How to change consumers’ opinions and influence people

The real challenge of marketing is all about availability — availability in the mind, and in the store.

When it comes to books about marketing, you could fill a mid-sized local authority library with them.

Philip Kotler, Michael Porter, Clayton Christensen, Seth Goden, Peter Drucker, John Kotter, Martin Lindstrom, Theodore Levitt, Rita Gunther McGrath, Al Ries and Jack Trout are just some of the thousands of authors who believe the world needs to know more about marketing.

One book, however, that stands out is How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know by Professor Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science which is part of the University of South Australia.

First published 11 years ago — with a sequel added in 2015 — the book challenges some of the many preconceived ideas that marketers have about their brands, and how they go about executing their brand strategy.

HBG, as it is known colloquially in the marketing world, is a manifesto for evidence-based marketing — and it insists marketing should be treated as a science rather than an art.

In so far as one can summarise a book in a few paragraphs, it says that the secret to growing a brand is to ensure that it is physically available to as many people as possible, and that it should have clear and distinctive branding that uses sensory cues — colours, logos and design — that are easy to remember and recall.

In other words, the real challenge of marketing is all about availability — availability in the mind and in the store. The more physical and mental availability a brand can achieve, the more likely it will succeed. Assuming people buy it, of course.

HBG was also the first marketing tome to identify a number of specific scientific laws that apply to marketing, and explain what they mean for strategy and business.

Read full article on Independent.ie.