Marketing is about creating physical mindshare in the brain

Ron Immink
8 min readSep 30, 2024

Distinctiveness is more powerful than uniqueness, fantasy triumphs over reality, and distinctive brand assets, bolstered by supercharged cues, build memory structure faster than you can say, Daniel Kahneman. Question traditional theories such as the product life cycle, segmentation, and the funnel because they go against the way the brain really works. Your data is wrong. What you see is not what you get.

The fallacy of persuasion

The premise of “The Power of Instinct” is that people don’t buy because of need or loyalty; they buy on instinct. We cannot convince anyone of anything, no matter how we try. People’s choices are not based on conscious thought. Most marketing is focused on the conscious mind; it should be on the unconscious mind. I wrote about it here about the arms race between mindfulness and sales manipulation.

Status quo

I love books that tackle the status quo. It is a bit like “The old rules in marketing are dead”, but also “The seven laws of guaranteed growth” , “The context marketing revolution”, “X: the experience when business meets design” and “Killing marketing” . “Killing marketing” is one of my favourites.

95%

The conscious mind only accounts for roughly 5% of our decisions. Our unconscious…

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Ron Immink

Father of two, strategy and innovation specialist, entreprenerd, author, speaker, business book geek, perception pionieer. See www.ronimmink.com