In today's Question of the Week, Dr Kelly Vaughan warns against overestimating the ability and influence of salespeople, and reminds us that consumers ask for their advice less often than you might think. Instead we suggest staying focused on building mental availability for your brand. This can make your brand easier for the consumer to find, and reduce the likelihood that consumers will ask for advice in the first place.

In today’s Question of the Week, Marketing Scientist Emily Gray answers an important question: why do some ads become more effective over time? Emily explains that the sales response to advertising follows a convex pattern and that the first exposure is the one that matters most. She also discusses the importance of reach and provides tips on how to prioritise reach in your media planning.

In today’s Question of the Week, Dr Arry Tanusondjaja answers the question: how can big brands continue to grow? Arry discusses brand growth for big and small brands, across different categories. He outlines the key growth levers for big brands, and explains why you need to consider growth of the category, rather than just focusing on your own market share objectives.

In our latest Question of the Week, Prof John Dawes discusses the effectiveness of everyday low pricing (EDLP) versus high-low pricing. John outlines key areas for consideration when determining your pricing strategy, as well as some questions you need to ask to make informed, evidence-based decisions.

In today’s Question of the Week, Senior Marketing Scientist Ella Ward discusses the importance of both Fame and Uniqueness in building Distinctive Brand Assets. Ella provides tips for increasing Fame and explains why consistency is key to protect your assets in the long term.

In today’s Question of the Week, Marketing Scientist Jake Mesidis answers an important question, why are loyal buyers not a useful source of growth? Jake explains why, if your goal is to grow your brand, loyal buyers are not particularly useful. He discusses light vs. heavy buyers, why your loyal buyers won’t leave you and why the key to growth is found in light buyers.

We’re all familiar with how brands grow, but little is known about how categories grow. In recent years, the Institute has pioneered new research into how categories grow and how to drive growth under different conditions.

Today’s Question of the Week asks, does category growth follow the same pattern as brand growth? Senior Marketing Scientist Dr Steven Dunn discuses some key components to category growth, and the importance of the maturity of the category.

When the goal is to maintain Share of Market (SoM), it is commonly understood that a brand’s Share of Voice (SoV) should be proportionate to its SoM.

But what about when a brand wants to grow its SoM? Should it invest above its ‘fair’ SoV?

The short answer is yes… but!… In today’s Question of the Week, Senior Marketing Scientist Kelly Vaughan discuses the relationship between SoV and SoM, why we need to reconsider how we define ‘over and under spending’ and highlights that spend is only one piece of the puzzle.

The basic idea of the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is that it is a measure of willingness to recommend, with claims it’s a strong indicator of a company’s growth. And because of this, thousands of companies around the world use the NPS (as well as many industry competitors) for their KPI performance review. While the sellers of NPS say that it’s loyalty or a word-of-mouth measure, research has found that NPS for businesses correlate extremely highly with satisfaction scores, resulting in a false satisfaction measure rather than an actual recommendation measure.

While outdoor advertising has high visibility and wide local coverage, it typically only allows for a brief exposure of a limited, visual message. This means brands don’t have the opportunity to share a detailed message or strengthen their auditory cues. So how do you maximise the effectiveness of outdoor advertising? Marketing Scientist Danielle Talbot explains how to utilise outdoor advertising best practice and provides three key principles to prioritise when incorporating outdoor into your media mix.