Not offending people isn't a growth strategy

This summer, there have been so many missteps from brands when it comes to their marketing and consumer response to it.

These days, it feels like if brands are not sparking the ire of consumers with their campaigns, that's a win.

However, not offending people should definitely not be the measure of success we use for brands.

Especially, when so many of the missteps, including the lost customers and PR nightmares brands experience as a result, are preventable.

As I've been poking around the internet looking into what consumers are saying about these various campaign fails, I saw a few people say (and I'm paraphrasing), "Well, what's the point of being more inclusive if brands are going to catch so much heat for being inclusive?"

I personally feel like that's the easy response for brands to not take accountability.

Too many brands are doing a poor job of producing marketing that speaks to today's consumer in today's climate.

They don't follow best practices, they don't ask for feedback, and they don't plan ahead.

What often ends up -- are half-baked attempts, if that, at being inclusive.

Poor effort yields poor results.

I'm no stranger to this either.

I signed myself up for a sprint triathlon years ago when I was living in Philadelphia. The first leg of the triathlon was a 750-meter swim in the Schuylkill River.

I wasn't able to complete 50 meters of that swim.

Not because I couldn't swim -- I had invested so much time, energy, and resources into swimming... in a pool. My standard weekly swim workout was 1000+ meters.

But swimming in the river is not the same as swimming in a pool. And I had never swam in a river before showing up for that triathlon.

I ended up having an anxiety attack, and couldn't continue the swim in the river.

So does this mean I should never try to complete a triathlon, because the last one didn't go well?

Or is the solution that I need to train for the race I'm running, and invest in preparing myself to swim just as well in a river as I can in a pool?

People are talking about two campaigns this week that missed the mark for separate but related reasons.

One campaign is from watchmaker Swatch, which managed to anger consumers in one of its most important markets with a single image.

The other comes from Sanex, whose ad was banned by the Advertising Standards Association in the UK.

I showed the Sanex ad to my husband, who viewed it without listening to the audio. At the end, he asked if it was for a skin whitening cream. It was for a body wash, so there's that.

I wrote about the scandals, what consumers are saying about it, and practical ways marketers can prevent these kinds of missteps in my latest for Forbes.

Inclusive marketing is just good marketing. And like good marketing, it requires more than just showing up to get it right and get results.

Word on the street