The Marmite Mindset: Why Trying to Please Everyone Backfires

Some brands spark obsessive devotion in some people and genuine disgust in others. Marmite is the obvious example: unapologetically itself, and never interested in being liked by everyone.

Why the love-it-or-hate-it approach works

In marketing, trying to please everyone is usually a beginner's mistake. The end result is bland, forgettable, indistinguishable from a dozen competitors. Brands that speak directly to a specific audience, accepting they'll repel everyone else, build the kind of devoted following a safer brand never could.

The same trade-off applies to people. Blending in feels safer in the moment. It also quietly sands down the parts of you that would otherwise make you memorable to the people who'd actually get you.

What it costs to please everyone

Softening your opinions so nobody disagrees, hiding a hobby because it's not cool enough, editing your personality down to something inoffensive, none of it makes you more liked. It mostly makes you less noticeable, to the right people as much as the wrong ones.

Fewer people will strongly connect with a fully authentic version of you than a carefully neutral one. But the connections that do form will be real, built on actually knowing you rather than a smoothed-over version of you.

Leaning into it

This is the same territory as not dulling your edges to fit in. Being fully yourself, strong flavour and all, means accepting you won't appeal to everyone. That's not a flaw in the plan. It's the point.

Worth sitting with this week: where are you currently diluting yourself to be liked by people you don't even want to be closer to?