What is one of the cardinal rules of business? The customer is always right. It is also rephrased as listen to your customers.

What if I told you that Coke - the largest beverage company in the world- listened to their customers to launch a new product and yet became a case study featuring the worst marketing disasters in the world? 

Coke listened to the customers, who responded by marching on the streets protesting against the company. Their offices were flooded with letters from protesting customers, and organizations such as the Society for the Preservation of the Real Thing and Old Cola Drinkers of America sprung up to protest against the launch of New Coke. 

How did this end up happening? I found the answer in Blink - Malcolm Gladwell's book on snap judgments. Malcolm argues that snap judgments are highly effective in certain areas and utterly misleading in others. 

To illustrate the effectiveness of snap judgment, he gives the example of Dr John Gottman, who could spend an hour with a couple and predict with 95% accuracy if the couple would stay married for 15 years. 

Malcolm cites the dangers of putting too much faith in snap judgment by sharing the story of New Coke.

Coke had been the dominant cola company forever. In 1972, 18% of soft drink users said they drank Coke exclusively, while only 4% said the same about Pepsi. However, the companies were almost tied at 12% by the early 1980s. This growth was credited to the Pepsi Challenge Ad Campaign. While Coke was spending $100m more on advertising and had a much more extensive distribution, Pepsi ran advertisements that showed that 57% of people preferred Pepsi over Coke.

Coke panicked and decided to "listen" to their customers. Here is what they did next.

Coke launched New Coke with much fanfare and elation. They genuinely felt this would end the cola wars. They had listened to their customers and changed a classic formula to improve it; hence, success should automatically follow. However, New Coke is now taught as a case study of one of the worst marketing disasters in business history. Why happened?

Malcolm Gladwell explains it with three key points. First, Coke's error was believing in the sip test results. Pepsi was sweet and designed to win a sip test. Coke had a vanilla tangy flavor and was scientifically designed to evade taste memory. Hence, you will struggle to complete a can of Pepsi but can guzzle down Coke. 

Second, consuming a product at home differs significantly from a blind taste test. When Coke did studies of people drinking their product at home over several weeks, they preferred Coke by a large margin. 

Finally, there is the case of sensation transference. People just don't consume the drink. They actually engage with the brand in much more subtle ways where the brand, the packaging, and the taste combine to create a nuanced experience. Coke had such a strong brand recall that Pepsi could not come close to in real life. 

This case study is a primary example of how simply listening is never enough. Listening is merely an act when your ears listen to information someone shares. Your brain then constructs meaning from it based on your tendencies, your ideology, and your prior experiences. It takes far more effort to understand than to merely listen. 

Let's dive a little into neuroscience to understand why this happens. Dr. Lisa Barrett, a leading neuroscientist, states that our brain predicts (almost) everything we do.

She explains that your brain is stuck in a dark and silent skull. It continuously receives sensory data from all your sense organs as a barrage of light waves, smells, and air pressure changes (sound). How can your brain make sense of all this data? That's why it uses memories. It scans a lifetime of past experiences, including the changes your body experienced during a similar situation. Did your heartbeat increase? Did your breathing become shallow? The brain then asks, "the last time I was in this situation, what did I do next"? That answer becomes your experience.

If you thought this was amazing, there is more. Dr. Lisa says that the whole constructive process of the brain manufacturing a reality for you is happening predictively. Your brain is hardwired to help you survive. She gives the example of how you feel satiated within a few seconds of drinking water. The water takes twenty minutes to reach your bloodstream. However, as soon as you sip water, your brain anticipates the effect of gulping water.

The Importance of Listening on the Spiritual Path

One of the most important lessons I learned after meeting my Guru Om Swami is how he can say one thing and four people can interpret it entirely differently. We all believe that our interpretation is the only correct one, and it creates a ton of ego, hubris, and confusion. 

Here is a beautiful video where he explains why this happens. 

He starts by explaining that people never accept any information with reason. They accept it with emotions and then use reason to justify it. Take the simple advice of universal love shared by all spiritual masters. They all state that the same universal divinity is present in all life forms, and you should practice love and compassion towards them. One person will use this to eliminate selfishness and share their wealth and resources with others. Another will interpret this to say that since divinity is present in everyone, then monogamy as a concept is a human construct, and they can have multiple partners without any guilt. The third person will steal from the rich while chanting god's name and justify it by saying he is only taking it from the divine energy, who does not care anyway.

Guru Nanak Devji had an amazing companion named Mardana, who spent his lifetime serving his Guru. One day, he asked Gurunanakdevji the following question.

Gurunanakdevji gave him a small stone and asked him to get it valued by a few different people. Mardana went off and met different people. A stone crusher told him it looked nice and he could give a few stones in exchange. A vegetable vendor made a similar offer, and a shopkeeper offered a rice bowl. Finally, Mardana went to a jeweler. He examined the shop and was flabbergasted. He said he would offer all the gold in the shop and even the shop itself if Mardana could just give him the stone. Mardana hurried back to his Guru and said he had learned his lesson.

The greatest gift you can ask for from god is to give you the wisdom to correctly interpret your Guru's words. The most actionable way to do that is to purify yourself by doing Sadhana. The mantras you chant help you cleanse your consciousness, and doing abhishekam and havan helps you establish an unbreakable bond with your diety.