We come out of the womb cold and naked and in need of a good stiff drink. We grow to 4 feet tall, and find ourselves standing toe-to-toe with our sibling in the sandbox arguing over whose turn it is to be Luke Skywalker. We spend most of high school in front of the mirror counting the constellation of pimples on our forehead. In college, we choose a career that will make us feel important and make us wealthy, so people will like us for our bank accounts and not our fading looks. And then we get married, have kids, and pass our self-image issues on to them so they can carry this torch to future generations.

We humans are simple, shallow and stupid creatures. At the end of the day, all our little pea brains really care about are three things:

Me. Myself. And I.

As marketers, all too often we allow this truism to escape us. Especially in our advertising messages. 10 times out of 10, your message will fail when it forgets that people only care about themselves, not your product. Nobody cares that it took a team of leprechauns twelve years to invent your flying machine. Or that your flying machine has seats made from the leather of pink unicorns. What they care about is whether or not your flying machine will make them feel young again, make their spouse notice them again, and will make their children look up to them again.

Tell the customer why their world will be rocked by your product, OR get out of the way. There are 10 million other ads standing in line ready to do just that.