Inhaltsverzeichnis
What really makes brands grow — and why half the truth is dangerous
Inhaltsverzeichnis
The world of brand management has split into camps. On one side stand the advocates of reach and penetration: brands grow by winning more buyers. Forget loyalty. Forget differentiation. Bet on mental availability and unmistakable brand codes. This position originates in the work of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and became popular above all through „How Brands Grow“ — the red book that sits on many a CMO’s desk.
On the other side stand the advocates of emotion and long-term brand building: the most effective campaigns are emotional, not rational. The greatest effect arises over the long run, not the short. Invest around 60 percent in brand building and 40 percent in activation. This position is associated above all with the analyses of Les Binet and Peter Field — the blue book, „The Long and the Short of It“.
Both perspectives have advanced the industry enormously. Both rest on solid empirical work. And both have helped put marketing decisions on firmer ground.
But both have also produced a shadow side: a simplification that becomes dangerous in practice.
Because what happens when a marketing organisation decides to „go with Sharp“? In many cases the result is broad reach without clear meaning. High visibility, but a diffuse brand message. Plenty of mental availability, but little reason to prefer the brand. You are remembered — but not chosen.
And what happens when a marketing organisation „implements the 60/40 split“? In many cases the result is a budget allocation key that answers neither what the emotional campaign should actually say nor how the brand promise is delivered beyond advertising.
The schools of thought answer important questions. But they do not answer every question. And that becomes a problem the moment they are mistaken for a complete set of instructions.
Before we come to the synthesis, it is worth understanding precisely what each perspective contributes. The point is not that one is wrong. The point is that each on its own is incomplete.
Ehrenberg-Bass and „How Brands Grow“ established a fundamental insight empirically: brands grow primarily through penetration. They win more buyers, not more loyalty. That is not a wish but an empirical pattern observable across hundreds of categories. Large brands do not have more loyal customers — they simply have more customers. And those customers typically buy from competitors too.
From this follows a second insight: brands have to be mentally available. They must come to mind in as many buying situations as possible. And they must be instantly recognisable while doing so — through unmistakable brand codes such as colours, shapes, sounds or characters. These codes are not decoration. They are memory anchors that ensure advertising, packaging and experiences are attributed to the right brand. The data here is unambiguous: only around 16 percent of all advertising is correctly attributed to the advertising brand. The rest evaporates — or, at worst, works for the competition.
Binet and Field answered a different basic question: how does communication work most effectively? Their analysis shows that emotional campaigns work more strongly over the long run than rational ones. That short-term activation is necessary but does not on its own produce sustainable growth. And that the balance between long-term brand building and short-term activation is decisive for the overall effect.
Kantar added a third perspective that builds an important bridge: they show empirically that mental availability alone is not enough to explain growth. The strongest predictor of penetration, willingness to pay and future growth is not awareness. It is what Kantar calls „meaningful difference“ — the question of whether a brand is perceived as relevant and distinguishable.
The figures are remarkable. Brands with high perceived relevance and distinctiveness achieve five times the market penetration. Their buyers are willing to pay up to twice as much. And they are four times more likely to increase their value share in the market. Mental availability explains around 40 percent of purchase intent. The remaining 60 percent — and over 90 percent of willingness to pay — are driven by perceived relevance and distinctiveness.
That is a decisive addition. Because it shows: getting into the mind is necessary but not sufficient. Being remembered without a meaning attached to that memory gives you awareness — but no purchasing power.
The three perspectives therefore do not contradict each other. They complement each other. But they only add up to a complete picture once you assemble them into a working model. That model consists of three mechanics.
A brand has to know what it stands for — and that promise has to be relevant to the purchase. Not every distinction counts. A brand can differ from competitors in many ways nobody cares about. Relevance arises where distinctiveness and psychological meaning meet. The strongest brands occupy not only a function but a psychological motive: security, belonging, control, relief, self-affirmation. These motives are the real reason people prefer brands and pay more for them.
Relevance also includes the question of which moments the brand should be remembered in. For which problem? In which situation? With which need? Brands that can answer this are not merely positioned — they are mentally anchored in the moments that count.
A relevant brand needs unmistakable codes so that its meaning is attributed to the right sender. Logo, colour, typeface, sound, imagery, packaging, design principles — these elements are not matters of taste. They are memory bridges. Without them a brand can hold a strong promise and still lose effect, because people do not recognise who it comes from.
Here also lies a central risk in many rebranding projects: replacing codes that work can mean destroying memory traces built over years. Brand codes are an asset. Swapping them out because someone internally wants something new is like discontinuing a well-established product line because management finds it boring.
Here begins the territory none of the major schools really covers. Relevance creates a promise. Recognisability makes it attributable. But what happens when the promise is not confirmed in the experience?
Then what can be called a brand gap opens up: a gap between what the brand claims and what people experience. These gaps are the silent killer of brand growth. Because they undermine exactly what makes brands strong: credibility and trust.
A brand promises simplicity — but the buying process is cumbersome. A brand promises premium — but the service feels arbitrary. A brand promises innovation — but the product experience is dated. In all these cases the experience works against the communication. And the experience wins.
The three mechanics form a system. Relevance gives the brand meaning. Recognisability gives it a clear sender. Delivery gives it credibility. Remove one and the brand weakens — no matter how much money flows into the other two.
Why do the major schools say so little about delivery? Presumably because their data comes from communication analysis. Sharp’s model is based on purchase data. Binet and Field analyse campaign effectiveness. Kantar measures brand perception and links it to market behaviour. All of that is valuable. But it describes the brand from the perspective of the signal — not from the perspective of the experience.
The reality looks like this: a considerable share of brand effect arises beyond advertising and communication. Studies show that employee behaviour explains around a third of brand success. In service companies the figure is higher still. Product, service, sales, digital interfaces, processes — all of it shapes the brand in the buyer’s mind. Not as a message, but as an experience.
That has an uncomfortable consequence for CMOs: the best campaigns in the world cannot compensate for a poor experience. Investing the bulk of your brand budget in communication while neglecting the touchpoints where buyers actually experience the brand means building with one hand and tearing down with the other.
Delivery is not a task for marketing alone. It is an organisational task. It requires employees to know what the brand stands for. To identify with that promise. And to be enabled to act on it. That concerns sales, service, product development, HR and leadership.
The strongest brands — the ones that grow sustainably rather than merely generating short bursts of attention — are therefore not only well positioned and highly visible. They are coherent throughout. They keep at every touchpoint what they promise. And that is exactly the difference between a brand that is known and a brand that is trusted.
The title of this article deliberately nods to Daniel Kahneman. Because brand management, like human thinking, operates at two speeds at once.
Fast is activation. Establishing availability. Securing distribution. Running performance channels. Optimising conversion. Managing promotions. These are the measures that work in the short term and are measurable in the short term. They are necessary, because a brand cannot be bought without availability. Brands physically present in all relevant buying situations win seven times as many buyers as brands available in only half of them.
But „fast“ alone is not enough. Activation only converts existing purchase intent. It does not create new intent. Relying exclusively on activation optimises the system — but does not refill it. The result is falling base revenue, growing dependence on promotions and a creeping loss of pricing power.
Slow is building. Creating meaning. Establishing codes. Anchoring associations. Building trust. Confirming the promise in the experience. These measures do not work next week. Often not next quarter. But they build the asset that „fast“ feeds on.
Good creative work is an underrated lever here. High-quality communication delivers a four to six times higher return than weak creative. The difference in effect on mental availability between good and bad creative is larger than the difference more media budget buys. Which means: it is economically wiser to invest in better creative than in more reach with mediocre creative.
Consistency amplifies the effect. Brands that hold on to their strategy, their codes and their messages over time build stronger memory traces. Constant change — a new campaign idea every six months, a new creative director every two years, a rebrand every five — destroys exactly what is built slowly.
Strong brand management operates at both speeds simultaneously. It activates in the short term what was built for the long term. And it builds for the long term what can be activated in the short term. One without the other is incomplete.
Or as a formula: revenue is essentially the product of purchase intent and availability. A strong brand plus strong activation yields around 46 percent cumulative growth over three years. If only one side is strong, the effect halves.
If this model holds — and the evidence suggests it does — then concrete consequences follow for how marketing organisations work.
Stop picking camps. The question is not: do we do Sharp now or Binet/Field? The question is: how do we make sure our brand is relevant, recognisable and delivers on its promise? That is not a compromise. It is a more complete model.
Define your meaning before you plan your reach. Many marketing organisations start with media placement before clarifying what meaning they actually want to anchor. That is like planning the logistics of a delivery without knowing what is in the parcel. Mental availability without meaning produces awareness without purchasing power.
Protect your codes. Every change to your visual, verbal and sensory assets costs memory capital. That does not mean nothing may evolve. It means change should be evidence-based, not taste-driven. Measure which of your codes are actually recognised and attributed. Strengthen what works. Replace only what demonstrably does not.
Extend your radius beyond communication. If a third of brand success arises from employee behaviour, it is strategically negligent to treat the brand as a pure communications discipline. Ask yourself: does our sales team know what the brand stands for? Does our service reflect our promise? Does our onboarding match the picture we paint externally?
Measure differently. Campaign KPIs (reach, clicks, impressions) are necessary but insufficient. They measure how communication performs — not how the brand develops. What you additionally need: how are perceived relevance and distinctiveness developing? How is purchase intent shifting? What about willingness to pay? And internally: do employees know and live the brand promise?
Be patient — but not with everything. Brand building takes time. Codes need repetition. Meaning needs consistency. That is „slow“ and must not be sacrificed to quarterly pressure. But „fast“ — availability, conversion, activation — must not be neglected while you wait for the long-term effect. Doing both at once is the craft.
The debate between the schools has given the industry a great deal: empirical grounding, clearer language, better arguments in front of finance directors. But it has also created a blind spot. It has narrowed brand management to what can be measured from the outside: awareness, reach, buying behaviour, campaign effect.
What has slipped out of view: a brand does not arise only in communication. It arises in every moment a person comes into contact with your company. In the sales conversation. In the service call. In the onboarding. In the product. In the app. In the invoice. In the way your employees talk about the company when they get home in the evening.
Understand a brand only as a signal and you optimise the surface. Understand a brand as a system — of meaning, recognition and delivery — and you build something that lasts.
This is not a rejection of the schools of thought. It is their completion.
Sharp tells you how markets work. Binet and Field tell you how communication works. But nobody tells you where the meaning that gets anchored in people’s minds should come from. And nobody tells you how to make sure your promise holds up in the experience.
That is the task that remains. And it does not begin with a media plan. It begins with three questions:
