Ehrenberg-Bass News

Why is this even a discussion? Yes, good question. You would think you need both to win as a B2B brand. Make sure you develop a unique, superior product and make it known to the market with eye-catching, recognizable advertising. Done, end of blog. If only it were such a party. When Byron Sharp published his book How Brands Grow in 2010, he initiated a change. Before 2010 differentiation was high on every marketer's list, after 2010 it was no longer so obvious.

First, the publication of Better Brand Health by the distinguished academic Jenni Romaniuk offers the first proper new insight into brand tracking in a very long time. It’s a practical book – perhaps too much so for the brand archetype-loving world of modern marketing – but contained within its pages are some incredibly applied, useful and advanced lessons in how to measure your brand. I’m halfway through but I strongly recommend it.

Building profitable brands is a challenging endeavour. While ultimately the success of our endeavours is revealed in buying behaviour, the initial battle is fought in the minds of category buyers. We can’t see this battle, but with the right metrics, we can check if we have laid sufficient groundwork to give a brand the best chance of success when that moment presents itself. This is the valuable role that brand health research can play - provide a window into the mind of the category buyer.

The brand is what drives the business and makes marketing easier. We work from the Marketing theory of Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. The Ehrenberg-Bass marketing universe has no place for Brand Love, loyalty campaigns, differentiation or hypertargeting. There is only 'Mental Availability' and 'Physical Availability'.

Marketers have traditionally been told that brand success comes from identifying a carefully selected market segment, then crafting a strategy to appeal to that segment. Then along came the book How Brands Grow, with evidence that challenged that theory.