Book profile

How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don't Know

Byron Sharp

An evidence-based demolition of conventional marketing wisdom, showing that brands grow chiefly by increasing market penetration and building mental and physical availability, not through differentiation, loyalty, or targeting.

How Brands Grow replaces the superstition that passes for marketing theory with empirically grounded scientific laws drawn from decades of research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Byron Sharp marshals real-world buying data across categories, countries, and decades to show that brands of different sizes share remarkably similar loyalty, sell to near-identical customer bases, and compete as lookalikes that vary mainly in popularity. He demonstrates that growth comes overwhelmingly from acquiring many light, occasional buyers (raising penetration) rather than deepening loyalty or targeting heavy buyers, that differentiation is weak and over-rated while distinctive branding is undervalued, that price promotions and loyalty programs do little for long-term growth, and that advertising works by refreshing memory structures and reaching all category buyers. For any marketer willing to unlearn false assumptions, the book offers a liberating, predictive framework for sophisticated mass marketing.

The model

A causal framework in which marketing design levers (reach, distinctiveness, consistency, distribution, competitive product/price) build the psychological and behavioural states of mental and physical availability, which drive penetration and ultimately market share and durable market-based assets.

Frameworks you can use

Double jeopardy: smaller brands have far fewer buyers who are also slightly less loyal.
Marketing's job is to make a brand easy to buy for more people in more situations.
Reach all category buyers continuously, especially light buyers.
Build and protect distinctive brand assets through consistency.
Behaviour drives attitudes more than attitudes drive behaviour.
No marketing activity is a goal in itself; the goal is mental and physical availability.

Key terms

Reach of Marketing Activity: The breadth with which a brand's advertising and distribution expose all category buyers, especially light buyers, across situations and time.
Distinctive Brand Assets: Unique identifying brand elements enabling recognition and correct attribution.
Branding Consistency: Consistent use of distinctive elements across media, time, and campaigns.
Physical Distribution Breadth and Depth: Extent and prominence of a brand's retail and channel presence.
Competitive Product and Price Quality: The competitiveness of product quality and price within category tier.
Mental Availability (Brand Salience): Propensity of a brand to be thought of/noticed in buying situations.
Physical Availability: Ease with which a brand can be noticed and bought across situations.
Market Penetration: Proportion of category buyers buying the brand at least once in a period.