It's all in your head

Do you think Apple makes the best computers in the world?

Wrong. There is nothing special about them. I think they’re bad, but I’m not right either. It is a matter of cultural implantation in our brain; brand positioning, the marketing people call it.

And there is scientific proof, entertainingly explained on that wonderful blog called Tercera Cultura, where they go over the results of an experiment to measure this brand positioning thing:

“The experiment was a recreation of the Pepsi Challenge, except this time all the tasting was being done in a brain scanner. Each person swallowed sips of cola from a plastic tube while their brain was being scanned. When Coke and Pepsi were offered unlabeled, the subjects showed no measurable preference for either brand. Most of the time, they couldn’t even tell the two colas apart. But Montague’s second observation was more surprising: subjects overwhelmingly preferred drinks that were labeled as Coke, no matter what cola was actually delivered through the tubes. In other words, brand trumped taste. We cared more about the logo than the actual product.”

Go read Tercera Cultura, you’ll love it, and while we’re at it we might manage to position that brand ;)

A message to the folks at TC: do us a favor and publish the full text of your posts in your RSS feeds. Don’t be stingy, that’s just not done. You won’t lose visits over it, believe me.