It is said that “fundamentalists decide whether they can accept a new piece of information based on how it will affect their prior belief system, not based on whether it is actually true.”

In his book “Small is the New Big”, Seth Godin discusses this in the context of the placebo effect.  His point was that if we are pre-conditioned to believe that something is going to work, then the reality of it not working is completely lost on us.  If an entrepreneur creates a business plan that hinges on a certain premise, then it becomes so very tempting to reject any advice or evidence that reveal the premise to be flawed.

Business owners often have very strong and ingrained opinions and beliefs about their brands.  The strength of those beliefs is proportional to the difficulty in persuading them that they can’t see the forest for the trees.

What do you believe about your brand and how do you account for the gap between what you believe and what your consumers experience?  If what your consumers experience is shown to be radically different than what you believe, then doing more of the same isn’t going to solve your problem.  Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.

Instead, maybe it’s time to remove your predisposition to a certain belief and objectively examine the evidence before you.  Sometimes the right answer is the most obvious one.