Somewhere along the line, we all created an Ideal Client Avatar: defining the age, income, Saturday morning routine, what keeps them up at night... the whole shebang. And yes, knowing who you're talking to matters!
BUUUT
There's a point where this exercise stops being a strategy tool and starts becoming a people-pleasing spiral, where you're trying to make every single brand decision based on how every single person in your audience *might* react. So much so that you pull yourself out of your own brand, try to please everybody, and end up with something... safe & forgettable.
But your "ideal client" doesn't want the safest, most palatable version of you. They want the real you, with the jokes, quirks, weirdness, and personal tastes that make YOU different from everyone else.
When I ask my clients who *they* wanna work with, the first answer I get usually isn't a looong description of their dream client. It's a list of everyone they don't want to *exclude*. They don't want anyone to feel alienated, they want their community to feel welcoming.
So they start making brand decisions designed to offend no one, which means decisions that excite no one either.
"Should I use pink? What if men see it and assume the brand isn't for them? Should I use a cursive font? Too feminine? Block letters? Too masculine?"
(for what it's worth, I can think of three brand designers right now who use hot fuchsia pink as their main brand colour, and two of them are men. Their clients are not exclusively women.)
Every single decision gets filtered through an imaginary committee of every possible person who might ever land on their website or social media, and the result is a brand that's been sanded down until there's nothing left to grab onto.
You're almost certainly wrong about your brand assumptions, especially early on when you have no data. And even when the assumptions are right, you're only solving half the problem.
If you take yourself out of your personal brand entirely (make it 100% about your audience, nothing about you) your audience has nothing to actually connect with. The person behind the brand disappears, and with it, any sense of trust or relatability.
I like think about brand decisions as a Venn diagram:
The goal is to get as many decisions as possible into the middle, things that feel like YOU and also land with THEM.
Because if you don't like how your brand looks, you won't show up for it consistently. You won't talk about it, share it, put it out into the world with any real energy. And a brand that never gets put out into the world doesn't grow, no matter how "strategically" it was built.
Your ideal client isn't looking for the safest, most palatable version of you. They're looking for the person who makes them think: "yes, this is exactly who I've been wanting to work with!" The jokes, the quirks, the weirdness, the specific tone of voice that makes you sound like you and nobody else: that's what makes people feel like they already know you before they ever reach out.
A watered-down, filtered-down version of yourself, built to please everybody, won't attract that person. It'll just attract nobody in particular.
So the next time you sit down to make a brand decision (whether you're rebranding, pivoting, or just questioning your colour palette at 11pm) yes, ask who your ideal client is. But also ask: "What do I want to be known for? What energy do I want my brand to carry?"
Your values and personality aren't meant to live in a brand strategy doc and never see the light of day. They're the central point of the whole thing.
If you're ready to put your personality back at the forefront of your brand, The Extravaganza is my signature 12-week offer where we make your personality the main asset, so your audience can see the person behind the brand, and you get to look the part, act the part, and sell like it too.
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Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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