There aren't any easy answers - marketing science is complex

True marketing science is a far more complex undertaking than one of the industry’s most widely-talked about books of recent years might suggest, says an associate professor of marketing at Oxford University.

Why it matters

How Brands Grow has been the go-to explainer for more than a decade but the analysis put forward by Professor Byron Sharp in that text and elsewhere is now being assailed on multiple fronts, from its lack of applicability to digital brands to its rejection of the role of new metrics such as attention.

The latest criticism comes from Felipe Thomaz of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School in an interview with Contagious, where he acknowledges “grains of truth in what [Sharp] is saying” but suggests that “he’s selected carefully around existing frameworks and left out important details”. (Sharp, unavailable for comment at the time of writing, would no doubt refute the provocative remark that he is “ignoring about 60 years of published work”.)

The critique

• How Brands Grow is built on Andrew Ehrenberg’s (peer-reviewed) work from the 1960s but, says Thomaz, that was based on certain assumptions – including unchanging brand market shares and undifferentiated brands – that undermine any claims to explain and offer guidance on growth. 
• “Growth is a function of perceived differentiation,” he states. “Distinctiveness doesn’t work”.
• The work highlights the advantages of being large, but “cannot address how to grow”. 
• It is not an academic text so definitions and word use are not precise, says Thomaz, who adds that the concepts of mental and physical availability do not exist in marketing science; nor is there a clear measurement of availability.

An alternative view 

“We think of brands in a branching model,” says Thomaz. Brand is split into two initial components of awareness and image, with each of those branching further in their turn.

Awareness includes recognition and recall: the former is important when in a supermarket aisle, for example, while the latter is crucial in an online environment.

Image branches into aspects of associations the brand has – types, favourability, strength and, importantly, differentiation – with these branching further into product related, emotion related, location related, experiences, symbols etc. 

It’s a more nuanced take than that of Sharp, who, says Thomaz, “dismisses the need for differentiation – where it lives inside of brand image – and bundles all of the other moving parts into a single item: mental availability”. 

The big idea 

Marketers are moving past the oversimplifications of Sharp and beyond just buying reach, says Thomaz. They are managing complex systems and understanding how they can get “abnormal and disproportionate returns” from carefully chosen combinations of channels and creative for any particular campaign. 

Sourced from Contagious