Eric Mineart
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

This hits at a common blind spot of Medium writers, tech/business journalists, and, based on the amount of fact-based marketing messages out there, founders/CEOs too. A product isn’t successful based solely on what it does and how well it does it; a product is successful based on our perception of what it does and how it does it. Brand beats facts.

Yet most of our digi-ink is spilled debating the factual merits of new products/features, not whether they are likely to lodge in our minds along with the right set of associations. If a product isn’t built and deliberately positioned to stick in the mind, it may be sunk, factual merit be damned. We should spend more time debating brand viability and alignment for this reason.

A classic example of perception trumping facts is the Black & Decker Professional line of tools. Never heard of them? It’s because they no longer exist, because our perception was that Black & Decker did lightweight tools, not professional quality. You might recognize this line of tools under its current name: Dewalt. Factually, the exact same product. The perception of the product under a new name, wildly different.

An absurdly hypothetical but illustrative example for the still unconvinced would be to imagine Wal Mart trying to move up market. There’s nothing stopping Wal Mart from factually becoming a luxury retailer, after all. And what would happen if they did it? Our perception wouldn’t follow. It is safe to say Wal Mart will never occupy the premium brand section of our mind. Absurd as it is, it proves the core point well: perception > facts. The mere fact a feature exists doesn’t mean we’ll file it away appropriately in our minds and recall it later. To that end, what lives in the mind matters most.

There’s an association, of course. Facts shape the perceptions we form and subsequently rely on to use/purchase. Sometimes it’s loose to nonexistent (Cass Sunstein says smart money buys brand X). Sometimes it’s direct (I don’t care what anyone says, Q-Tips are factually superior to cotton swabs.) Still, founders should focus on creating a perception, not just a product. And journalists should write about the likelihood of those perceptions sticking, not just the factual quality of the product launched. When you do that, as you say, sometimes the answer is obvious.


I must confess: I thought our perception of Instagram too far afield sharing fleeting moments for Stories to take hold. Snapchat was built on the ephemeral, disappearing moment, but Instagram seemed too carefully curated for us to start profaning our feeds with countless unrefined clips.

I was wrong, obviously.

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Eric Mineart

Written by

An idea guy writing about better branding and sometimes other things. Not an expert.

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