Scotoma for Marketing Intelligence.....

Scotoma.....mind sees what it chooses to see....dont believe it???...but its true.....when I first heard it I thought it was some kind of disease but this phenomenon is true for every human being and plays an important part in Marketing Intelligence.....

Consider the portrait of Mona Lisa...some say she is smiling some say she is not a she but a female version of Leonardo himself....consider the controversy behind the famous painting of Leonardo "The Last Supper"....whether the person on left of Jesus is a male or female..and if she is a female and Mary Magdelene herself is she and Jesus making a shape of chalice together symbolozing the holy grail....why there are 13 glasses of wine when there should be one.....all of this....Scotoma....mind sees what it chooses to see....

One would say this is only applicable to art...music and religious beliefs but its not....this phenomenon plays an important part for marketers and creation of product image in the minds of consumers which ultimately not only decides the product performance but also shapes the consumer perception on the whole genre of product line, brand identity and the product life. One very interesting example in this context would be the QWERTY keyboards (named so after the first six alphabets on the keyboard)....it was first designed by Christopher Sholes in 1870s for typewriters and the alphabets were placed haphazardly to actually slowdown the process of typing as fast typing stuck the keys!!!......they are used to this date and inspite of ll other revolutions in personal computer, QWERTY is still the preferred keyboard and what more majority of people dont find anything odd about the placement of alphabets!!!....again mind sees what it chooses to see..... this phenomenon plays an important role for the marketers in terms of packaging and presentation because even though different brands may boast of superiority in majority of features but there are some basic components which need to be kept consistent and that is why even though Apple, Dell, Compq etc may boast of differences in their computer models but QWERTY lives on :)