Copyright Inc. Magazine
Marketing has a long-standing love affair with cleverness. The wink in a headline, the double meaning in a tagline, the campaign designed to be “decoded” by those in the know. Clever appeals to insiders. It makes the team feel smart. And in a pitch room, it usually earns applause. But clever doesn’t always win where it counts: in front of customers. Confusing marketing doesn’t make you look sophisticated…it just makes you forgettable. And forgettable marketing is the most expensive kind there is. Why clever is expensive Featured Video An Inc.com Featured Presentation It’s easy to forget that the end goal of marketing isn’t recognition from peers. It’s action from an audience. Yet countless campaigns have been built around cleverness that reads beautifully in the deck but collapses the moment it meets the market. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Nobody cares about your clever line as much as you do. People aren’t sitting around with extra brainpower waiting to decode your message. They’re half-awake, half-distracted, juggling emails, TikToks, and Slack pings. If they don’t get what you’re selling in the first five seconds, they’re gone. Clever feels good to marketers because it flatters our own taste. It makes us feel smart, creative, or different. But clever is a luxury reserved for the brands that already own space in people’s heads. Nike can write something cryptic because you already know what they stand for. Apple can drop two words on a billboard and have it land because decades of brand equity are doing the heavy lifting. You are not Nike. You are not Apple. If you’re still fighting for awareness, clever just makes you invisible. Why marketers struggle with clarity It’s tempting to blame ego for muddy the messaging, but that’s only part of the story. Founders and marketers also get tripped up by the endless pressure to stand out from competitors. Everyone wants their tagline to feel different, fresh, and disruptive. The danger is that in the effort to sound unique, they stop sounding understandable. You’ve probably seen a homepage that says something like, “Reimagining the future of connection.” Sounds lofty, but what does it mean? Is this a CRM? A messaging app? A dating site? No one knows. The attempt to differentiate stripped away the actual value proposition. Differentiation still matters, but it can’t come at the expense of being misunderstood. If prospects don’t know what you do, they’ll never care about how you’re different. Ask yourself, “Would a stranger get this in one read?” If the answer is no, you’re not there yet. The hidden cost of confusion The danger of unclear messaging is that it quietly erodes momentum. Marketing that people don’t understand wastes time on both sides. Your team spends hours debating clever lines that never convert, while your audience spends seconds shrugging and scrolling past. Multiply that by every campaign, landing page, and pitch deck, and the cumulative cost is staggering. Unclear messaging also burns opportunity. Every moment a prospect spends confused is a moment they aren’t considering your product. They’ll give that attention to someone else—the competitor who spelled it out in plain English. 3 things clarity actually requires Finding clarity can be much easier said than done. It requires you to decide what matters most and cut everything else. And that discipline can make it tricky—especially when you live and breathe your business, but your audience doesn’t. Here are three elements to consider: 1. Specificity Lead with the obvious. Say what you do before you say why it’s exciting. “Payroll software for small businesses” may not sound sexy, but it works. If someone has to dig three paragraphs down to figure out what you sell, you’ve already lost. 2. Plain language Avoid words you’d never use outside of a marketing meeting. No one introduces themselves at a party as someone who “empowers cross-functional synergies.” Talk the way your customers talk. 3. Outcomes, not features Customers don’t care that your product integrates with 200 APIs. They care that it eliminates the manual spreadsheet that’s been ruining their Fridays. Anchor in the result, not the mechanism. How to build clarity into your process The teams that consistently nail clarity bake it into every workflow. That starts with stripping messages down to their simplest form. Before anyone adds polish, test whether the plain version makes sense. Could you explain it to your neighbor in one sentence? Would a stranger understand it without context? If not, keep cutting. It also means testing beyond the bubble of people who already know your product. Teammates and insiders are terrible clarity checks—they know too much. Effective clarity testing means asking someone outside the company to read your website or pitch and repeat back what they think you do. If their version isn’t close, you’ve still got work to do. Some companies formalize this with “clarity checks” before every launch. Others bring in customers or even interns to flag where the language gets muddy. The exact process doesn’t matter as much as the discipline of making clarity a step, not an afterthought. Finally, clarity has to evolve. What feels obvious today won’t be obvious tomorrow as your product and market shift. Build in time to retest and resharpen continuously as things change. Final thoughts Marketers chase cleverness because it flatters us. Founders chase differentiation because it feels safer than being ordinary. But both instincts backfire when they overshadow the most important task: being understood. Say what you do. Say it directly. Then—and only then—make it stick.
