--- title: "Tricking Your Customers Dilutes Your Brand - Cro Metrics" url: "https://crometrics.com/blog/tricking-your-customers-dilutes-your-brand/" image: "https://crometrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screen-Shot-2012-03-22-at-9.45.54-PM.png" --- #### Blog Friday, March 23, 2012 # Tricking Your Customers Dilutes Your Brand Reading time: 1 minute By Chris Neumann Founder and Co-CEO of Cro Metrics. Serial entrepreneur who built and sold software company (OEM) for $5M, launched multiple startups, and developed several top 10 Facebook apps. Mechanical engineer turned lean startup practitioner. Colorado-based pilot (300+ flight hrs), biker, skier, husband, & father. [ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisneumann/) [ ](mailto:%20chris@crometrics.com) ## Table of Contents - [Introduction](#intro) - [My 5 Top Takeaways from the Lead Gen Innovation Lab](#top5) - [Moving Ahead with Lead Generation](#moving-ahead) What's next? - [Strategy](https://crometrics.com/resources/?topic=strategy) ## Ready To Amplify Your Growth? Schedule a 30-Minute Strategy Consultation. [Get In Touch](/contact) ## Recent **activities** - [ How to Properly Determine A/B Testing Sample Size ](https://crometrics.com/blog/ab-testing-sample-size/) - [ Top 6 A/B Testing Tools, Experimentation Platforms & Software in 2024 ](https://crometrics.com/blog/top-6-a-b-testing-tools-experimentation-platforms-software-in-2024/) - [ How To Best Structure Your Organization’s Experimentation Team ](https://crometrics.com/blog/how-to-best-structure-your-organizations-experimentation-team/) - [ The Principles of a Successful Optimization Strategy ](https://crometrics.com/blog/optimization-strategy/) - [ Your Emails Aren’t Getting Opened Because They’re Not Getting Delivered ](https://crometrics.com/blog/email-deliverability-2026/) It recently came to my attention that Gilt is starting to offer full price items alongside their sale items. This strikes me as the beginning of the end for Gilt, who built their brand on offering high quality items at amazing prices. That is their brand promise. Breaking your brand promise will quickly alienate your user base – think Facebook privacy debacles, Google promoting their own stuff in search results. To illustrate, here’s an example of something that is full price: Now, here’s something that is on sale: The only difference in presentation is the crossed out price. For users who expect everything on the site to be a good deal, if they’re not aware of this, they are being “tricked” into buying stuff for full price. Probably they are celebrating their success over at Gilt right now since this stuff surely comes with high margins. However, now their users have to think when they look at the site, and perhaps comparison shop to find out of they’re getting a good deal or not. This dramatically erodes their competitive advantage and probably even has negative effects on employee morale. Ready to turn ambitious growth goals into deeper customer connections and measurable business impact? 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