This is one advertising trope that just needs to stop.

Brand after brand confidently stating that their product or service allows people to do things their way.

These are just a few examples that I’ve seen in the last 12 months. It’s curious to explore why it’s so prevalent, it also shows how brands and agencies are not looking at other work out there.

Even internally at my agency, I’ve told teams about this trope, it still sometimes rears its head, like a weed. And it will often pop up on brands we work on, from other agencies, in live work.

I think clients like it as it feels like they’re giving customers control ‘at a time when people might feel out of control’. I can see that being an easy sell.

But it’s all a fallacy. It’s not ‘your way’, it’s ‘their way’. It’s their product, their service, their porridge. I’m going to them because (I hope) they’re the expert. I don’t want to go to Apple and have the iPhone ‘my way’. I want Apple’s iPhone, their way.

There’s also a whiff of ‘showing your briefs’ where what’s gone into a brief almost transposes itself into the creative with barely any disguise/nuance/emotion.

Only one brand earned the right to strategically include these words in their marketing, and that is Burger King. They originally used it to differentiate the brand from the market leader, McDonalds, and allow customers to create their burgers ‘their way’.

Link to my original Twitter/X post