Our team recently ran across this fascinating Substack piece by Brett Queener. It really got us thinking…
We’re living in a golden age of software innovation. Products ship faster than ever. AI is reshaping roadmaps in real time. Entire categories are being redefined, merged, or replaced.
But there’s a problem: users aren’t evolving at the same pace.
Product teams live in the future. Customers live in the present. And product marketing gets caught in the middle.
We wanted to unpack the psychological limits of adoption, how unchecked innovation can muddy your story, and what product marketers can do to maintain clarity and traction in a fast-moving environment.
Why Product Changes Don’t Always Feel Like Progress
Even the best new features can feel like friction. From a user’s perspective, every update adds a small cognitive tax: new interfaces to learn, workflows to rewire, habits to break.
Psychologically, users have limited bandwidth for change. Three concepts explain why:
- Cognitive load: Every new element increases the mental effort required to use your product. Too many updates at once can overwhelm working memory and lead to disengagement.
- Change aversion: People don’t only resist change; they actively dislike it, especially when it disrupts muscle memory or introduces uncertainty. In enterprise settings, this discomfort can translate into real productivity loss.
Habit disruption: Over time, software becomes part of a user’s daily ritual. Altering those routines—even for good reasons—can feel like a breach of trust. Small, well-communicated changes often land better than big overhauls.
When the Product Moves Faster Than the Narrative
Here’s the real challenge: Product marketing is narrative-building, and narratives need time to stick.
If your product roadmap shifts direction every few weeks, the story you’re telling the market never has time to land. The positioning you just rolled out to the sales team is already outdated. Messaging becomes a reactive exercise. Customers lose the thread.
And when the story breaks down, so does trust. There are a few recurring symptoms:
- Narrative fragmentation: Constantly shifting value props, audiences, or use cases erodes clarity. The market forgets what you stand for.
- Customer anxiety: If users can’t predict what your product will do next, they’ll start to question its reliability. Consistency is a key signal of stability.
- Sales and CS lag: Rapid change creates a disconnect between product reality and GTM readiness. Internal teams can’t keep up—and it shows in the customer experience.
Messaging debt: Just like tech debt, old narratives pile up. Content, decks, campaigns – they all start to contradict each other. Confusion multiplies.
A Practical Framework for Narrative Stability
Product marketing doesn’t need to slow down innovation – but it does need to create structure around how that innovation is communicated. Here’s our approach:
- Core vs. peripheral change: Not every release deserves a narrative overhaul. Core changes (to your value prop, category, or ICP) might justify a shift. Most other updates should reinforce your existing story—not rewrite it.
- Narrative rhythm: Decide how often your story evolves—every 6 to 12 months is typical. In between, bundle updates into campaigns or content that connect back to the same central theme.
- Message mapping: For each new feature, answer three things: Why it matters, who it’s for, and where it fits in your larger positioning. This keeps your messaging consistent—even when the product keeps moving.
Internal absorption: Give GTM teams time to catch up. A 90-day window for major messaging shifts is a good rule of thumb. Pilot the narrative internally before you scale it across channels.
One Story, Many Chapters
Product marketers are stewards of the narrative. Their job is to take many fast-moving inputs and translate them into one steady, cohesive signal that builds trust over time.
That means resisting the urge to rewrite the story with every release. Let the product evolve. Let the roadmap shift. But anchor your messaging in something that lasts—your promise, your positioning, your core value to the customer.
Innovation creates value.
Narrative stability creates traction.
You need both to grow.
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