Product Truth vs. Customer Truth

Most financial brands think their problem is awareness. It isn’t.

It’s relevance.

You can buy awareness. You can’t buy relevance. You earn it by saying the one thing that makes someone stop scrolling, stop comparing, and start thinking, “This might actually work for me.”

That doesn’t come from your product truth. It comes from your customer truth.

Product truth is what the team wants to say about the product. The rates, the app features, the cash-back percentages. And don’t get us wrong—those things matter.

But they only matter if they mean something to the customer.

Here’s an example. In our 2024 Finsights study [add link] of US financial attitudes, we asked consumers how they evaluate new financial products. 76% said they don’t bother looking into a new option unless it promises a clear advantage over what they already have. That’s not a comparison of rates. That’s a filter for relevance.

So if you lead with a product truth that doesn’t connect to a customer need—or worse, that assumes they’re already interested—you’re not even in the conversation.

This is where creative strategy often breaks down. A team gets excited about a new feature and builds an entire campaign around it. But what if that feature doesn’t matter to your audience? What if it doesn’t address the one thing they need to believe before they act?

We don’t just ask what the product does. We ask why anyone would care. That’s where the magic is.

That’s how you move from product truth to customer truth.

Because when your messaging is grounded in the customer’s lived experience—their skepticism, their habits, their decision filters—your product becomes more than a list of features. It becomes a real solution.

Want messaging that actually resonates? Start with customer truths—and build everything else to serve that.