why constant discounting hurts brand, and the Three C Method we use to help brands charge full price.

Let's get into it →

Welcome to the discount treadmill.

You know the pattern. Sales dip, so you run a promo. The promo works, and revenue spikes. Then it dips again, a little lower than before. So you run another one. Six months later your customers won't buy anything that isn't 20% off, your margin is shrinking, and you now own a "bargain brand."

This week: why that happens, and the framework that gets you off the treadmill.

If you have to discount to keep cash coming in, you don't have a pricing problem. You have a brand problem.

I've spent 6+ years making ads for 9 and 10 figure automotive brands, and I see the same pattern all the time. The brands that actually make money don't run monthly sales. do they run sales occasionally? Of course. But the difference is they don't have to.

Look at Weathertech and Thule. Floor liners and roof boxes, two of the least sexy products in the space. Did you know they only run a couple major sales a year? It hasn't stopped them from being billion-dollar brands.

And when you look at their ads, their creative sells the brand, never the price.

Look at examples like this or this. You know what we don't see? A price.

Discounting isn't a growth lever. It's a substitute for one.

1. They treat monthly discounts as a strategy instead of a symptom. 

The promo calendar becomes the marketing plan. But every discount trains your customer to wait for the next one. Every dollar comes at the expense of the next.

2. They think brand is something thats built upstairs.

 Operators hear "brand problem" and picture a rebrand: new colors, new fonts, and some fancy brand voice deck. That's not the problem 90% of the time. Brand is the web of things people associate with your name, and that's built every day through the hundreds of touch points your customers have with your brand. Its built in the field, not in the boardroom.

 3. They separate brand creative from performance creative.

 Assuming performance creative has to be quick and dirty is a mistake. That brand voice that comes through in your Hi-Fi TV campaigns? Customers should see that on their feeds as well.

Every discount you run is paid for twice. Once with your margin, and again with your brand. The good news is my team and I have developed a way to break this cycle. We call it the Three C Method.

Build the connections. Broadcast them with creative. Bind them with community. Do that, and and next thing, you'll be setting the terms of the sale not your consumers.