What Marketing Science Says About Growing a Brand | Professor Byron Sharp (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute)

Core Idea: What Brands Actually Do

• A brand is something consumers can distinguish—it “stands out,” so people know which option they’re buying.
• If buyers can’t tell differences, they can’t reliably repurchase or be loyal. In that case, the “brand” becomes just the category or retailer swapping product supply.
• Brands create practical value by reducing effort and speeding choice (e.g., grabbing the “blue” sugar because it’s familiar).

Evidence-Backed Positioning (Contrary to Common “Hot Takes”)

Funnels are not the primary organizing model

Marketing funnels are described as “nonsense”—at least as the main way to understand what drives growth.

Instead, the real work is building:

• Mental availability: the probability you come to mind when purchase is possible
• Purchase/physical availability: the probability you’re easy to buy when the buyer is ready

Differentiation and positioning matter less than marketers claim

• Kids can often tell differentiation instantly, which suggests that true differentiation is rarer than ad-industry narratives imply.
• In most categories, competitors converge. The main battle becomes avoiding being “not top of mind” or “not easy to buy,” rather than being meaningfully different.

The “Brand Growth Engine” (Playbook)

Keep working on both assets continuously

• Mental availability increases via repeated, linked impressions and cues.
• Purchase availability increases by removing friction and ensuring distribution/stock/easy signup.

Advertising matters—but it’s not the whole mechanism

• Advertising can help “get mental availability started,” especially for tiny brands.
• But big brands keep advertising mainly to “keep the plane up.” Even famous brands can have low share of mind, and customers don’t buy frequently.

Key Frameworks / Concepts Referenced

• Mental availability + Purchase (physical) availability

• “Advertising is creative publicity” / “publicity is advertising” Any spotlight or attention that reinforces brand recognition works similarly.

• Cue-linking / neural anchors Build associations so the brand appears when the right situational cues occur (e.g., coffee shop vs. beach).

• Mere exposure effect (high-level) More exposure increases familiarity/preference; the operational implication is consistency over time.

Concrete Examples / Case Illustrations

Coca-Cola

• Even for the biggest brand, many customers buy rarely (e.g., “once a year”), so recognition doesn’t automatically translate into purchase.
• If advertising stops, sales erode over time as mental availability declines and share of mind shrinks.
• Big share of mind depends on how often reminders occur, not just awareness.

Soviet Union / unlabeled products

• Without brands, consumers learned quality from serial numbers—“brands” effectively become whatever identifiers customers can distinguish.
• Reputation creates consequences for product quality and behavior.

Wine

• Champagne shows what strong brand building can do: global distribution + recognition.
• Many other wines survive with thousands of variants. Advantage goes to those who manage distinctiveness and availability effectively.

Omega Moon Watch

• A long-running campaign has “stickiness” through an iconic story reused for decades.

GEICO lizard

• A highly distinctive brand asset that people instantly recognize, supporting mental availability.

Yellow Tail (kangaroo)

• Distinctive brand assets + fast learning for consumers.
• “Stole” physical availability via distributor win and built mental availability quickly; growth is described as moving “from nothing to a million cases a year” (scale-up outcome implied).

What to Do Differently (Actionable Recommendations)

1) Shift from “funnel” thinking to availability-building

Don’t optimize only for “top-of-funnel” awareness or “bottom-of-funnel” conversion.

Instead:

• Always run initiatives that increase mental availability
• Always reduce friction that harms purchase availability

2) Treat “ease to buy” as a branding lever (especially in software)

In online software, “purchase availability” is the ease of taking the next step.

Examples of levers mentioned:

• 1-click sign-up / fewer steps
• Free version / freemium to reduce trial friction
• Payment methods (e.g., taking PayPal)
• Improve purchase flows for different buyer types (e.g., enterprise compliance or “preferred supplier” status)

3) Optimize brand assets for instant recognition

Distinctive brand assets are meant to “look like you,” so recognition is immediate and reduces second-guessing.

For AI/chatbot categories, the argument is that brands must build distinctiveness because otherwise consumers ask “which one?” and default to familiarity.

Measurement Guidance (How to Operationalize)

Practical leading indicators mentioned

For small brands, use simple leading indicators tied to mental and purchase availability:

• Search volume / Google mention counts for your brand name (and related brand terms)
  • Example cited: tracking queries for an institute (e.g., Aaron-Bass Institute) and related brand terms monthly
• Shelf/stock presence for physical retailers
  • Track out-of-stock frequency and whether you appear on shelf where expected

The guidance emphasizes not over-measuring everything—track a small set of indicators linked to the two levers.

Software/publisher measurement approach (from the podcast source)

In an AI world, the proxy suggested is to measure brand presence via the open web:

• Crawl the web to count brand mentions
• Measure search volume by country
• Expect measurement challenges from brand-name misspellings; include variants in analytics

Implication for AI-era marketing

AI models aggregate multiple sources; more web mentions increase the likelihood the brand is surfaced.

Skepticism on “Brand Purpose” and Differentiation

Brand purpose research takeaway

• Even long-running “purpose brands” have very low customer recall of the stated purpose.
• Purpose may function more like an image notice than a mental availability driver.
• Recommendation:
  • If purpose doesn’t directly reinforce mental availability and purchase availability, it may distract from what actually drives sales.

Metrics / KPIs Explicitly Discussed (Mostly Qualitative Proxies)

• No specific numeric KPIs (e.g., CAC/LTV targets) were given.
• Explicit “measurables” and proxies:
  • Mental availability proxy: brand search volume, web mentions, brand fame over time
  • Purchase availability proxy: shelf presence and out-of-stock rates (offline); ease-to-purchase factors (online steps, payments, free trial)

Descriptive examples (not targets):

• Coca-Cola buy frequency for many customers: “once a year” (for the biggest group)
• “Share” of mental availability described qualitatively (e.g., “a few percent” estimate for beverages)
• Yellow Tail described scaling to “a million cases a year” after building availability + distinctiveness

Organizational / Leadership Tactics Implied

• Prefer evidence-based marketing with simple, trackable metrics aligned to the actual levers (mental + purchase availability).
• Reject “buzzword frameworks” that create false confidence (e.g., focusing on “activation,” “short-term vs long-term,” or “top/bottom funnel” as primary lenses).
• Treat brand assets and channel friction reduction as ongoing operations, not one-off campaigns.

Presenters / Sources Mentioned

People

• Professor Byron Sharp (director, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute; author of How Brands Grow)
• Host: referenced as “HF’s podcast” (host name not provided in subtitles)
• Steven Holden (Australian academic referenced; cues/questions paper)

Researchers / Institutes

• Ehrenberg-Bass Institute (also referred to as Aaron-Bass Institute)

Authors / External Works

• Rory Sutherland (Alchemy)
• Paulo Coelho (piracy anecdote referenced)
• Geoff “DocuSign” presentation (example of adoption timelines; company not otherwise sourced)
• Justin Cohen (colleague referenced for wine knowledge/personal discussions)

Brands and Examples Used

• Coca-Cola, Pepsi, McDonald’s, Burger King, Domino’s
• Omega, Omega Moon Watch
• Geico
• Yellow Tail
• Tic Tac
• Windex (as spelled in subtitles)
• Plus additional retail/wine references (e.g., Aldi), and AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok.