Call it the 78% problem: most brands still talk about themselves. Customers don’t care. They care about getting a job done. That gap kills campaigns. They have features
Call it the 78% problem: most brands still talk about themselves. Customers don’t care. They care about getting a job done. That gap kills campaigns. They have features at the forefront, insist on templated assertions and hope that repetition will work. Ishrath Nawaz says the contrary. Unless the context of the customer precedes your message, it will not land, however glossy the movie or clever the phrase.
Ishrath uses a simple test for any message: does it help the customer do what they’re trying to do right now? If not, it’s noise. Don’t be different just to be different – be useful, specific, and timely so people choose to pay attention.
A customer-centric strategy puts the audience’s needs, words, and moments at the center. You swap product talk for value clarity: what the customer wants to do, how you remove the friction, and what happens next. As per Ishrath the goal is credibility and recurrence and not a big bang.
Ishrath Nawaz challenges the teams to recreate briefs on such pillars. He cuts fast to the point, linking every promise to a specific customer moment – that’s where persuasion happens.
Map the journey end to end. Identify the distinguishing points of results.
Construct one picture of the customer and rely on it to build creative, and not just targeting.
Compose messages in each phase, unaware, problem-sensitive, solution-sensitive, making selection, employing. Seal the circle up with on-going surveys and support analytics.
Stop chasing vanity lifts. Read performance through revenue, retention, and advocacy. And Ishrath is blunt: if an idea can’t be tied to a real customer moment, it’s decoration.
Conduct regular short surveys and ongoing surveys on web, application, email and support. Tag open-text answers by theme, pull call transcripts, and watch the trends. Treat all of this as fresh signals you act on fast – not long reports that gather dust.
Prioritize the journey
Pick three moments where the decision swings. Write one sharp message for each: the job, the friction, the fix, the next step.
Use leverage data and AI moderately
Use prediction to sort who needs what, then keep a human in the loop on language and tone. Precision without empathy backfires.
Recruit people who can feel and educate ease
Great messaging sounds like help, not hype. Train teams to cut jargon, show outcomes, and tell people exactly what to do.
Make convenience policy
Short forms. Clear pricing. Fast paths to a person. If a process creates drop-off, change the process, not the headline.
Ishrath Nawaz often reduces this to two lines on a wall: “Solve the real job. Remove the next obstacle.” Every asset should prove both.
When you are not able to make movements other than clicking, you are not strategy but you are trend. Track:
Establish goals, revisit on monthly basis, and repeat. Tighten the weakest message in the chain first.
Ishrath would add one more: remove anything the customer wouldn’t miss.
Most campaigns fail because they start from the mirror – not the market. At Kabrand Consulting, founded by Ishrath Nawaz, we build from the outside in. Ishrath listens for the job, writes for the moment, and proves it in behavior. Do that with discipline, and your message stops needing to shout. People lean in because it helps them win.
Ishrath calls that creative excellence — not the loudest brand, but the clearest one. At kabrandco, we call it common sense, practiced with rigor. And when you do it well, the “78% problem” stops being your problem.
