Ready to rethink everything you know about marketing? What do McDonald’s golden arches, the Nike swoosh, and the law of double jeopardy teach us about brand growth? From building mental and physical availability to winning over light buyers and maximizing reach, discover how brands truly grow. Not through loyalty, but by being unforgettable, accessible, and everywhere buyers turn.

How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands

At the heart of the authors' argument is a stark yet powerful insight: brand growth is driven primarily by increasing market penetration—not customer loyalty. While loyalty is valuable, it tends to be a byproduct of having more customers in the first place. In other words, the brands with the most customers also tend to have the most loyal customers, but not because of anything special they do to retain them. It’s simply the law of double jeopardy in action—brands with fewer buyers also suffer from lower loyalty.

The authors highlight that focusing on loyalty alone is misguided and often a dead-end strategy. Growth doesn’t come from trying to squeeze more purchases out of a brand’s most loyal buyers, because those people are already buying as much as they reasonably can. The real gains come from acquiring new and especially light buyers, who may only make one or two purchases a year but represent a huge untapped segment of the market.

This leads directly to the principle of market penetration. Brands grow when they attract more people, more often. To do that, they must be mentally and physically available when and where purchase decisions are made. Mental availability ensures a brand is top-of-mind, while physical availability ensures the brand is easy to find and buy.

The authors also caution against over-indexing on heavy users, citing the "heavy buyer fallacy." Just because a small subset of users generates a large share of sales doesn’t mean it’s strategic to focus marketing resources on them. These individuals are already maximized in terms of value. Instead, brands should focus on expanding their appeal to infrequent buyers, whose behavior fluctuates and can be positively influenced by exposure and availability.

Furthermore, regression to the mean ensures that today's heavy buyers may not remain so tomorrow, and vice versa. It’s important to adopt a broader perspective, treating all market participants as potential customers. Marketing strategies built on exclusion—whether demographic, behavioral, or psychographic—tend to miss opportunities that mass marketing would naturally capture.

In short, brand growth stems from mass reach, broad targeting, and consistent brand presence. The foundation of sustainable brand success is scale—scale in mindshare, reach, distribution, and recognition. Loyalty, while a welcomed outcome, should never be the sole objective.

Is Brand Loyalty Overrated in the Quest for Market Dominance?

One of the most pivotal contributions of this book is its comprehensive examination of memory and how it relates to marketing. The authors assert that a brand essentially exists as a collection of memories in the buyer’s mind. If people can’t recall your brand when faced with a buying decision, then you might as well not exist. Therefore, building and maintaining mental availability is fundamental.

Memories are complex, but for marketers, four main types matter: semantic (meanings and facts), episodic (experiences), implicit (automatic skills), and sensory (smells, visuals, sounds). For brands, semantic and episodic memories are especially vital—people remember what the brand stands for and how they’ve experienced it in the past.

Cued retrieval plays a massive role here. Buyers don’t think through their entire list of options during a purchase; they rely on mental shortcuts triggered by contextual cues. This is where the concept of Category Entry Points (CEPs) becomes critical. CEPs are the circumstances, motivations, or needs that lead someone to mentally enter a product category. The more CEPs a brand is linked to, the more likely it is to be recalled.

Romaniuk and Sharp introduce the “7 Ws” framework to identify these CEPs: When, Where, With/for Whom, How (feeling), While, With What, and Why. These prompts help marketers uncover when their brands can naturally come to mind. For example, “with friends on a Friday night” might be a powerful CEP for a beverage brand.

The breadth and strength of CEP associations determine a brand’s mental market share. Three key metrics are introduced: mental penetration (how many people think of the brand), mental market share (share of CEP associations), and network size (number of different CEPs linked to the brand). Unlike Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA), which measures only the first brand that comes to mind, these metrics give a more holistic picture of memory structures.

To win in the market, brands must consistently create and refresh these memory links. Memory decays over time, and competitors are constantly trying to overwrite existing links. Therefore, marketing must be continuous and repetitive. The game isn’t just being remembered once—it’s being remembered consistently.

Unlocking Brand Success: Romaniuk & Sharp's Memory Mastery in Marketing

Distinctive brand assets are the tools marketers use to enhance recognition without always needing to repeat the brand name. These include colors, shapes, logos, taglines, sounds, characters, and more. Their main function is to make the brand instantly recognizable in cluttered or time-limited situations.

The authors stress two critical criteria for evaluating assets: fame and uniqueness. Fame refers to how widely recognized the asset is among category buyers. Uniqueness refers to how strongly that asset is associated with your brand (and not competitors). An ideal asset scores high on both.

To audit your brand’s assets, place them on a 2x2 grid with fame and uniqueness as axes. Assets that are both famous and unique should be used frequently and confidently. Assets that are unique but not famous require more exposure. If an asset is famous but not unique, it risks benefiting competitors more than your own brand.

Co-presentation is a key tactic. When building a new asset, always present it alongside the brand name. Once it's established, the asset can stand alone to cue brand recall. Think of the golden arches for McDonald’s or the Nike swoosh—powerful triggers that don’t even need the brand name to work.

Marketers should also be strategic about which assets to emphasize based on media context. For example, visual assets work well in print and digital, while audio assets shine in radio or streaming platforms. Simplicity and consistency are crucial—too many competing elements dilute impact.

Ultimately, distinctive assets act as memory triggers. When buyers are faced with a buying situation and their mental filters search for options, these assets help your brand rise to the surface. Without distinctive cues, even high-budget campaigns can fail to cut through the noise.

How Do Golden Arches and Swooshes Transform Brand Recognition in a Crowded Market?

Reach is the oxygen of brand growth. Without reaching new and existing buyers frequently, no amount of clever messaging or branding will make a meaningful impact. The authors make a compelling case that marketers should obsess over maximizing reach, especially among light category buyers.

Marketing campaigns must aim to expose the brand to as much of the buying population as possible. Reaching 100% of your target audience once is often more effective than reaching 10% of them ten times. Repetition helps, but only after broad initial reach has been secured.

Romaniuk and Sharp argue that “targeted marketing” is often counterproductive. While targeting feels efficient, it frequently excludes potential buyers. Even demographics or psychographics aren’t as meaningful as behavioral reach. Brands should aspire to reach all category buyers, regardless of their buying frequency.

They also highlight the dangers of over-optimizing for ROI. High-ROI campaigns may deliver short-term efficiency but often at the cost of long-term growth. That’s because they tend to favor low-hanging fruit—current buyers, not potential ones. True efficiency comes from scale.

Choosing the right media mix is crucial. Start with high-penetration platforms that reach large audiences. Use overlap data to reduce duplicated reach across channels. This kind of strategic media planning helps maximize effective reach without unnecessary waste.

Lastly, brands should embrace consistent, ongoing exposure rather than sporadic “big bang” campaigns. Memory is built over time. A steady drumbeat of presence ensures your brand is there when it matters—when someone is ready to buy.

Unlocking Brand Potential: Romaniuk and Sharp's Guide to Strategic Reach

Physical availability is the complement to mental availability. It ensures that once a buyer recalls your brand, they can actually find it and buy it. This seems obvious but is often overlooked in favor of glamorous messaging campaigns.

Three core pillars define physical availability: presence, prominence, and portfolio. Presence refers to being stocked and visible where buying happens—whether online, in-store, or through distributors. Prominence ensures the brand is easily noticed in those environments. Portfolio ensures the brand has a format or option that meets buyers’ needs.

Clutter—both competitive and situational—makes prominence a challenge. A brand may be present on the shelf, but if it’s surrounded by louder competitors or located in a poorly trafficked section, it may as well be invisible. Smart packaging and placement are essential.

A well-structured portfolio means offering variants that fit diverse needs without overwhelming buyers. Too many SKUs can create confusion, but too few can limit reach. The trick is finding the balance that allows for maximum buying contexts without diluting brand identity.

Physical availability must also be maintained with the same discipline as advertising. Just like memory decays, physical presence can erode through poor stock management or competitor encroachment. Regular audits and attention to distribution efficiency are necessary.

Ultimately, if mental availability builds the promise of revenue, physical availability is what fulfills it. Brands must remove friction and eliminate all possible speed bumps on the path to purchase. That’s how you convert mindshare into market share.

Is Your Brand's Physical Presence the Missing Piece to Unlocking Market Share?

New and emerging brands face daunting odds. Buyers generally stick with the brands they know. Initial advertising and PR may generate interest, but without sustained activity, these early gains fade fast. For new brands, memory-building starts from scratch.

The authors recommend that new brands begin with simple, foundational messaging: who you are, what you do, what you look like, and where to buy. Forget complex value propositions or comparisons to incumbents—clarity trumps creativity at this stage.

New brands should focus on common CEPs to begin with, since these have the broadest appeal. Only once the brand is known can it begin to link itself to more niche entry points. Smart use of distinctive assets is also vital—name, logo, and tagline must be prominent across all touchpoints.

B2B brands, often thought to operate under different rules, actually follow the same laws of growth. The same cognitive biases, mental shortcuts, and memory decay issues affect business buyers. Double jeopardy and duplication of purchase apply here too.

In B2B, marketers must think beyond companies and instead focus on decision-makers—their brains, priorities, and constraints. Physical availability in B2B might involve being on procurement lists, participating in RFPs, or showing up at industry events.

Services and luxury brands also aren’t exempt from these rules. Though categories differ in buying frequency and emotional involvement, the core principles—mental availability, physical availability, broad reach, and distinctive assets—still apply. Marketers must adapt their tactics, but not abandon the laws.

Building Brand Success: Clarity Over Creativity for Emerging Names

Brand growth largely stems from increasing market penetration rather than solely focusing on customer loyalty. Loyalty emerges naturally when a brand attracts a larger customer base. 

To thrive, brands should prioritize acquiring new customers, especially those who buy infrequently, rather than concentrating on heavy users. Key to this growth is ensuring the brand is mentally and physically available when purchase decisions are made. Mental availability is about being top-of-mind, while physical availability means the brand is easy to find and buy.

Marketing strategies should aim for broad reach, treating all potential buyers as customers and avoiding exclusionary tactics. Distinctive brand assets, like logos or taglines, enhance brand recognition, acting as memory triggers. The focus should be on maximizing both reach and frequency of exposure, ensuring the brand remains present in buyers' minds.

Physical availability complements mental availability, requiring strategic placement and distribution to ensure the brand is accessible when recalled. Consistent exposure and presence, rather than sporadic campaigns, are crucial for maintaining brand memory over time.

New brands should start with clear, foundational messaging, focusing on broad appeal before targeting niche markets. Even in B2B or luxury sectors, the same principles apply: mental and physical availability, broad reach, and distinctive assets are foundational to growth. These insights underscore the importance of scale and presence in building sustainable brand success.

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How Brands Grow: Part 2: Emerging Markets, Services, Durables, New and Luxury Brands

Jenni Romaniuk

7 Key ideas

13 MINS

Ready to rethink everything you know about marketing?

What do McDonald’s golden arches, the Nike swoosh, and the law of double jeopardy teach us about brand growth?

From building mental and physical availability to winning over light buyers and maximizing reach, discover how brands truly grow. Not through loyalty, but by being unforgettable, accessible, and everywhere buyers turn.

Ready to rethink everything you know about marketing?

What do McDonald’s golden arches, the Nike swoosh, and the law of double jeopardy teach us about brand growth?

From building mental and physical availability to winning over light buyers and maximizing reach, discover how brands truly grow. Not through loyalty, but by being unforgettable, accessible, and everywhere buyers turn.

Improve your Career, Health & Life with 15min insights from 9000+ non-fiction books

Key Ideas

#1