Ehrenberg-Bass / How Brands Grow
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of South Australia, led by Professor Byron Sharp, has produced the most rigorous body of evidence-based marketing research. The core insight from 'How Brands Grow': brands primarily grow by reaching more light and non-buyers through mental availability (being thought of in buying situations) and physical availability (being easy to find and buy). Loyalty programmes, targeting heavy buyers, and differentiation are less effective than most marketers believe.
When to use this framework
- →Your marketing strategy is overly focused on loyal/heavy users and ignoring light buyers
- →You need to challenge assumptions about targeting, differentiation, and loyalty
- →You're building a brand growth strategy and want evidence-backed principles
- →You want to audit whether your brand has sufficient mental and physical availability
- →Leadership asks why you're recommending broad reach over narrow targeting
Before you start
Read 'How Brands Grow' by Byron Sharp (or at minimum the key principles). This framework challenges many traditional marketing assumptions.
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Coca-Cola
1. Mental Availability Audit
Mental availability = the probability that a buyer will think of your brand in a buying situation. It's driven by the quantity and quality of memory structures linked to your brand.
List all the situations, needs, motivations, and occasions when someone might think of buying in your category. These are the 'paths into the category.' The more CEPs your brand is linked to, the higher your mental availability.
For each CEP, how strongly is your brand linked? Are you among the first brands that come to mind?
List your non-brand-name elements that trigger brand recall: colours, logos, characters, jingles, slogans, shapes, celebrities. These must be unique to your brand (not shared with competitors) and famous (widely recognised).
How unique are your distinctive assets? Do consumers attribute them to your brand specifically, not competitors?
How widely recognised are your distinctive assets among all category buyers (not just your current customers)?
2. Physical Availability Audit
Physical availability = how easy it is for a consumer to find and buy your brand. Distribution breadth, shelf presence, online findability.
Where can customers buy your product? What percentage of relevant retail outlets stock you?
How prominent are you at the point of purchase? Shelf space, search ranking, marketplace positioning.
How easy is it to buy? Frictionless checkout, availability, out-of-stock rate, delivery speed.
3. Growth Lever Assessment
The evidence shows brands grow primarily through penetration (getting more buyers), not loyalty (getting existing buyers to buy more). Are you investing accordingly?
Are you reaching all category buyers, or only your current customer profile? Brands that grow reach broadly, not narrowly.
Are your distinctive assets used consistently across all touchpoints and over time? Consistency builds memory structures.
4. Action Plan
What will you do to link your brand to more CEPs and strengthen your distinctive assets?
What will you do to make your brand easier to find and buy?
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