Decoding the Distance Between Message and Meaning
Over the last few weeks, our family has been following the interviews and debates ahead of the Dutch elections. It hasn’t been long since the last elections, and we recognize the mechanics of the show. The discussions between politicians and talk show hosts are sometimes heated, the topics all seem urgent, but what’s also interesting are the things that happen after the closing statements.
In the days after each of these televised performances, people in the public discourse, news outlets and commentators aren’t debating content or policy; they are dissecting gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice. A raised eyebrow here, a misplaced smile there. Who made the best impression? What was the one-liner that came in hardest? Which snippet is being repeated and rehashed in the days after?
Each political party seems to claim future victory based on how their candidate is perceived, not on what they actually said. Watching this play out, I couldn’t help but think of my own world of branding and communication, where meaning often gets lost between the sender’s intention and the receiver’s interpretation.
What fascinates me most isn’t the political content per se but the precision with which perception is managed. Spin doctors do what brand managers do every day: craft narratives, frame visuals, and adjust tone to evoke specific emotional responses. And, as in politics, perception often trumps reality.
An Anatomy of Perception
Perception isn’t simply a lens through which we view reality; it is the process through which reality is constructed. Every image, sound, or message is filtered through our biological, emotional, and cultural wiring before it becomes meaningful. Your frame of reference and your place in time are part of that filter. And so is your attention span.
Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes this through his dual-system model of thinking: System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional, while System 2 is slow, deliberate, and rational. Our initial perception of anything — a brand, a person, a sound — almost always starts with System 1: emotion first, logic later.
This aligns with another perspective on how the human brain processes information: as three interconnected systems operating simultaneously — instinct, emotion, and cognition — where,situationally, each can interpret the same stimulus differently. A color, a tone of voice, or a slogan can trigger a visceral reaction long before we consciously analyze it.
Culture and language further complicate the picture. In an earlier article, I wrote about how linguistic structures shape perception. Words aren’t just carriers of meaning; they define what we are capable of noticing. What we label, we begin to see. What we repeat, we begin to believe.
And that brings us to an uncomfortable truth: what we perceive isn’t necessarily what is real; it’s what our mind allows us to experience as real.
When Fidelity Fails – Lessons from Color, Sound, and Brand
For much of my career, I’ve worked at the intersection of visual communication, marketing, and research; I’ve been immersed in print, design, and audio. These fields have taught me that precision and perception are tightly connected, but often don’t overlap in a way we would expect.
Color
In print, I’ve often discussed color perception with my friend Eddy Hagen, who has spent years examining the nuances of color fidelity. Technically, color reproduction can be measured down to exact values. In print, we speak of ink mixes, spectral curves, ΔE tolerances, and we use complex models to ensure colors match between input and output. But that doesn’t mean two people will see the same color once printed.
Environmental conditions change everything. A perfectly printed red will look different under fluorescent light than it does in daylight. The human eye adapts continuously, normalizing differences that instruments can detect but our brains often ignore, and vice versa. Metamerism, reflectance, and even mood can alter perception entirely.
So what, then, is “accurate color”? The measurable or the perceivable?
Audio
The same paradox exists in audio. Audiophiles — myself included — love to debate reproduction quality: the characteristics of DAC’s, amplifiers, and speaker designs. Yet, when all the technical perfection is in place, what remains most decisive is perception.
Psychoacoustics reminds us that hearing is never purely mechanical. The brain fills gaps, suppresses noise, and emphasizes frequencies it expects to hear. A perfectly calibrated system can sound dull or uninspiring if the listener’s state of mind isn’t receptive.
Two people listening to the same track under identical conditions may still have entirely different experiences. One might describe warmth and intimacy, the other sibilance and sound stage. Technical fidelity cannot account for psychological variability. Let alone how the music itself resonates beyond the physics of sound.
Branding
Branding follows the same law. The logo, language, and tone of voice may be carefully designed to project an image, yet the audience will interpret it through their own cultural, emotional, and situational frames of reference.
Marketing departments spend enormous effort perfecting what they say. Far fewer, and mostly those that employ a decent persona model, invest in understanding how it is perceived. A campaign may be visually stunning and linguistically clever, but if it doesn’t resonate with the audience’s lived reality, its impact will be cosmetic.
Across these domains — print, sound, and image — the same pattern emerges: perfection in transmission doesn’t guarantee clarity in perception.
Introducing the Perceptive Influence Model (PIM)
It was this recurring gap between what is promised and what is perceived, that led me to develop a systemic framework I call the Perceptive Influence Model — PIM for short, or Perceptie Invloed Model in Dutch.
Based on an integration of behavioral, ethical, and organizational theories, the PIM allows for a perceptual cartography, charting the distance between an organization’s articulated promise (its corporate DNA, or Soul Purpose) and its perceived reality (the audience’s True Persona reflection). While developed in a branding context, the PIM’s principles apply wherever perception shapes outcomes, whether corporate messaging or political discourse.
The PIM does not offer simple, corrective fixes; it functions as a diagnostic lens, illuminating the gap where message and meaning diverge. It also doesn’t assume good faith; it reveals discrepancies, whether they stem from misalignment or misinterpretation. Through frameworks like the MKWG (Moeten, Kunnen, Willen, Gunnen) analysis and others, it measures perceptual congruence, understood as the degree to which what is said and what is understood overlap.
I often describe it as a kind of brand calibration system. Just as a color calibration chart can be measured with a spectrophotometer for visual accuracy or a frequency analyzer quantifies acoustic properties, the PIM measures this deeper, ethical alignment. It shifts the focus from managing surface-level impressions to understanding the complex, interwoven factors that define authentic connection.
It aims at the difference between promise and perception.
A Case of Misaligned Perception
A relative of mine recently told me about a job interview that left him puzzled. On paper, the position seemed perfect; it seemed to align with his experience, ambitions, and personality. But as the conversation unfolded, something felt off. The company’s presentation didn’t match its reality.
Curious, I ran a PIM assessment on their public materials: website, social posts, and the job posting itself. I then extended the analysis to compare how the role was positioned versus how the organization presented itself culturally.
The result confirmed what my relative had sensed intuitively. The company’s external messaging promised innovation, autonomy, and collaboration, while its internal tone revealed hierarchy, control, and a fear of risk. What seemed a perfect fit on paper was, in reality, a complete mismatch.
This is what perception analysis often exposes: not deceit, but disconnect. The gap between aspiration and authenticity. Between what an organization wants to be seen as and what it truly is.
The Ethics of Perception
Once you begin noticing perception gaps, you see them everywhere: in politics, marketing, media, and even personal relationships. The instinct to manage perception is human; it’s part of how we navigate social complexity.
But in the corporate world, perception management easily slips into manipulation. The temptation to appear responsible, sustainable, or innovative can overshadow the slower work of becoming so.
The short-term gain of spin often leads to long-term erosion of trust. We see this not only in failed branding efforts but in governance and public communication as well. In a world saturated with messaging, the real competitive advantage is authenticity. More specifically, it’s the kind of authenticity that can withstand scrutiny.
This brings us to a crucial ethical question: when does influence stop being guidance and start being deception?
In my previous writing about counter-marketing and moral governance, I argued that influence is not inherently wrong. What matters is intention. Influence becomes ethical when it aims for alignment rather than control, and when it helps people see clearly rather than persuades them blindly.
The PIM plays a subtle role here. By revealing discrepancies between a company’s message and its perceived meaning, it encourages self-awareness. It becomes not a tool of persuasion, but of reflection.
The Environment of Perception
Every act of communication happens in an environment — physical, emotional, and cultural.
In audio, that environment is the room itself: the surfaces, reflections, and materials that shape sound before it reaches the listener’s ears. A poorly treated space can distort even the highest-fidelity playback. In print, it’s the lighting and context in which the colors are viewed. The same brochure appears dramatically different under warm incandescent light versus cool daylight. In branding, the environment is the social and emotional climate in which the audience receives the message: a sustainability claim lands differently during a climate crisis than in times of abundance.
Too often, communicators focus on the signal and forget the space in which it resonates. A campaign designed in a boardroom may not survive the noise of real-world interpretation. A company’s internal culture may distort even the most elegant external message.
The environment of perception is, in many ways, the most powerful variable, because it’s the least controllable.
From Bias to Balance
Recognizing the limits of perception doesn’t mean surrendering to relativism, nor does perceptual variability erase common ground. It means developing perceptual awareness; it’s the ability to question how meaning is formed, and how our own filters shape what we see. And it invites us to build bridges between diverse perspectives.
For individuals, this starts with humility: accepting that our perception is a version, not The Version, of truth. For organizations, it means cultivating alignment between what they believe internally and what they project externally.
Perceptual awareness can be trained, much like critical thinking. It’s the practice of asking:
- Who is the audience, and what structural biases are they bringing to this message?
- What assumptions are embedded in our language or design?
- How might context, timing, or emotion alter interpretation?
When we start asking these questions, influence becomes a dialogue rather than a broadcast.
The Perceptive Influence Model in Context
In that sense, the PIM is not just a marketing tool. It’s part of a broader practice: a way to explore the distance between intention and interpretation. Whether applied to a brand, a public institution, or a hiring process, it maps perception as a living system rather than a static state.
This approach can extend into collaborative research or brand diagnostics, translating into practical interventions for communication strategy and organizational alignment. The methodology itself becomes a bridge between exploration, analysis, and shared understanding.
Ultimately, the PIM is less about managing perception and more about understanding it. It serves as a shift from projection to reflection.
Seeing with Wider Eyes
As the political performances that opened this piece fade from the news cycle, what remains isn’t who will win but how each side’s narrative lingers differently in people’s minds. Some remember assertiveness as confidence, others as arrogance. The same gestures, the same words; they can lead to entirely different interpretations.
It reminds me, again, of music and print. Two listeners, two readers, two viewers; each takes away something uniquely their own.
Perception isn’t noise in the system; it’s the human signature within it.
In business, politics, and culture alike, bridging the gap between message and meaning requires more than clearer communication. It demands awareness, and an ongoing calibration between what we intend to express and what others are capable of receiving.
And perhaps that’s where influence finds its higher purpose: not in shaping perception, but in understanding it well enough to meet others halfway.
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