My 3rd grader has been drawing brackets on printer paper all week.
The kid is sketching matchups at the kitchen table, circling upsets based on criteria I'm pretty sure include mascot quality and uniform color, and informing me - firmly - that I'm wrong about Duke.
He's fully bought in, and the tournament hasn't even started yet.
(For the record, all 7 of us have our brackets in. I've got the 8/9 OSU - TCU game circled for today - OSU by 6, Thornton goes off, and we're cutting down nets by April. ;) A girl can dream... the trash talk at dinner is... a lot.)
Meanwhile, 70 million other Americans are doing the exact same thing this week. Arguing about 12-seeds at work. Texting group chats about sleeper picks with the urgency usually reserved for natural disasters. Refreshing brackets during meetings... the whole thing.
No one is forcing them to do this.
I keep thinking about why... And it's not really about basketball. (Sorry, ZG.)
The bracket works because it does something most marketing never figures out:
It turns spectators into participants before a single game is played. You pick your teams. You commit your logic. And suddenly every game matters - not because you bet money (well, maybe??), but because you bet your opinion, which, tbh, feels more expensive.
The bracket proves something slightly uncomfortable when it comes to our branding/marketing. We pour ourselves into the polished proposal, the airtight strategy, the "trust us, we're the experts" pitch.
But the bracket proves something slightly uncomfortable:
People will value an idea they helped shape more than maybe a more polished idea handed to them on a silver platter. (Which is mildly infuriating if you've spent 20 years perfecting this great idea, but here we are...)
My kid can't name a single player on half the teams in his bracket. Doesn't matter. He picked them. They're his teams now.
Most firms brand themselves as the star player - the ones with all the answers, the smartest person in the room. But the bracket isn't the team on the court. It's the structure that makes the whole thing make sense.
That's closer to what our brands should actually be: not "we're the experts" but "here's how we navigate this together - and your thinking shapes the strategy."
The more successful firms aren't necessarily better at "selling." They're better at making the buyer feel like a co-author.
→ Discovery that feels like collaboration, not a deposition.
→ Proposals that reflect the client's own words back to them.
→ The prospect's fingerprints are on the strategy before the ink is dry
...and that changes how invested they are in the work, the relationship, and the results.
70 million people filled out a bracket this week because someone gave them a structure and said your picks matter. That's the energy most client experiences are missing. (Also the energy of my dinner table right now, but that's a separate newsletter...)
So, before your next discovery call, maybe stop "presenting" and start asking: "We could go deep on [X] or tackle [Y] first - which matters more to you right now?" 1 question. That's it. You just gave them a pick. Now they're shaping the conversation instead of sitting through it...
Rooting for the 12-seeds (and your next big "pick"),
Dani
P.S. If OSU loses to TCU today, ignore everything I just said about strategy and expertise. I’ll be busy mourning my bracket and listening to my 3rd grader say "I told you so."