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Every brand starts by earning attention. The hard part is keeping it.

When a new campaign launches, everyone notices. It feels fresh, different, even exciting. Then something strange happens. A few months later, people stop reacting. The same visuals, the same tone, the same message that once felt alive now pass unnoticed. Nothing seems wrong with the work — but somehow, no one cares.

That’s what psychologists call cognitive set. It’s the brain’s way of getting efficient. Once it recognizes a pattern, it stops paying attention to it. The first time you hear a song, you feel every note. By the fifth time, you hum along without listening. The same thing happens with brands. Once the brain predicts what you’re going to say or show, it tunes you out.

This is the moment where most marketing dies quietly.

Priming, as we discussed earlier, is what helps people feel comfortable and emotionally ready to connect with your brand. It creates familiarity, safety, and recognition. But once people become too familiar, you enter dangerous territory — predictability. And predictability is the enemy of attention.

That’s where pattern disruption comes in.

Pattern disruption is the art of breaking expectation just enough to wake people up again. It’s a small but deliberate break in rhythm — not to shock, but to refresh perception. When something interrupts our mental autopilot, the brain releases a quick burst of dopamine, the chemical of attention and curiosity. Suddenly, the mind says, “Wait, that’s new. Look again.”

You see this in storytelling, design, even human behavior. A pause in a speech that lands unexpectedly can be more powerful than the next line. A silence in a song can make the return of sound feel larger than life. In marketing, a surprising shift in tone, image, or format can make an old brand feel new again without changing what it stands for.

One of the best articulations of this philosophy comes from TBWA, the global agency that built its entire creative framework around a single word: Disruption®.

TBWA’s idea of disruption isn’t chaos. It’s about challenging the conventions that keep categories predictable and consumers asleep. Every industry, every audience, every brand operates within a set of rules — the “cognitive set” of that market. TBWA’s Disruption method works by identifying those rules and then intentionally breaking one, just enough to make people see things differently.

It’s not rebellion for the sake of it. It’s controlled defiance with a purpose.

That’s why their work for brands like Apple, Nissan, and Adidas felt so alive — not because the ads were loud, but because they broke expectation in meaningful ways. Apple’s “Think Different” didn’t introduce new technology; it reframed how people saw it. It broke the pattern of tech advertising, which was obsessed with features, and replaced it with emotion and philosophy. Suddenly, technology wasn’t about machines; it was about people who dared.

That’s pattern disruption at its highest level — not a new message, but a new lens.

When brands repeat themselves too long, they become like wallpaper. People stop seeing them, even when they’re right in front of their eyes. A billboard, a jingle, or a slogan that once sparked recognition becomes background noise. It’s not rejection; it’s indifference.

The irony is that this happens most often to successful brands. The more consistent they become, the more invisible they get. Familiarity breeds comfort, but comfort breeds blindness.

The solution isn’t to throw away consistency — it’s to renew it. Disruption is not about abandoning your brand; it’s about reintroducing it through surprise.

The brain needs small shocks of newness to stay engaged. A subtle visual shift, a new tone of voice, a campaign that breaks your usual rhythm — these moments remind people that you’re still alive, still thinking, still relevant.

Think of Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign. For decades, Coca-Cola had been about happiness and togetherness — a message so familiar that people could recite it in their sleep. But when they printed people’s names on bottles, they didn’t change the message; they changed the entry point. Suddenly, the familiar red bottle became personal. The message was the same — connection — but the pattern was new. That’s disruption with purpose.

The same applies to smaller brands. A local café that always uses warm lighting might one day switch to candlelight evenings. A bank known for its steady tone might release a campaign about taking risks. A brand known for noise might suddenly go quiet — imagine an MTN billboard that’s completely yellow, no words, no logo, just the color. People would stop and stare. That’s what disruption does.

It’s important, though, to understand that disruption without clarity is just confusion. The best disruptions feel surprising but inevitable. They make you say, “I didn’t expect that,” and immediately after, “but it makes sense.”

TBWA calls this the sweet spot between convention and vision. You keep enough of what people recognize so they know it’s you, but you add enough newness to make them look again.

In a sense, it’s the same balance every artist, entrepreneur, and leader must find. You must be familiar enough to be trusted, and unpredictable enough to stay interesting. That’s what keeps both people and brands alive — the rhythm of comfort and surprise.

So, when your marketing starts feeling invisible, it might not be because it’s bad. It might just be because it’s too good at being expected. The job then isn’t to start over. It’s to disrupt yourself — on purpose, with intent, guided by meaning.

Because in a world where attention is the most valuable currency, familiarity alone won’t make people see you. Surprise will.

In marketing, what happens before someone sees your message is often more important than the message itself. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, about how most buying decisions are shaped long before logic has a chance to participate.

Think about how you react when you walk into a store. Sometimes you immediately feel comfortable even if you can’t explain why. You hear a familiar tune, you catch a pleasant scent, and somehow, you already trust the place before you’ve even looked around. Or you see a video online, and within a few seconds you find yourself smiling or feeling connected before you even realize what’s being sold. That’s not coincidence. That’s priming.

Priming is the process where your surroundings quietly prepare your brain to think, feel, and behave in a particular way before you consciously decide to. It’s one of those invisible forces that shape human behavior more than we care to admit.

Psychologists have been studying this for decades. What they’ve discovered is that our brains don’t wait for us to think before they act. They are constantly scanning for signals—sound, color, temperature, tone, rhythm—and forming associations that lead us toward certain emotions. You think you’re making a decision, but your brain has already tilted you in a direction before you even start weighing options.

This is where sonic marketing comes in. In retail environments, for instance, background music is one of the most powerful priming tools. Studies have shown that when stores play slow, soft music, customers slow down too. They take their time, they browse longer, and they often end up spending more. The same product, the same shelf, and the same customer, but a different soundtrack completely changes the experience. That’s how subtle and powerful priming can be.

You’ll notice the same thing in restaurants. Dim lighting, warm tones, and mellow music immediately make people feel more relaxed, even before the waiter arrives. You might leave thinking the food tasted amazing, when in truth, it was the environment that did most of the work.

The same principle shows up in one of my favorite examples of psychological priming outside marketing—the movie Focus starring Will Smith. In one scene, he plays a skilled con artist who primes a wealthy gambler throughout the day using numbers, words, and symbols that seem random. Later that night, when the gambler is asked to pick a number during a high-stakes bet, he confidently chooses the exact number Smith had planted in his mind all along. What looks like luck is actually preparation. The man’s subconscious had been quietly guided for hours without realizing it. That’s what priming does. It doesn’t push. It prepares.

When you understand this, you start to see marketing differently. Every color, sound, and texture becomes part of the brand’s language. The message doesn’t start when the ad begins—it starts the moment the first cue is felt.

That’s also why good advertising follows a very deliberate structure. Think of the most engaging TV commercials you’ve ever seen. They rarely begin with the logo or even the product. Instead, they start with a relatable story—an everyday moment, a feeling, or a situation that draws you in. There’s no branding yet, no hint of who’s behind the story. You’re simply watching, getting invested, softening up emotionally. Then, slowly, the cues begin to appear. A color on the wall that feels familiar, a line of dialogue that sounds like the brand’s voice, a setting that subtly carries the brand’s identity. Only near the end does the logo appear, accompanied by a short sound or melody—what advertising professionals call an audio mnemonic or sonic logo—that seals the emotional experience.

This sequence isn’t random. It’s the psychology of timing. The ad first primes you emotionally, then connects that emotion to the brand. By the time the logo appears, your mind is already open to it. You’re not being sold to; you’re completing a story you’ve already joined.

Unfortunately, many local advertisers miss this completely. They want their logos on screen from the first second. They insist on their brand colors in every frame. They want every line of dialogue to mention their product. In doing so, they break every law of priming. When the brain detects branding too early, it switches from feeling to evaluating. Instead of relaxing into the story, the audience starts resisting. The guard goes up. The experience shifts from connection to defense. The result is an ad that’s loud but forgettable.

The brands that get it right understand that emotion leads and branding follows. They know that priming is about setting a stage, not shouting a name.

You can see this in smaller, everyday examples too. A coffee shop that uses warm lighting, wooden textures, and soft acoustic music is priming people for calm and connection. A youth clothing store with amapiano beats, graffiti-style visuals, and energetic movement primes people for self-expression. A bank that uses clear, steady tones, clean design, and predictable patterns primes for trust. Each brand is telling a story before a single word is spoken.

Priming only fails when what people experience doesn’t match what they were led to expect. A spa that promises peace but feels chaotic destroys trust before a therapist even greets you. A restaurant that advertises luxury but uses plastic chairs creates friction between what customers were primed to believe and what they actually find. People can’t always explain why they feel disappointed, but their subconscious knows something doesn’t line up.

That’s why priming isn’t manipulation—it’s alignment. It’s making sure the experience, the environment, and the message all say the same thing. When those elements agree, trust forms almost instantly. The customer feels right before they can explain why.

Every brand has what I call a subconscious contract with its audience. People expect you to make them feel a certain way. They might not know how to describe it, but they know when it’s missing. That’s why the best marketing often feels effortless. It doesn’t fight for attention; it feels natural. It fits the mental script your audience already holds about what your brand should be.

Priming also affects long-term brand memory. If a customer’s first few experiences with your brand make them feel calm, respected, or inspired, that emotional memory becomes the lens through which they’ll interpret every future encounter. That’s why consistency matters. You’re not only shaping today’s mood—you’re building tomorrow’s memory.

So, when you think about your marketing, don’t start with what you want to say. Start with how you want people to feel before you say anything at all. Ask yourself whether your colors, sounds, and tone set that feeling even before the message begins. Because in the end, persuasion doesn’t start when your audience listens—it starts when their senses do.

Eventually, though, priming reaches its limit. When people have seen the same cues too often, their brains stop noticing. Familiarity turns into invisibility. That’s when brands lose attention, not because they’ve lost relevance, but because they’ve lost surprise.

And that’s where we’ll go next: how to break that pattern and use the element of surprise to wake your audience back up.

Next in the series: Breaking the Cognitive Set — Why Surprise Restores Attention.

Last time, I spoke about two people walking into the same restaurant — one feeling romance under candlelight, the other feeling grief. Same light, different meanings.
That story never leaves me, because it reminds me that perception isn’t passive. It’s creative. We don’t simply receive the world — we frame it.

Framing is how our minds make sense of things that don’t come with built-in meaning.
It’s why we can look at the same event, the same product, or even the same person, and walk away with completely different stories about what just happened.

If observation determines what becomes real, framing decides what that reality means.

Meaning Lives in the Frame, Not the Fact

The brain doesn’t store raw data; it stores interpretation.
Everything we see, hear, or read passes through filters of experience, emotion, and context before it becomes understanding.

Take something simple: a price tag.
“E99” might mean affordable to one person and cheap and unreliable to another.
Same number — different story.
It’s not the price that changes, it’s the frame that surrounds it.

The same happens in everyday life.
A parent who says, “You’re stubborn,” may mean determined.
A teacher who says, “You’re stubborn,” may mean difficult.
Framing transforms qualities into judgments.

In marketing, this is everything.
A product doesn’t live in its features; it lives in the meaning people attach to those features.
And meaning is always framed.

How the Frame Builds the Feeling

Psychologists like Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proved this decades ago through what’s called the framing effect — our decisions change depending on how information is presented.

People were more likely to agree to a medical procedure when told it had a “90% survival rate” than when told it had a “10% death rate.”
Same data, different frame, different outcome.

Brands do the same thing every day.
A telecom saying “Stay connected to those who matter” isn’t selling data — it’s framing the product as love and togetherness.
A bank saying “Own your future” isn’t promoting savings — it’s framing finance as freedom.
And a fast-food chain saying “Made fresh every morning” isn’t selling buns — it’s framing familiarity as freshness.

We don’t respond to the thing itself.
We respond to the meaning the frame gives it.

Frames as the Invisible Storytelling Tool

Here’s what most marketers miss: framing doesn’t start in the ad; it starts in the world around the ad.
The cultural climate, social language, and emotional temperature of your audience are already shaping how your message will be read before you’ve even said a word.

Think of it like a picture in a gallery.
A gold frame makes the art feel valuable.
A cracked wooden frame makes it feel rustic.
Same image, completely different aura.

Now apply that to Eswatini.
A brand promoting “luxury” in Mbabane might frame it as quiet sophistication, while in Nhlangano that same message might read as out of touch.
The difference isn’t the product — it’s the context in which the frame hangs.

That’s why marketers must study culture as closely as they study their own product.
The frame isn’t decoration; it’s translation.

Revisiting the Candlelight

Let’s go back to that restaurant.
The candle didn’t change — the people did.
One’s life story framed the light as love.
The other’s story framed it as grief.
And both walked away convinced their perception was true.

Now imagine that candle is your brand.
You can’t decide how everyone will feel about it — but you can design the room around it.
You can choose the tone, the color, the story, the setting.
That’s what framing really is: building the environment in which perception takes place.

The Art of Conscious Framing

So how do we frame consciously? A few guiding ideas:

1. Name the feeling before the message.
Decide how you want people to feel before you decide what you want them to know.
If your campaign is about empowerment, your visuals, copy, and timing must all support that emotional frame.

2. Keep one truth per frame.
If you mix messages — humor and sadness, luxury and cheapness, corporate and friendly — the frame collapses.
Every great brand is clear about what its light should mean.

3. Align the internal and external frame.
How your staff experiences the brand is how your audience eventually will.
If the team feels under pressure, the tone of your brand will leak that stress.
Internal culture frames external perception.

The Frame Shapes the Choice

Remember the experiment where the act of watching changed how particles behaved?
Framing is how language and context change how people behave.
It’s what decides whether a consumer’s next step is interest or indifference, love or avoidance, curiosity or mistrust.

Think about your own experience:
You can watch two identical ads — same visuals, same voice — but if one says “Join us,” and the other says “Don’t miss out,” your brain interprets them differently.
One frame invites belonging; the other triggers fear of exclusion.
Frames are emotional lenses.

And the frame that fits your audience best is the one that feels like their truth.
Your message shouldn’t force its meaning — it should reveal what already exists in the observer’s mind.

Framing and the Limits of Control

You can’t control how everyone will perceive you, but you can influence where their perception starts.
You can plant the right cues, colors, and words that whisper the meaning you hope they’ll find.

A youthful brand can use motion, brightness, and rhythm to frame energy.
A heritage brand can use stillness, texture, and warmth to frame trust.
A financial brand can use clarity and rhythm to frame stability.

The key is not to paint a new reality, but to illuminate the version of reality that best reflects your truth.

The Quiet Power of Intention

In the end, everything we create — an advert, a post, a shop window, a social campaign — is a frame for perception.
And every consumer, in turn, is framing us through their own biology, culture, and emotion.

The magic of marketing lies in that meeting point — between what we intend and what they interpret.
That’s where meaning happens.

Because just like that candlelit room, the light stays the same.
But the story that surrounds it changes everything.

Looking Ahead: Priming the Subconscious

If framing gives meaning to what people see, then priming prepares the mind for what they’re about to feel.
It’s the quiet setup that happens before the message even arrives — the color, rhythm, or sound that tilts perception one way or another.

That’s where we’ll go next: how subtle cues, often unnoticed, steer the choices people believe they made freely.

Next in the series: Priming the Subconscious — The Mood Before the Message.

Two people walk into the same restaurant.
The lights are low, candles flicker softly on the tables.

One smiles, feeling a wave of calm. To them, candlelight means romance — warmth, love, and connection.
The other stiffens slightly. For them, candlelight recalls funerals, mourning, and loss.

Same room. Same glow. Two completely different worlds.

That moment has always fascinated me.
How can the same light create opposite emotions?
How can one person’s comfort be another’s discomfort?

It’s as if we don’t see the world as it is — we see it as we are.

And that thought took me back to something I’ve been reading about and watching for years — the double-slit experiment, one of the strangest discoveries in science.

We Don’t See Reality — We Interpret It

In the double-slit experiment, light behaves like a wave — pure potential — until someone observes it.
The moment it’s watched, it collapses into a single outcome. Observation itself changes what is.

That isn’t poetic exaggeration — it’s physics.
And the more I studied it, the more I realized how deeply it connects to human life.

We don’t see the Earth as it truly is; we see it as our biology allows.
Our eyes capture only a narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum — a slim window we call “visible light.”
Bees see ultraviolet patterns on flowers. Snakes detect heat signatures. Birds sense magnetic fields.
Even the air we breathe is full of energy and particles that we simply can’t see.

Our brains filter this complexity down to what we can handle — not for truth, but for survival.
They edit the universe into a manageable illusion, one that feels solid and familiar.

So when you and I look at that same candle, we aren’t really seeing the same thing.
We’re each seeing what our biology, our memories, and our experiences allow us to see.

That’s why I believe everything humans create — our art, our language, our cities, our technology, and yes, our brands — is filtered through the same perceptual lens.
We don’t build reality from scratch; we build it from what we understand of reality.

Marketing, then, isn’t an invention apart from life — it’s an extension of how life itself works.
Brands, like everything else, exist in endless possibility until they are observed.
And once they’re observed, they become whatever the observer’s perception allows.

The Consumer as the Observer

Before a consumer experiences your brand, it exists in a cloud of possibilities.
It could be modern or old-fashioned, affordable or premium, inspiring or ordinary.
But the moment someone interacts with it — sees your billboard, scrolls your post, walks into your store, or uses your product — their mind collapses all those possibilities into one reality:

“This is who this brand is.”

And when I say “see,” I don’t just mean eyesight.
Seeing includes every sensory and emotional encounter — your tone of voice, your color choices, your scent, your speed of service, the music in your store.
Each of these is a point of observation. Each one collapses meaning into perception.

It’s the same as those two people in the restaurant.
Same candlelight, different meanings.
The brand didn’t change — the observers did.

That’s marketing’s humbling truth: people don’t see your brand; they see themselves through it.

The Brand as the Observed

But there’s another layer.
In physics, particles behave differently when observed.
In marketing, brands do too.

When we know we’re being watched, we act differently — it’s called the Hawthorne effect.
A restaurant sharpens its service when it spots a reviewer.
A business becomes overly polite when journalists start calling.
A social page suddenly posts its community work once followers are paying attention.

Observation turns brands into performers.
And that’s not necessarily bad — it’s awareness.
When you know you’re visible, you become deliberate.

But there’s a risk: if you try to perform for everyone, you stop meaning anything to anyone.
The candlelight can’t mean romance and mourning at the same time.
You must choose whose perception defines your light.

Perception and the Right Eyes

That’s where audience comes in — not as a marketing checkbox, but as an act of focus.
Different observers collapse different realities.

A youthful clothing shop in Manzini might blast amapiano not to annoy older shoppers, but to signal belonging to the young.
A local brewery might use rough, hand-drawn labels that feel “authentic” to some and “cheap” to others.
Each choice invites a certain type of observer to see the brand in the right light.

You can’t please everyone, not because you shouldn’t, but because you can’t exist the same way for everyone.
The observer decides which version of you becomes real.

Seeing Creates Reality

Once you understand that, everything about marketing changes.
It’s no longer about controlling the message — it’s about shaping perception.

You stop obsessing over what you show and start caring about what people actually see.
Because what they see depends on who they are, what they’ve lived through, and what the symbols around them mean.

To one person, red means love. To another, danger. To another, a sale.
E200 for a perfume might whisper “luxury” to one buyer and shout “wasteful” to another.
Same facts, different frames.

Marketing isn’t about creating one truth; it’s about shaping the conditions of observation that allow your desired truth to appear.

Just like those two people under the candlelight, two consumers can experience the same brand and walk away with opposite feelings.
And that’s okay.
The goal isn’t to change their light — it’s to understand which eyes you were meant to be seen through.

The Real Work of Branding

Once you see marketing this way, everything softens and sharpens at the same time.
You stop shouting for attention and start shaping what attention reveals.
You become intentional about sound, color, language, and timing — because each one is an invitation for meaning to form.

When the right people see your brand, you don’t need to convince them.
They collapse it into the version of reality that already feels true to them.

Because in the end, the candlelight doesn’t change.
The glow stays the same.
What changes is who’s watching — and what that light means to them.

Observation doesn’t just record reality.
It creates it.

And in marketing, that means every consumer, in their own quiet way, becomes the co-creator of your brand.

Looking Ahead: Framing Reality

So the question becomes: if observation creates reality, how do we guide what that reality becomes?
How do we frame the moment of being seen so that what people collapse into meaning aligns with who we really are?

That’s where we go next — into the quiet architecture of perception.
Because once you understand that people don’t see the world as it is but as it’s framed, you begin to see that marketing isn’t just communication.

It’s construction.

Next in the series: Framing Reality — The Psychology of Meaning.

I’ve always been fascinated by the strange relationship between the observer and the observed.
In that corner of quantum physics known as the double-slit experiment, light behaves like a wave of infinite possibilities—until someone observes it.
Once it’s watched, it suddenly behaves like a particle, collapsing from many potential realities into a single, measurable one.

That idea has always stayed with me: that maybe the world isn’t what it is, but what our perception collapses it into.
Each of us lives in a slightly different version of reality, built from attention, memory, and expectation.

Lately, that fascination has started to merge with how I think about marketing.
It actually began one evening on TikTok, when I stumbled across a local influencer doing riddles with people in town.
You know the kind—“You’re a Pulse bus driver; two people get off, ten get on; what’s the driver’s age?”
Everyone gets it wrong because the mind is too busy solving the wrong problem.

And that’s when it clicked for me.
These riddles aren’t just games—they’re miniature psychology experiments.
They reveal how our brains filter reality, make predictions, and miss what’s right in front of us.
And if that’s not marketing psychology, I don’t know what is.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that marketing and physics share something profound:
what people see is never the full picture—it’s what their brain decides to see.
That’s what led me to explore how misdirection, framing, priming, and cognitive sets quietly guide what consumers notice, believe, and choose.

The Brain Is the Real Battleground

In Eswatini’s crowded market, everyone’s shouting. Billboards, radio spots, influencer posts—each fighting for the same few seconds of mental space.
But here’s the truth: our brains don’t absorb everything. They predict what’s worth noticing.

The mind is efficient to the point of arrogance—it edits the world before we experience it.
That’s why a bright yellow MTN billboard stands out instantly, while a muted government poster, though equally visible, fades into the background.
The brain has already decided what’s relevant before we even look.

That’s what psychologists call cognitive steering—the process of guiding perception without forcing it.
And it’s at the core of how brands shape their realities.

1. Misdirection — Where the Eyes Go, the Mind Follows

Magicians do this best: they move your attention so skillfully that the truth becomes invisible.
Marketers use the same principle every day.

A flashing “Limited Offer!” or a ticking countdown timer isn’t random decoration.
It’s attentional design—steering the eye toward urgency instead of price.
It’s not manipulation; it’s storytelling.
Because people don’t respond to everything you show them—they respond to what you highlight first.

For Eswatini brands, the key question becomes: what deserves the spotlight?
Before you speak, decide what you want people to see before their mind drifts.

2. Framing — How Meaning Changes Shape

Two identical truths can feel completely different depending on how they’re framed.
“90% fat-free” feels healthy. “10% fat” feels guilty. Same numbers, different emotion.

That’s the power of framing—it doesn’t change facts; it changes context.
A bank that says “Own your future” is no longer selling savings—it’s selling empowerment.
A telecom that says “Stay connected to those who matter” isn’t talking about data—it’s talking about belonging.

In Eswatini, where trust and personal connection still shape buying behavior more than algorithms, the frame often decides which brand feels right.

3. Priming — The Mood Before the Message

Before logic enters, emotion has already voted.
That’s priming—when subtle cues like color, rhythm, and sound trigger emotional readiness.

A perfume ad doesn’t start with a price—it starts with atmosphere: warm light, soft music, elegant motion.
It primes you for prestige long before you think about cost.

The same happens online. Rounded buttons and warm tones feel safe; sharp edges and cold blues feel efficient.
The consumer’s brain is already halfway to “yes” before the offer appears.

4. Cognitive Set — Breaking the Old Mental Script

Here’s the biggest challenge: once people “know” your brand, they stop seeing it.
It’s called the Einstellung effect, or mental lock-in.

We’ve all experienced it—a brand we think we’ve already figured out.
The moment we assign it a label (“cheap,” “serious,” “for older people”), every new message gets filtered through that assumption.

That’s why surprise is one of the most powerful tools in marketing.
Old Spice broke its stereotype with absurd humor.
A serious Eswatini bank could do the same by showing warmth and human moments.
A familiar retailer could borrow luxury aesthetics just to reset perception.

Sometimes you don’t need a new story—you just need to tell the old one in a new voice.

So What Does This Mean for Us?

We can’t win attention by being louder.
We win it by designing how people interpret what they see.

• Misdirection captures the eye.

• Framing gives it meaning.

• Priming sets the mood.

• Cognitive Set decides whether they still care.

Together, these shape how consumers move from seeing to believing.

The Bigger Realization

As I kept unpacking these ideas, something deeper began to surface.
Most of what we call choice in marketing isn’t really choice at all.
It’s guided perception—the same kind of illusion that makes a riddle work or a magician’s trick succeed.

Consumers don’t simply choose between products; they choose between realities carefully framed for them.
And once you understand that, marketing stops being about persuasion and starts becoming about designing perception consciously.

That thought became the starting point for this new series:

The Illusion of Choice — how perception, psychology, and context quietly decide for us before we think we’ve chosen.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at how the Observer Effect—the simple act of being seen—changes what a brand becomes.

Because in the end, people don’t buy what they see.
They buy what their brain decides to notice.

The most powerful marketing strategy in Eswatini is the one nobody talks about—because it works in silence.

I’ve been studying how brands show up in people’s lives across Eswatini, and there’s a pattern that most marketers completely miss. It’s what I call regional marketing—the black ninja of brand strategy. Silent, often invisible, but devastatingly effective.

When we analyzed the Top Brands Survey conducted by Yati, the numbers revealed something more interesting than just preference rankings. They showed me where preference comes from. And that geographic dimension tells a completely different story about how brands actually win in this country.

The Geography of Trust

Take the telecommunications battle between MTN and Eswatini Mobile. On the surface, MTN’s 54.1% preference looks like straightforward market dominance. But dig deeper, and you discover it’s really a story about geography and what different communities value.

MTN’s strength comes from rural Eswatini, where reliability trumps everything else. When you’re outside Mbabane or Manzini, every bar of network signal matters. People don’t just want connectivity—they need it to work consistently. MTN built that trust over years of being present when others weren’t, of providing service that rural communities could depend on.

Meanwhile, Eswatini Mobile’s 39.5% preference tells a different story. Their strength lies in urban centers, particularly among younger consumers who prioritize data packages, digital innovation, and modern brand positioning. They’re the cool alternative that speaks to aspirational urban lifestyles.

Two brands, same market, completely different value propositions shaped by geographic realities.

The Retail Geography Lesson

The retail sector reveals the same pattern. Bhunu Mall’s 28.3% preference ranking reflects its position as the heartbeat of urban Manzini—convenient, varied, and central to city life. But travel to Shiselweni, and Nhlangano Mall holds its ground not because it’s bigger or flashier, but because it resonates with local community life.

This isn’t about mall size or investment levels. It’s about understanding that shopping behavior changes based on where people live, how they move through their communities, and what role retail plays in their daily lives.

Urban shoppers want convenience and variety in one location. Rural shoppers want familiarity, accessibility, and connection to community rhythms. Different geographies, different shopping logics.

Why Most Marketing Misses This

The problem with marketing in Eswatini is that most campaigns assume a single, uniform consumer. Brands create one message, one positioning, one value proposition and blast it across the country as if geography doesn’t matter.

But Eswatini isn’t uniform. Our rural and urban identities shape everything—how we build trust, how we spend money, what we consider valuable, even how we relate to brands themselves.

As Samkeliso Magagula from our team put it: “Regional patterns in consumer behavior show us that winning nationally requires a layered approach—brands that ignore the rural-urban divide risk missing half the story.”

The Subtlety Advantage

What makes regional marketing so powerful is its subtlety. It’s not about having the loudest TV commercial or the biggest sponsorship deal. It’s about showing up in ways that matter to people in their specific corner of the country.

In some regions, that means emphasizing reliability over innovation. In others, it means highlighting trendiness over tradition. The brands that can balance both—being dependable in rural settings while exciting in urban ones—develop a kind of national strength that’s nearly impossible to replicate.

This approach rewards understanding over volume, insight over investment. A brand that truly grasps how geography shapes consumer behavior can outmaneuver competitors with much larger marketing budgets.

The Strategic Framework

Through analyzing our survey data and observing successful brands across Eswatini, I’ve identified what effective regional marketing actually requires:

Geographic Segmentation Beyond Demographics

Stop thinking rural versus urban is just about income levels or education. It’s about different relationship patterns with brands, different trust-building mechanisms, different definitions of value.

Value Proposition Flexibility

Your core brand promise might remain consistent, but how you communicate that promise needs to shift based on regional priorities. Reliability resonates differently in Hhohho than innovation does in Manzini.

Distribution Strategy Alignment

How and where people access your product or service changes dramatically across regions. Urban convenience requirements differ completely from rural accessibility needs.

Trust-Building Mechanisms

Urban consumers might trust brands based on social proof and trendy positioning. Rural consumers often trust based on long-term reliability and community reputation. Different regions, different trust equations.

The Missed Opportunities

Most brands in Eswatini are leaving money on the table by not thinking regionally. They’re either trying to be everything to everyone (and ending up meaning nothing to anyone) or focusing exclusively on urban markets while ignoring rural potential.

The opportunity lies in developing what I call “regional coherence”—maintaining brand consistency while allowing regional relevance. It’s more complex than single-message marketing, but it’s also more effective.

Beyond Rural-Urban

Regional thinking extends beyond just rural versus urban divisions. Within urban areas, different neighborhoods respond to different approaches. Within rural areas, different communities have distinct preferences and behaviors.

The most successful brands I’ve observed develop almost neighborhood-level understanding of how their value proposition resonates. They think nationally but execute locally, maintaining brand integrity while allowing regional flexibility.

The Implementation Challenge

The biggest challenge with regional marketing isn’t conceptual—it’s operational. It requires:

Multiple campaign variations rather than single national campaigns Regional market research that goes deeper than traditional demographic data
Flexible distribution strategies that work differently across geographic areas Local relationship building that can’t be centralized or automated

This complexity scares many marketers into defaulting to simple, uniform approaches. But that’s exactly why regional marketing becomes a competitive advantage for brands willing to invest in the complexity.

The Black Ninja Advantage

Regional marketing works like a black ninja because it operates below the radar of traditional marketing metrics. You can’t easily measure its impact through simple reach or frequency calculations. Its power lies in relevance, resonance, and relationship-building that happens at the community level.

Brands that master this approach don’t just win market share—they win market trust. And in a small country like Eswatini, where word-of-mouth still drives significant business, trust translates directly into sustainable competitive advantage.

The Future of Brand Building

The brands that will dominate Eswatini’s future aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets or the flashiest campaigns. They’re the ones that understand geography shapes everything—from trust patterns to purchasing behavior to brand loyalty.

These brands will invest in understanding not just who their customers are, but where they are and how location influences their relationship with products and services.

They’ll recognize that national brand strength comes from adding up regional brand relevance, not from broadcasting uniform messages and hoping they resonate everywhere.

The Strategic Imperative

For any brand serious about long-term success in Eswatini, regional marketing isn’t optional—it’s essential. The country may be small, but it’s not simple. Our geographic, cultural, and economic diversity requires marketing approaches that respect and leverage that complexity.

The black ninja of marketing doesn’t announce itself with loud campaigns or expensive activations. It builds preference quietly, community by community, region by region, relationship by relationship.

And in the end, that quiet approach often wins the loudest victories.