website, and you’re back in 1995. Their lack of initiative to establish a Brand Design, gives you bad taste on your first visit.

Take Berkshire Hathaway for example – with a whopping USD 24 CR+ Revenue, they still refuse to leave the dark ages. Their website is a perfect example of resistance to change.

Band Influence: Influencers are all the rage now. Food, Fashion, Business, even not-for-profit causes, are all dominated by a few people that dominate social media. The tricky thing about social media is – it’s a lot of attention. And some of these influencers aren’t the brightest. Some MAJOR brand influencer fails have pushed back the brand value for companies by leaps and bounds.