One of the most influential marketing books of the last decade - at least in the Anglo-sphere - is Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow.
Building on Professor Andrew Ehrenberg’s principle of Double Jeopardy, it posits that narrower segmentation efforts are misplaced - as are efforts to foster brand loyalty. Brands with larger market share invariably have more users - higher penetration levels - than smaller ones, and their buyers also purchase slightly more frequently.
So higher penetration levels are key. Gaining new users.
This concept is connected to additional success factors mental and physical availability. That people think of your brand when they’re in the frame for a category purchase, and that your brand is easily buyable, online or offline.
First published in 2010, there was and still is a huge resonance for the book.
People in communications seemed to love it particularly - what better way to create popularity and mental availability than great brand-building adverising, with TV a great choice.
I have no issue with this at all - except that its arguably narrow focus easily reduces the marketing concept to branding and advertising, essentially. And it makes it all seem so incredibly straightforward.
What Value: “Easy”?
However: dismantling complexity in this way is potentially counterproductive for many in the industry.
Why, if it’s that simple, should you spend much time or money on disciplines such as marketing and advertising when it’s really quite simple? Build distribution, have a catchy ad with great branding.
Actually, marketing isn’t simple at all. And it’s much more than about creating a great ad - wherever it’s published.
Think about managing a NPD project. Or launching into a new marketplace. Or optimising your across-the-line media budget. Or simply increasing sales through new channels. Managing word-of-mouth.
These more knitty gritty things are tougher calls. But they need skill - and attention. Neglect your innovation pipeline, or your efforts to master digital selling, and you’re in trouble.
Marketing - bigger than Branding
Marketing is incredibly valuable - and difficult to get right. We would do well - including those dependent on marketing such as marketing research - to boost perceptions of the granular grunt stuff, and shift away from brand-building glory, with overtones of Cannes and the like.
How brands grow is great - but why (and how) marketing grows as a discipline is a critical challenge.
Curious, as ever, as to others’ views.
(Photo: Photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash)
hi! so are you saying that narrower segmentation is important and it does indeed work? how important exactly do you think market research is? i feel like all these things would go hand in hand and the dependence on each would be a case by case situation. what do you think?