Stop Selling Crap: Why Your Brand Is Dead on Arrival
- The Cigar Profit
- 28 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Market’s not buying your vanity. Prove you know better - or get buried with the rest.
11.13.25 | Jonathan Lipson | Cigar Profit Consulting | Schedule Exploratory Call
The Legacy Lie - Why Your Brand Was Over Before Launch
You think that in the age of exposure culture and AI that legacy still sells like it’s 1998.
You think the market owes you something because Grandpa invented a widget in 1957, survived two wars and drank cognac with barons.
You think the customer ought to stand there and clap for your bloodline.
But here’s the truth:
Your story isn’t just tired. It’s a liability.
And it’s one more reason nobody’s lining up.
You launch another “pedigree” product, hoping history will pull you out of the quicksand.
CEO signs the press release.
The interns pump the socials.
And the agency bills you for “authenticity.”
Meanwhile, your sell-through tanked and the big dealers are sending your emails straight to archive.
Gen Z: the zero out your brand code the moment you start preaching saga.
Millennials: the only thing they like about your background is that there’s a skip button.
Xennials and Gen X: they want an answer - how does this save me time, status, headache, money? They’re allergic to nostalgia, especially yours.
You keep marketing backwards because it feels safe. You think your journey is the pitch. It’s not. The only journey a customer cares about is their own. You’re putting your legacy on the shelf and wondering why it doesn’t move. Here’s why: the world is sick of your museum.
You’ve got three options: adapt, die, or sell out to the next guy. The market isn’t asking for your forgiveness. It’s giving you a deadline - and the clock’s running out.
Tunnel Vision Vs. Market Reality
You think I’m making this up. You think that your brand story and your legacy will save you.
It won’t.
Look at LVMH -
Last quarter – an illusion.
No real market value added.
They posted a rally on the books –
Shifting numbers.
Cannibalizing sub-brands.
Praying for China to save their skin.
The top tier’s sweating in silk. The middle is crumbling.
Grey market watch flippers -
Praying for a rich uncle or a bigger fool.
Prices on icons - Daytona, Nautilus, Royal Oak - down by double digits.
Not moving? Sell them at cost.
Still not moving? Flip the business model. Turn to social media.
Expose the market – how things really work behind closed doors.
Destroy the markup illusion.
Monetize content.
Because the old way doesn’t make money, but entertainment does.
If you’re still not seeing it – check your glasses. The brand name on the arms: Narcissism.
Narcissist Metrics: The Pitfall of Founder/Owner/CEO-Driven Metrics
Your CMO stands up, talks about Instagram:
Reach.
“Real engagement”.
“Major placement”.
You eat it up.
Your board eats it up.
Your marketing team pats themselves on the back.
Your agency applauds.
You love it.
It validates your leadership.
It validates everything you think.
It validates everything you are.
But the applause isn’t free, because the data’s lying through its teeth.
You want to know what actually matters?
Sell-through.
Repeat buys.
Returns from actual pain solved.
Still not convinced?
Leather is softer than ever, but nobody wants “heritage tannery,” just a reason to buy for their next trip, their next night out, their next everyday win.
Spirits - Instagram campaigns, tasting nights, big launch events - but the only things moving are flavored vodkas and craft seltzers that went viral because some no-name, unsponsored nobody did a silly dance on TikTok.
Nobody’s paying $300 for a bottle because some master distiller turned 80.
Your marketing reflects you, not the market.
You keep yelling “look at me”!
But your buyers see nothing.
Retail partners saw your launch, placed orders, took on risk and spent Q2 liquidating inventory at 40% off.
Distributors gave you shelf, you gave them drama.
The only metric that matters now is cash flow - yours, theirs and the market’s.
Here’s how the real buyers talk about your brand behind closed doors:
“All ego, no velocity.”
If you haven’t heard that, ask a retailer for their dead-stock list.
Read the email chains:
“Never again”.
“Can’t move.”
“Too much owner content.”
You paid for press, bought a pile of vertical buzz and ended up with storage expenses.
The agencies made money.
The influencers made money.
Your competitors - who lead every pitch with a real pain and solve it in two sentences - made money.
You’re exporting drama, importing regret and adding one more chapter to your legend called:
“We used to be special.”
The Only Psychology That Pays: Buyers’ Desires, Not Your Narrative
Maybe you wouldn’t have read this far if any of this didn’t resonate. Maybe you’re still on the fence. Maybe you just want to see where this is going.
And if you still don’t get the picture – here’s the clarity:
Marketing your legacy isn’t elevating you. It’s killing you.
You want to make money instead of noise?
Start where your buyer bleeds.
Your ads brag about “brand values” like everyone’s waiting for permission to belong.
Reality: nobody’s joining your club. They’re hunting for wins, shortcuts, leverage.
You don’t know what the market looks like? Here’s some granular hints:
Gen Z –
Sees your ad, snoozes, and bounces. They’re not chasing your founder’s ghost - they want what makes tomorrow smoother, cheaper, smarter. Instagram is their battlefield, not your genealogy lab. You pitch “family,” they buy frictionless gain and fun. If your product’s not changing their speed, status, or experience, you’re wallpaper.
Millennials –
They’re allergic to complexity - if your pitch takes more than three seconds, you lost the sale, the repurchase, and maybe your distributor’s patience. They don’t buy because you have a story. They buy because you bulldoze hassle. Forget “community” - make their day easier, make them look sharper, don’t waste their time.
Gen X –
You want their cash?
Try selling to someone who’s raised a family, survived two market crashes, and hates inefficiency more than fake nostalgia. Your storytelling is just one more dead pixel. Efficiency, guarantee, surprise them - then stay out of their way. They win, you win. Ego plays die on arrival.
Xennials –
That micro-generation in between Millennials and Gen X. Mix the two together and see where your messaging doesn’t resonate.
Stair stepping and being everything to everybody doesn’t work anymore. Choose your demos, speak their language, build brand equity.
Ego and ignorance are no longer on the menu.
Verify, Don’t Trust: How AI Kills Every Market Excuse - And Every Narcissist’s Last Defense
Here's the gut punch:
You can no longer hide behind last quarter’s metrics or “beliefs” about market pulse.
In 2025, research is not just live - it’s surgical.
Any founder, board member, or exec can run an agent, punch in a few keywords and get the unvarnished readout – in real time:
Trend spikes.
Sentiment dips.
Product flops.
Competitor wins.
No more spreadsheets built on trust. No more campaign wrap-ups padded with PR-friendly “reach.”
You think the stats can be juiced?
Not anymore.
Set up a monitor and AI will parse every review, every hashtag, every angry Reddit laundry list in five minutes flat. The sniff test is automated. The market’s real answers are crowdsourced and quantified. The excuse factory is closed.
Your job isn’t to trust - it's to verify. Markets don’t lie. They’re not buried under trade show handshakes, influencer boosts or boutique awards. They're tracked by algorithms trained to cut through drama, myth and agency self-congratulation.
If your "community" isn't buying, it will tell you - louder, faster and more clinically than your own staff ever would.
Nobody gets to live off faith anymore. The window for “instinct” closed when AI opened the vault on every sector’s weak spot.
If you’re still running blind, banking on legacy and hoping the market’s lagging behind your PowerPoints, you’re toast.
Every bad launch, every self-serving ad, every ego-fueled partnership will be timestamped, indexed, and archived with a digital footprint - forever.
Adjust or die.
The Ruthless Rewrite: Make It About Them or Get Out
If you want to win, torch your own script. Scrap the family album. Stop making your pain the center of someone else’s buying decision.
The brands making money in 2025, and will continue to do so in 2026, are the ones rewriting everything around customer friction, customer gain, customer ego.
You think “rebranding” is swapping logos. You think rinsing out another collab will keep you relevant.
Try again.
Cracker Barrel couldn’t hit the mark. Learn from it.
Collabs aren’t special anymore. They’re overdone. Get your house in order.
It’s time for a complete gut renovation.
Audit every touchpoint - website, ad, packaging, pitch.
Ask yourself: does this solve, speed or serve my buyer? Or am I just begging for applause with a new paint job? If it’s the latter, you’re already circling the bowl.
Here’s where the killers separate from the casualties:
A cigar company ditches founder stories, hardship press releases, contradicting social media posts - and replaces them with solutions to consumer pain points -
Price point
Value proposition
Moment
Suddenly tastings double, repeat sales go up and the only people complaining are the brand principals stuck in the past.
A mid-tier watch brand nukes the “family archive” language, adds a disruptor to the team and ditches collabs with designers who’ve already run through 7 of their competitors.
Resell value? Up 17%.
Engagement from people under 30? Doubled.
Spirit-maker fires the “master distiller” campaign, runs with cocktail hacks, life hacks, social dares.
It gets roasted… by their board.
But it 3x’s their Q2 share in key urban markets.
If what you’re saying isn’t for the buyer, it’s fuel for your own funeral pyre. The companies that survive this market cycle slaughter their own ego on the altar of utility and surprise.
Don’t adjust. Overcorrect.
The only way to get noticed is to stop showing off and start shutting up. Let the product perform, the service speak, the results echo.
If you need a standing ovation every time you change the label color, the material of the packaging or an “elevated” logo on the same old product - you’re already managing
decline.
The Audit: Your Ego Is a Line Item - and It’s Draining You Dry
Here’s the number nobody wants on their balance sheet: the ego tax.
Every campaign about you, every headshot, every “brand journey” video, every “legacy” poster - delete it and see what’s left.
If anything is working without you in the picture, now you’re onto something.
Review the graveyard –
Luxury goods.
Watches.
Spirits.
Cigars.
And stunningly – chain restaurants.
The market is burying brands in real time -
Retailers are doing triage, dropping dead weight.
Distributors marking your emails as spam.
End users are posting, laughing and vaporizing the hype in real time.
You don’t feel the drain yet because your agency told you the next campaign “will connect.”
They lied.
The only “connection” is between your ego and your negative cash flow.
You killed your own flexibility: buyers remember your pain points because you forced them to listen; you trained the market to see through your story, then handed them faster, simpler, sexier competitors on a silver platter.
The instant your ego becomes the product, you’ve already lost. You just haven’t run out of excuses yet.
Now’s the time. Audit. Strip everything back to buyer wins. Everything else is nostalgic debt - and it’s due.
The ego you’re protecting isn’t a brand. It’s a liability.
Checklist: If You’re Still Selling Crap, These Are Your Red Flags
You mention your founder, your origin or your “brand values” before you mention customer benefit.
You measure campaign results in engagement, not in paid repurchase or margin.
Your product launch gets covered by blogs… but gets returned by buyers.
Your best feedback comes from your team or agency - not your customer’s wallet.
You obsess over awards and press, but dodge data on sell-through or repeat buys.
You lead with “community” but never audit which buyers cash out and disappear.
Your board meeting always starts with “legacy” - never “urgency.”
If you tally three or more, you’re still selling crap. And if the market’s not even your buying fertilizer in 2025, your new home in 2026: outhouse.
The Real Reflection – Your Business, Not Yourself
Look up, not out - the reckoning isn’t waiting for the FY 2025 report.
Because in 2026, the market still won’t care how you feel about your own brand, how many stories you can string together or how many insiders clap at your launch.
Vanity is a liability - every dollar spent telling your story that doesn’t move a buyer pushes you closer to the liquidation line.
Forget the old excuses:
“The press is positive”.
“Next campaign will convert”.
“Retailers just need to learn the brand”.
You’re out of time. Shelf space is shrinking. Distribution is moving to leaner, meaner brands - brands that exist only to solve, serve and speed the buyer’s next win.
Don’t wait for the line to move - the line is gone. Buyers are in control, and the only thing they value is proof: proof your brand solves, your product delivers, your price wins. The rest is noise, and the market will silence you cold.
Here’s your CTA - enough drama, no more wishful thinking:
Embrace AI, run an agent. Get your market pulse. Listen to what buyers are actually saying, not what you wish they’d say.
Cut the self-congratulation. Make every pitch about the buyer. No exceptions, no ego, no backstory.
Put your product through hell: speed, experience, ROI. If it doesn’t beat the next best option, rebuild it now - don’t wait for market forces to make you obsolete.
Survival isn’t a round-table topic. It’s a knife fight. 2026 will claim the weak - those too slow, too proud, too self-loving to see what customers want. Don’t join the next casualty list.
Audit, optimize, act - or wait for someone else to do it for you.
It’s not the customer that’s always right, but it’s the buyers who are. Prove you understand. Anything else is dead code.
And if you made it this far and felt anything - relief, discomfort, rage – schedule an Exploratory Call with someone who lives the audit you’ve avoided. Because the alternative isn’t second place. It’s burial.
You know where to find The Cigar Profit. There’s no ego in the diagnostic. Only cash, clarity and the last ticket out.