Research from System1 and eatbigfish finds that a cow chewing grass sparks more emotion than half of professionally produced TV advertising.
Marketing scientists from the likes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and IPA apply scientific rigor to answering questions such as “How does brand loyalty really work?” and “What brand indicators predict market share movement?” They leverage massive data sets and design repeatable experiments.
Their conclusions and guidelines have been proven effective in every industry and geography, including b2b and b2c.
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If you don’t understand empirical marketing principles, then you are probably spending a lot of money on brand activities that don’t work.
Measuring mental availability, the probability that consumers will think of a brand in a real buying situation, enables brand leaders to predict market share growth or decline. Brand awareness is a lagging indicator that does not directly correlate to market share effects.
Category entry points, the real reasons, triggers, or occasions when someone considers buying a product in your category, are more effective targets than personas, aka fake consumers.
The more CEPs consumers link to your brand — and the more deeply those CEPs are embedded — the more mental availability your brand commands, the more likely they are to buy you.
Focusing on making your brand easier to recognize through distinctive brand assets — any element other than your brand name that consumers associate with only you — is a surer path to building mental availability than focusing on points of differentiation.
Despite marketers’ best efforts at positioning, the data is unequivocal: consumers don’t recognize meaningful differences between brands and products; rather, there are brands they recognize, and brands they don’t.
Most brand health trackers offer a snapshot of the past or present, rather than actionable guidance for moving market share based on scientifically proven principles.
Introducing The Cogs of Empirical Marketing: a system for measuring and moving the empirical wheels of market share.
This visual shows how all the market share forces impact each other.
The smaller cogs like Integrated Campaigns, move faster but have smaller market share effects.
The larger cogs are harder and slower to move, but have a larger impact on market share.
Where does your brand rank in real customers’ minds when they’re in relevant buying situations?
Which buying situations trigger your brand vs. competitors.
Which should you defend?
Which should you attack?
Which elements of your branding are making you easier to recognize?
Which ones are getting lost or even benefiting your competitors?
This phase reveals actionable data for improving the impact of your creative — aka Creative Effectiveness — and the performance of your Integrated Campaigns, both of which power Media Efficiency and Extra Share of Voice.
It’s all backed up by the latest global research in marketing science.
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