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I want to do a small experiment with you.
Picture this: you've just left the gym. You've been pumping some serious iron, you feel those muscles and think: "I could use some extra protein." Which brand comes to mind? Maybe a Snickers (which now also has a protein variant), or one of those healthier snack bars like Barebells or Upfront?
Now the second scenario: you're sitting comfortably slouched in the cinema tonight. The movie's about to start, you fancy something tasty. Which brand comes to mind now? Probably M&M's, or perhaps a bag of Maltesers?
Two moments. Two completely different sets of brands. And that, dear reader, is exactly where brand growth comes from 😁.
The mistake almost every brand makes
This is where it often goes wrong for brands. They think brand growth is about what people think of their brand. How positive the image is, how strong the brand values are, how beautiful the campaign looks. And yes, all of that helps a bit. But it's not where growth in the category comes from.
Byron Sharp – the 'god' to whom we owe all this – puts it nicely: "It's not about what people think of your brand, but when." He's quite black-and-white about it. He even thinks image is nonsense. (We actually believe that image does matter, but we've written about that in previous blogs and webinars).
What counts, according to Sharp, are those contextual hooks that bring your brand to the surface in consumers' brains.
And this is where many brands make their first fatal mistake: they ask people which Category Entry Points (CEPs) they only associate with their own brand. But that's far too limited. Your growth doesn't lie with the people who already know and buy you. Your growth lies in the category. With the people who do eat chocolate, but don't buy your brand yet. Who do go to the gym, but choose a different snack bar.
If you only stare at your own brand, you miss the entire playing field.
Why chocolate in the cinema evokes different brands than after exercise
Let's go back to those examples for a moment. M&M's and Maltesers didn't get that cinema association by accident. They've been working on that for years. Those brands are constantly in that cinema context in their marketing, they're available through those channels, they've claimed that movie-CEP.
But here's where it gets interesting: protein bars after the gym, that's a completely different story. There you suddenly have brands like Barebells, Grenade or Upfront. They've become mainstream in recent years and are now simply in every supermarket. But you don't see them in the cinema. Because they have a different package of CEPs. They belong to different needs and different contexts.
And that's the point: brand growth comes from how many of those contextual hooks your brand has in consumers' brains. The more CEPs you've conquered, the more often your brand comes up in daily life, the more you sell.
Mental market share predicts growth, awareness follows
Now you might be thinking: "Okay Tim, but we already measure brand awareness, right? That's just how well-known you are?"
True. But awareness is a lagging indicator. It follows growth, it doesn't predict it. First you grow as a brand in sales, and then your awareness goes up. Makes sense really: we're more aware of brands we buy frequently. But as an indicator to drive growth? Forget it.
Mental availability is different. That truly predicts growth. And that's because it encompasses more of the building blocks of awareness: all those contextual hooks, those CEPs. Mental market share – that's the percentage of all links to all possible CEPs that lead to your brand – has a 94% correlation with physical market share.
Let that sink in for a moment. If you know how much mental space your brand occupies across all those different contexts, you can predict your market share with 94% certainty.
This blows my mind every time I see it. As a marketer, you're constantly looking for ways to grow your brand. And here you simply have the roadmap in your hands.
The beautiful thing is: we often do these kinds of analyses ourselves when we set up a brand tracker for our clients. We link mental market share to actual Nielsen sales figures, and then you just see it. Growth in mental market share is indicative of growth in physical market share.
Brand awareness tells you that you're known. Mental availability tells you why you're growing.
How do you strategically expand your CEP network?
Okay, you now understand the principle. But how do you actually do this in practice? How do you ensure your brand gets linked to more contexts?
It starts with identification. Which CEPs are actually important in your category? You do this using the 5W framework: when, where, with whom, with what, why, and with what feeling do people consume the category?
Note: the category. Not your brand. Because that's where your growth lies.
You actually need to do a pilot at the start. Just take a group of category buyers and figure out what separates the wheat from the chaff in terms of most common contexts. What are the moments when people consume from your category?
And then comes the interesting part: many purchase situations are actually a combination of CEPs. You have CEPs in a place (at home, on the go, in the cinema), and you have CEPs in time (in the morning, in the evening, after exercise). These often go together. Evening at home on the couch is a different context than morning on the go.
From there you can organize your marketing. Your media strategy, the content of your campaigns, the channels where you're present – it all needs to align with those CEPs you want to conquer or strengthen.
And perhaps most importantly: you need to measure it. Mental market share isn't one simple question like general awareness. It's multiple questions, per context. But it gives you such much more nuanced insight into where your growth comes from, where you're winning from competitors, and where you still have room.
Discover the complete CEP growth strategy
What I've shown you here is the tip of the iceberg. We've talked about why context is more important than image, how mental market share predicts growth, and why you need to look at the category instead of just your own brand.
But there's so much more. How do you actually set up a practical, repeatable CEP monitor? What other mistakes do brands make (spoiler: there are more than you think)? And how do you translate the scientific principles behind CEP growth into concrete actions in your marketing?
We go much deeper into this in the full webinar. We show you how to measure brand-linkage on CEPs, how these insights help steer your strategy, and what you actually need to do (and especially not do) in your marketing.
Sign up for the webinar and get immediate access to:
- The full webinar recording (55 minutes)
- All slides and practical frameworks
- A complete step-by-step plan to strategically grow CEPs
Because there's common sense, not always common practice. Let's change that.
