As I always say, branding is a lot more than simply logos, flyers, websites, and such. Branding has as much to do with customer service and consistently showing up as it has to do with graphics and graphic design. Because many people don’t know this or understand this, here I’m gonna give you some sure fire ways to destroy your brand that have absolutely nothing to do with graphics. So if you’re looking to sabotage all your hard work and turn your customers away in droves, just follow these 6 handy tips:

1. Ignore Your Customers: Who needs feedback from those pesky customers anyways? Just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t make any changes based on their feedback or requests. They’ll probably just forget about it – or leave entirely. One of my favorite quotes is “treat a person well and they’ll tell a friend, treat them shitty and they’ll tell all of their friends.” I have no clue who said it or if the quote is paraphrased but the truth of it stands out!
2. Overpromise and Underdeliver: Hey, nobody likes a showoff – except when they’re delivering their product or service. So go ahead and make grand claims about what you can do for your customers… and then fail to deliver. They’ll love being disappointed and frustrated. Frustrating your clients will be the main topic of all conversations about your brand. Any time someone asks about a referral for doing what you do, guess who will not being giving that referral.
3. Be a Copycat: Why reinvent the wheel? Just go ahead and steal those cool ideas and designs from your competitors – or even from your customers. They’ll appreciate the total lack of originality. OK, I’m gonna make this one a little about graphics. Many folks go to Fiverr, using Canva templates, and are now even using AI to create logo, flyers, and such, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, these things take time to create which means the only way that I can sell them for extra cheap is to sell them over and over again. Purchasing a $5 logo or a using a flyer template is a quick way to make sure that your shit will definitely not be original and may turn up on another company’s website and uniforms.
4. Be Inconsistent: Consistency is overrated, right? So just go ahead and switch up your branding, marketing messages, and even your products or services on a whim. Your customers will love the challenge of keeping up with your 3 different logos. You sounded really professional on your blog posts last week but this week you’re using slang and urban jargon. What do you think that does to the folks that are paying attention? Consistency builds loyalty.
5. Put Profits Over People: Sure, customer satisfaction is nice and all, but you know what’s even nicer? Money. So do whatever it takes to squeeze a bit more profit out of your customers – even if it means screwing them over. Just today I had a potential client call and ask me to do a job. I could do the job and he was ready to spend some money. But I know that what he was asking for was not a strong suit for me. I’m aight at it, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be good at it. For this reason I turned it down. I refused to have my brand be known as one that takes money knowing I can’t perform at the highest level.
6. Avoid Transparency: Honesty is the best policy? Nah, let’s go with obfuscation and deception instead. Keep your customers in the dark about your actions, policies, and behind-the-scenes dealings. They’ll love the mystery. Have you ever hired someone to do a job and they give you a date that it will be completed only for that date to come and go and you hear nothing from them. Not an email, a phone call, or nothing. This is the worst. You had your mouth all ready for some orange juice, go to the fridge, grab the container, and there’s no more orange juice in the container. Someone could have warned you, right? Just tell me that you can’t do it, knowing always makes it a little better.

So there you have it y’all, 6 simple ways to commit brandicide and utterly destroy your brand and send your customers running for the competition. Of course, if you’re looking to actually build a successful brand that your customers will love, you might want to do the exact opposite of everything we just talked about. Good luck out there, friends!