The distinctive asset in the room
When Byron Sharp wrote his seminal book on evidence-based marketing in 2010, it sparked a debate on distinctive brand assets and the benefits of immediate consumer recognition. Does his premise remain relevant today?
When it was first published back in March 2010, How Brands Grow: What Marketers Don’t Know was something of a sensation. Written by Professor Byron Sharp (with the help of assorted colleagues), the book was a flag-waver for evidence-based marketing. It offered data-driven, pleasingly simple laws around awareness and accessibility that every marketer, whether they sat in a midtown, high-rise, multinational C-suite or shared office space with the sales team in a suburban retail park, could grasp and live by.
Central to Sharp’s ideas was the notion of distinctive brand assets – the need for immediate consumer recognition in a crowded market place. The bricks and mortar of a brand’s identity, the logo, the font, the colours, pre-influencer, old-school celebrity endorsements, a mascot, perhaps, provide crucial signals for consumers who don’t have the time or inclination to linger over options. A series of seven rules for growth contained in How Brands Grow included “Get noticed (grab attention frequently)”, “Refresh and build memory structures (respect existing associations that make the brand easy to notice and easy to buy)” and “Create and use distinctive brand assets (use sensory cues to get noticed and stay top of mind)”.
Sharp, who is professor of marketing science and director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, part of the University of South Australia in Adelaide, stressed the importance of attention-grabbing in a crowded marketplace. This, of course, was at a time when physical shopping was still very much the thing. He also outlined how brands should build memory structures around distinctive assets, so that consumers wouldn’t simply home in on colourful packaging or a strong logo, but beyond that would be able to instantly identify and pick out both brand and product next time they were making a purchase.
Read the full article in Campaign Live UK.
