Recently my wife and I spent almost a week in Barcelona. Great city. Great weather. Lots to see and do. And of course… shopping.
The place is absolutely overrun with souvenir shops. T-shirts, magnets, mugs, little Sagrada Família models — the same stuff over and over again.
Walking around, I kept thinking: “How on earth do all these places survive?” Most of them hardly seemed busy. But then you start doing the math. Tiny stores. Family-run. Minimal staff. Huge markups.
And then there’s La Rambla. In peak season it gets something like 250,000 people a day walking through it.
But here’s the important part: They’re tourists.
Tourists don’t think like you and me sitting in an office trying to make rational decisions. They’re hot, tired, rushed, slightly overwhelmed, and suddenly feel the need to buy something that says: “Yep… I was here.”
And the souvenir shops understand this perfectly. They are not really selling magnets or T-shirts. They are monetizing a mood. At any given moment, somebody walks by in exactly the right state of mind to buy a €4 fridge magnet they absolutely did not need 30 seconds earlier. The retailers simply need to be there when the feeling hits.
That’s what makes this interesting.
Most businesses dramatically underestimate the emotional state of the buyer — especially in B2B. They talk about features. Capabilities. Architecture. Process. Technology. Meanwhile the buyer is thinking something completely different.
Take cybersecurity. Nobody wakes up in the morning saying: “Today I’d really like to buy some advanced AI-based zero-trust architecture.” What they actually want is:
The technology matters, obviously. But the emotional drivers matter more.
And this applies almost everywhere: Sales presentations, websites, LinkedIn, trade shows, investor decks, channel strategy - all of it.
What are you doing to generate the right kind of awareness?
If you are not visible when the buyer hits that moment of need - somebody else will be!
Just ask the guy selling Barcelona fridge magnets.
See you next time,
Andrew
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