Perception = Reality

Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perception within a person.

Most people create products and then try and find clients when it’s entirely the other way round.

See, the product is not the hero of the marketing journey, it’s the customer.

Which is why we need to fundamentally understand their needs, and work from there.

Perception precedes experience.

Marketing precedes sales, and continues long after the dotted line is signed.

If we think something is going to be great, and if we have an embedded expectation, then chances are we are going to perceive it to be great.
We see this all the time in the blind taste testings.

Die hard Pepsi fans have been left red faced after a blind taste testing where they admitted the unmarked cola tasted on their right tasted better (it was Coke).

However, in the real world, their subjective experience and perception allows Pepsi to provide an experience that feels superior to them.

Seeing as the gen pop aren’t going to be signing up to blind taste tests, what do you think is really more important?

Same thing happened with VB…

They went undercover at a Craft Beer show, labelled as Vaucluse Bitter, an edgy micro brewery in Sydney’s east), taking out the gold award in a crowd of people that disdain the mass-produced ‘corporate’ beer.

They didn’t change the recipe… they just changed the perception.

The only reality that exists is our own perceptions of the world.

What perception do your customers have of your brand, and what is their subjective experience with it?

Zac

Ps. By no means am I saying that marketing can replace a good product…

Marketing may be able to get people in the door, but without delivering to the experience that is promised and managing expectations, there will never be strong enough foundations to build.