If we took all the money spent trying to change customers' opinions of us...

...we could probably cure world hunger.

The problem is that customer perception (once formed) is almost IMPOSSIBLE to change.

It doesn't matter how many rebrands Slack undergoes.

How many new phrases they come up with.

How many new features and functionality they add.

Most people will still think of them as a company messaging app.

Most people will still picture the typical interface with channels, chats, etc.

And so the question for marketers is what to do with this knowledge.

Option 1: Fight the long hard battle of changing perception

This HAS been done successfully.

Spotify won the music streaming war...

...then added podcasts.

Now they are the market leader in both.

(But this is extremely difficult and fraught with all types of peril. See the examples on the left side of the image below where companies have been unsuccessful in this endeavor.)

Option 2: Lean into that perception and use it to fuel expansion in other ways

Stripe is a chief example of this: they still lead with their payments functionality but then sell a suite of products (some adjacent, some not).

Salesforce is another example — they still lead with their CRM, and then upsell tons of different products beyond the base Starter Suite.