Established model
Mental availability
Byron Sharp · 2010
What matters is not whether people like a brand but whether it comes to mind in the situations where it could be bought.
Its place in the frameworkBrand Core›Brand Perception
What it does
Built on decades of panel data, it argues that most categories are bought by many light buyers rather than a loyal few, and that growth comes from being thought of in more buying situations by more people. It is deliberately unromantic about brand love, and the evidence behind it is uncomfortably large.
- Reach for it when
- When perception research reports strong affection among a small group and the brand is not growing.
- Where it stops
- It generalises from repeat-purchase consumer categories. In markets with few buyers and long considered purchases, the pattern it rests on is a different one.
Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow, Oxford University Press, 2010.
Why it sits at Brand Perception
What people actually think, as opposed to what the organisation intended them to think — measured rather than assumed, and taken seriously when the two differ.
A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:
- Measuring perceptionBrand tracking practice, and the association-elicitation methods used to get at what comes to mind unprompted rather than on a scale.
- The identity–image gapKapferer on identity against image, and Hatch and Schultz on the gaps between vision, culture and image in corporate branding.
- Segment differencesThe employer-brand and internal-branding literature on the divergence between internal and external brand pictures.
- Shifting perceptionWork on belief updating and on brand repositioning, both of which find that behaviour disconfirming the old belief moves perception where messaging does not.
What it touches elsewhere
Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Brand Perception lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.
- Brand IdentityIdentity is the input to this object; the gap between the two is the finding.
- Omni CorePerception is formed at the touchpoints, which is where the experience is designed.
- Data CorePerception tracking is a longitudinal measurement and only means anything if the instrument holds still.
- Market CoreA perception reading is only interpretable against how the category and its competitors are perceived.
Filed at the same place
These answer questions that arise at Brand Perception too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.
- Distinctive brand assetsThe colours, shapes, sounds and characters that make a brand recognisable before its name is read.
Elsewhere in Brand Core
These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.
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