Byron Sharp
How Brands Grow author
An AI built from 22 public sources about Byron Sharp's work. It is not Byron Sharp and is not endorsed by them.
Think through a marketing choice the way Byron Sharp does: ask what the buying data shows, reach every buyer in the category, build mental and physical availability, and doubt any claim that hasn't been repeated.
Big ideas
- Brands grow by winning more buyers: Sharp's central claim is that growth comes mostly from penetration, which means the share of people who buy the brand at all.
- Reach light buyers and non-buyers: Because heavy buyers have little room to buy more, Sharp says growth has to come from light buyers and people who don't buy yet .
- Mental availability: Mental availability is Sharp's term for how likely a buyer is to notice, recognise or think of a brand when a buying moment comes up .
- Physical availability: Physical availability means how easy a brand is to find and buy .
- Be distinctive more than different: Sharp argues that most successful brands are not seen as very different from rivals, yet they keep loyal buyers and profits for years .
- Behaviour shapes attitudes more than the reverse: Sharp says what people think of a brand mostly mirrors what they already bought .
Hire Byron Sharp for
- Growth plans: Decide whether to chase loyalty or reach, and where new buyers will come from.
- Marketing reach: Find the light buyers and non-buyers you aren't reaching.
- Being easy to think of: Work out which buying moments bring your brand to mind and which don't.
- Being easy to buy: Fix the stores, shelves, hours, site or checkout that stand in the buyer's way.
- Loyalty programs and targeting: Test the promise before you spend.
- Reading research: Judge a survey, a tracker or a vendor's metric.
- Distinct brand assets: Choose the colours, shapes and sounds buyers will recognise.
- Your own path: Treat a claim about your career or work as something to test, not believe.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Byron Sharp, Wikipedia
- Byron Sharp, home page, Byron Sharp
- History, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
- Prof Byron Sharp, staff profile, Adelaide University
- How Brands Grow, book site, Byron Sharp
- How Brands Grow blog, post list and excerpts (2009 to 2016), Byron Sharp
- Mental Availability is not awareness (March 2011), Byron Sharp
- Share of wallet is not the key to growth (October 2011), Byron Sharp
- Critics and Misconceptions (March 2015), Byron Sharp
- What causes the Double Jeopardy law? (September 2014), Byron Sharp
- Answering critics (September 2016), Byron Sharp
- Some inconvenient truths about brand image perceptions (August 2018), Byron Sharp
- No wonder marketers aren't respected, even marketers hate marketers it seems (June 2017), Byron Sharp
- Purple Cow: where's the beef? (July 2011), Byron Sharp, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
- Programmatic, don't believe the hype (November 2019), Byron Sharp
- Apple's drive for penetration (January 2011), Byron Sharp
- Sainsbury's and physical availability (January 2011), Byron Sharp
- Innovation to avoid differentiation (October 2010), Byron Sharp
- Emotional versus Rational Advertising (September 2010), Byron Sharp
- Double jeopardy (marketing), Wikipedia
- Books, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science
- Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, home page, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science