Brand Building & Growth

Definition

Growth is an ingrained part of business – if you are not growing you are dying. However, market share growth is exceedingly difficult. Markets are more competitive than ever and marketers must work very hard (and spend a lot of money) for their brands to merely retain their market share.

Brand competition and growth is largely about building two market-based assets: Mental and Physical Availability.

Brands that are easier to buy, for more people in more situations, have greater market share.

Key Findings

Most markets are near-stationary, with minimal movements in market share from year to year.
The big difference between competing brands is in the number of customers who buy them at all; their penetrations. Big brands have markedly larger customer bases than do smaller brands.
To grow you must substantially increase your customer base – the number of customers who buy you.
Most buyers of a brand are very light buyers. Buying only 1x in a time period is typically the most common purchase rate. Even big brands – category leaders – have mostly light customers.
When brands grow, the biggest movement comes from the very light or non-customers
Normal growth is:
- Getting more of all types of customers
- Changing the size, not the nature of your customer base
- More people buying from you in any time period
The Pareto rule is not an 80:20 rule but 50-60:20. Only 50-60% of sales come from the top 20% of customers. Sales contributed by heavy buyers are much less than previously thought.
Targets to grow through substantially (or only) increasing purchase frequency are a fantasy.
Targeting only a segment of customers can’t deliver substantive growth.
You compete practically ‘head on’ with all of your competitors
Your buyers are loyal, but polygamous, buying from your competitors as well as you
You mean little to most of your customers

Best Practice

Marketing is important – to reach numerous light customers who hardly think of you at all
To grow you must target the entire market
Continuous reach is vital
Branding is paramount
Differentiation is not central to strategy to grow

Reports (40)

Marketing Commentary (46)

Marketing Commentary

Showing 46 results

How do you adapt your Distinctive Assets to deal with COVID-19?

MAY 2020
PROFESSOR JENNI ROMANIUK

How do you adapt your Distinctive Assets to deal with COVID-19? Just like Christmas, Easter, Halloween and any other holiday - your creative can change, your message also might but your Distinctive Assets should stay the same!

February 2020
Article
Professor Rachel Kennedy

This year Jeep and others again spent big on Super Bowl advertising. Here marketing scientist Professor Rachel Kennedy takes a quick look at some of the publicly available numbers to critique the Super Bowl from a brand growth perspective.

July 2019
Professor Byron Sharp and Professor Jenni Romaniuk

Marketing professional services requires knowledge of how brands compete, grow and decline, and this is the same for both products and services. Understanding your service brand's distinctive assets will help amplify the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

July 2019
Prof. John Dawes, Prof. Magda Nenycz-Thiel and Prof. Bruce McColl

Premiumisation is about more than simply launching a premium brand – and even if it does involve a premium brand, marketers need to guard against making assumptions about who will buy it and where, according to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute.

may 2019
Dr Arry Tanusondjaja

The rising popularity of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) in recent weeks has left political commentators scratching their heads. But should we be surprised by UAP’s sudden upswing amongst Australian voters? Or, considering what we know about advertising, brand growth and building mental availability, is this just the result of a well executed marketing campaign?

October 2018
Publication
Jenni Romaniuk

Discusses the factors to consider when creating the identity of a new brand launch.
• To design a good sub-brand or variant brand identity you first need a clear strategy for the parent brand.
• Always remember to protect the parent first, and make sure any sub-brand or variant brand identity decisions ‘cause no harm’.
• Use brand identity as a bridge that links the parent and the sub-brand, don’t create more difference than similarity.
• When creating a new asset for a new variant, avoid the obvious (e.g. green = natural) as this will be easy for competitors to copy.

This article was also published on WARC as part of a series of articles on brand architecture in the digital age.

October 2018
Commentary
Byron Sharp

Marketing Week reports that a number of companies have appointed Chief Growth Officers, e.g. Conagra, Coty, Colgate-Palmolive, and Coca-Cola. So what is a Chief Growth Officer?
All of these companies are sponsors of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, a tribute to how they take marketing and business growth seriously.

September 2018
AdMap Magazine
Dr Cathy Nguyen

Marketers constantly seek new attention-grabbing advertising tactics. And for good reason, because each time an ad fails to capture the attention of potential buyers, precious advertising dollars are wasted. Does a second brand aid advertising impact?

July 2018
Comment
Byron Sharp

An anecdote shared with us from a Sponsor about the similarity of challenges facing marketers today to those from 50 years ago.

June 2018
Interview
Byron Sharp

This month Byron Sharp, the Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, was interviewed about what he prophesises now about 2025. By thinking today about the day-after-tomorrow, this helps businesses to increase their odds of being viable and successful despite all the disruption, disintermediation and exponential change to come the next 5-7 years.