Some products seem to generate demand almost naturally.
Others require constant effort to maintain momentum.
Marketing pressure pushes them forward — until it stops.
Then growth slows.
The difference is rarely explained in marketing discussions.
Yet once you see the underlying pattern, it becomes difficult to ignore.
They struggle because the market has mentally filed them in the wrong place — and once that happens, the economics quietly change.
Infrastructure is compared.
Accessories are negotiated.
Commodities compete on price.
Marketing can push against those rules. Campaigns create activity. Promotions generate spikes. But pressure reaches its limits.
When a product occupies the wrong role in the market, growth begins to feel heavier than it should.
The product works. Revenue may be growing.
Yet something in the system begins to feel effortful.
Marketing must constantly push.
Ads. Promotions. Discounts.
The moment the pressure slows, momentum fades.
What once felt like growth begins to feel more like maintenance.
This is usually interpreted as a marketing challenge.
In many cases, the issue sits elsewhere.
Markets evaluate products according to the role they occupy.
That role is rarely written down, yet it quietly shapes how customers interpret the object in front of them.
Is it infrastructure?
An accessory?
A tool?
Or something chosen — something that carries meaning beyond its function?
Each role produces its own economic behavior.
Infrastructure invites comparison.
Accessories invite negotiation.
Identity objects invite attachment.
Once the role is established, the economics tend to follow.
Role Determines Gravity.
When a product is mentally filed as an accessory, it behaves like one.
When it becomes something central — something chosen rather than simply used — the dynamics begin to shift.
Pressure decreases.
Pull begins to form.
Role determines gravity.
I began exploring this question inside a small product company called Naked Root.
At first glance, nothing was broken.
The product worked. Customers were buying.
Still something felt structurally off.
Growth existed, but required constant effort.
Momentum appeared only when marketing pressure increased.
It became clear the planter had been mentally filed as an accessory — something that supported the plant rather than something chosen beside it.
That classification defined the economics of the product.
Over the following year we redesigned the system surrounding the object.
Not simply the marketing.
The role.
How the product appeared inside the home.
How the brand introduced signals into the market.
How customers encountered the object and interpreted its presence.
Gradually the classification began to shift.
The planter stopped behaving like infrastructure and began behaving like something authored — an object chosen for its presence rather than tolerated for its function.
The economic consequences followed.
Monthly revenue moved from roughly $30k to nearly $200k.
But the most interesting change was not the numbers.
It was the structure.
Growth stopped requiring constant pressure.
The product began to carry its own gravity.
This case study examines what happens when the role of a product changes — and how that shift alters the behavior of the system around it.
Read the Case Study
Reading time: ~12 minutes
If you built a product you believe in, but growth increasingly feels like effort rather than momentum, the issue may not be marketing.
The market may have filed the product in the wrong role.
And once that happens, the economics follow.
Because in markets, as in physics,
role determines gravity.
Observations on how products are understood — and how that understanding shapes what they become.
Why Most Products Are Not Weak — They Are Misclassified
Why Marketing Feels Like Pressure for Some Products — and Pull for Others