I’ve spent thirty years telling other people they don’t see their own brands clearly. A few years ago, I found out I was no exception.
I’d just finished refreshing my website — new copy, new design, a version I was genuinely proud of. It wasn’t landing. Traffic was fine. Engagement wasn’t.
So I did something a little vulnerable. I handed the site, along with a stack of recent client proposals, to a room of my own graduate students at USC and asked them to grade me the way I teach them to grade brands.
The verdict came fast. “Professor — that’s not you at all. This is boring.” They knew me from three hours a week in a classroom: spontaneous, funny, decisive, a little edgy. The website in front of them had none of it. It read like it had been assembled by committee — because, in a sense, it had. Mine.
