Blog for the Curious

The Truth About Mental Availability

The memory structures that determine whether we are bought are only partially under our direct control. Mental availability, the probability...

Why Mental Penetration is Essential for Brand Growth

For organisations seeking predictable and evidence led growth, understanding the brand’s Mental Penetration is critical....

CEPs Help Create Consistent Customer Experiences

From screen to store, and every step in between, Category Entry Points give marketers a clear way to unify fragmented...

CEPs: The Secret to Smarter More Successful Innovation

Without a deep understanding of the situations, needs, and cues that drive consumer choice, NPD can fail to gain traction....

Why CEPs Are Critical In An AI World

To be surfaced at the right moment, whether by consumers or by AI engines, a brand must be mentally linked...

A Winning Portfolio Brand Strategy: Navigating through Portfolio Overlaps.

How do you manage two brands that consumers already see in largely the same way? The answer lies not in...

How to Spot a Fragile Brand Before it's too late!

Traditional tracking might be lulling brand leaders into a false sense of security. In a competitive market, brand teams keep...

Why Mental Availability Deserves More of Your Attention

Sometimes, the simplest truths get lost in the noise. Brands grow because people think of them, in the right moments....

Why Mental Availability is More Powerful Than Awareness

In many organisations, marketers are facing a familiar and frustrating situation. They are working harder than ever, investing in campaigns,...

Brand Health Scores are Stable, But You are Losing Share?

You’ve just reviewed the latest brand tracker. Awareness is high. Your attitudinal metrics are holding steady. Yet your sales are...

How to Influence Buyer Behaviour: Two Key Concepts

Our job as marketers is to influence buyer behaviour. At SmilingCFO, we believe two concepts are critical in influencing why...

Don’t Let History Hold You Back - How to Enhance Your Brand Health Tracking.

This article explores the history of brand health measurement, delves into the challenges faced by today’s brand owners, and proposes...

Using Category Entry Points to Spot New Growth Opportunities.

If you’re responsible for brand strategy, one of the most valuable analyses you can conduct as part of your market...

Boosting Brand Growth: A 5-Step Strategy to Strengthen Mental Availability

How a brand’s Mental Availability can be strengthened by linking a number of strategic themes together, creating a multiplier effect....

Delivering High Quality Brand Growth

The strategies being deployed by brand owners to create new demand....

Category Entry Points: 5 analytical steps to Improve Business Performance

We show how CEPs help tie brand metrics to business metrics...

A Category Entry Point Case Study for Chocolate

How to grow Mental Market Share by building 'Mental Penetration'...

Build team capability with these Marketing Effectiveness principles

Companies that embed Marketing Effectiveness principles into their organisation are the companies that will win...

Understanding which Category Entry Points are Most Important Moves You 1 Step Closer to Growth

Mental Availability: The perils of only focussing on your buyers

In this short video, using data from our ‘savoury cracker’ database, we bring to life another principle of Mental Availability...

Build Mental Availability to increase the Chances of Being Purchased

Using gin data, we illustrate in this short video, how improving a brand’s Mental Availability, (most specifically Mental Penetration) increases...

Why Brands Need to be Easily Recalled in Buying Situations

Understanding the extent to which your brand is easily recalled in buying situations is fundamental for growth. Analysis of real...

Strong Mental Penetration is a key pillar of brand success

To be in the game, you need at least half the market to be able to link your brand to...

Knowing When To Widen Your Messaging

In our series of quick reads we are diving deeper into the different Mental Availability metrics. Here we focus on...

How to Improve Your Brand's Mental Availability

Understanding how likely your brand is to be thought of in a buying situation is a smart starting point for...

A First Step Toward Stronger Mental Availability

If you want to win the Mental Availability battle, and you do, then Mental Penetration is a critical step towards...

How Mental Availability and Demand Spaces Can Complement Each Other.

Why Category Entry Points are the vital link between Mental Availability and Demand space theory....

Brand Budget: Don't Try To Do More With Less

We offer a set of guidelines and some shared experiences to help you make the most of the budget available...

Building Mental and Physical Availability To Gain an Edge Over Your Competitors

No matter the size of your brand there is ample evidence to show that you will gain an advantage if...

My 6 Ways to Optimise The Brand Planning Process

This article is written with a CMO or Brand Leader in mind and concentrates on uniting the commercial function behind...

Brand Strategy: How Challenger Brands Can Win

We offer a set of actions that will help grow Mental & Physical Availability and close the gap to the...

Why the CMO/CFO relationship is the most important in the C-Suite.

Martin Coyle shares what he found to be the most effective way to build a partnership with his CFO....

Mental Availability Assessments are a Critical Part of Market-Orientation

In this article we walk you through how to use the results to inform stronger hypotheses and objectives that ultimately...

THE BENEFITS OF A MENTAL AVAILABILITY ASSESSMENT PART 1 (VIDEO)

In this video we provide a step by step guide to understanding how easily your brand is recalled in buying...

A PUKKA approach to building links to multiple Category Entry Points

We haven’t been lucky enough to meet the nice people at Pukka, but we think not only do they how...

4 Steps to a More Effective Brand Strategy

We give you the 4 x Steps to be able to build a more effective strategy for your brand. A...

Brands Grow By Building Wider Fresher Networks

It's ok not to know the whole song, but don't get caught out miming after the first verse!...

Fame on Toast: The Key Findings From our Mental Availability Assessment of the Bread Category.

We recently completed a Mental Assessment of the brands in the bread category, we pause for a moment to salute...

HOW TO BUILD A BRAND STRATEGY AND NOT JUST A BRAND PLAN

The best brand leaders don’t spend months on brand planning, here’s why…...

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MENTAL AVAILABILITY BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

We applaud anyone who puts their hand up and says I don’t think I understand as much as I should...

We Talk To Category Buyers Not Consumers

Mark tells us why the all-important Category Buyer is the focus at SmilingCFO. Sure, consumers influence (sometimes!), but our focus...

The Truth About Mental Availability

The memory structures that determine whether we are bought are only partially under our direct control. Mental availability, the probability...

Why Mental Penetration is Essential for Brand Growth

For organisations seeking predictable and evidence led growth, understanding the brand’s Mental Penetration is critical....

CEPs Help Create Consistent Customer Experiences

From screen to store, and every step in between, Category Entry Points give marketers a clear way to unify fragmented...

CEPs: The Secret to Smarter More Successful Innovation

Without a deep understanding of the situations, needs, and cues that drive consumer choice, NPD can fail to gain traction....

Why CEPs Are Critical In An AI World

To be surfaced at the right moment, whether by consumers or by AI engines, a brand must be mentally linked...

A Winning Portfolio Brand Strategy: Navigating through Portfolio Overlaps.

How do you manage two brands that consumers already see in largely the same way? The answer lies not in...

How to Spot a Fragile Brand Before it's too late!

Traditional tracking might be lulling brand leaders into a false sense of security. In a competitive market, brand teams keep...

Why Mental Availability Deserves More of Your Attention

Sometimes, the simplest truths get lost in the noise. Brands grow because people think of them, in the right moments....

Why Mental Availability is More Powerful Than Awareness

In many organisations, marketers are facing a familiar and frustrating situation. They are working harder than ever, investing in campaigns,...

Brand Health Scores are Stable, But You are Losing Share?

You’ve just reviewed the latest brand tracker. Awareness is high. Your attitudinal metrics are holding steady. Yet your sales are...

How to Influence Buyer Behaviour: Two Key Concepts

Our job as marketers is to influence buyer behaviour. At SmilingCFO, we believe two concepts are critical in influencing why...

Don’t Let History Hold You Back - How to Enhance Your Brand Health Tracking.

This article explores the history of brand health measurement, delves into the challenges faced by today’s brand owners, and proposes...

Using Category Entry Points to Spot New Growth Opportunities.

If you’re responsible for brand strategy, one of the most valuable analyses you can conduct as part of your market...

Boosting Brand Growth: A 5-Step Strategy to Strengthen Mental Availability

How a brand’s Mental Availability can be strengthened by linking a number of strategic themes together, creating a multiplier effect....

Delivering High Quality Brand Growth

The strategies being deployed by brand owners to create new demand....

Category Entry Points: 5 analytical steps to Improve Business Performance

We show how CEPs help tie brand metrics to business metrics...

A Category Entry Point Case Study for Chocolate

How to grow Mental Market Share by building 'Mental Penetration'...

Build team capability with these Marketing Effectiveness principles

Companies that embed Marketing Effectiveness principles into their organisation are the companies that will win...

Understanding which Category Entry Points are Most Important Moves You 1 Step Closer to Growth

Mental Availability: The perils of only focussing on your buyers

In this short video, using data from our ‘savoury cracker’ database, we bring to life another principle of Mental Availability...

Build Mental Availability to increase the Chances of Being Purchased

Using gin data, we illustrate in this short video, how improving a brand’s Mental Availability, (most specifically Mental Penetration) increases...

Why Brands Need to be Easily Recalled in Buying Situations

Understanding the extent to which your brand is easily recalled in buying situations is fundamental for growth. Analysis of real...

Strong Mental Penetration is a key pillar of brand success

To be in the game, you need at least half the market to be able to link your brand to...

Knowing When To Widen Your Messaging

In our series of quick reads we are diving deeper into the different Mental Availability metrics. Here we focus on...

How to Improve Your Brand's Mental Availability

Understanding how likely your brand is to be thought of in a buying situation is a smart starting point for...

A First Step Toward Stronger Mental Availability

If you want to win the Mental Availability battle, and you do, then Mental Penetration is a critical step towards...

How Mental Availability and Demand Spaces Can Complement Each Other.

Why Category Entry Points are the vital link between Mental Availability and Demand space theory....

Brand Budget: Don't Try To Do More With Less

We offer a set of guidelines and some shared experiences to help you make the most of the budget available...

Building Mental and Physical Availability To Gain an Edge Over Your Competitors

No matter the size of your brand there is ample evidence to show that you will gain an advantage if...

My 6 Ways to Optimise The Brand Planning Process

This article is written with a CMO or Brand Leader in mind and concentrates on uniting the commercial function behind...

Brand Strategy: How Challenger Brands Can Win

We offer a set of actions that will help grow Mental & Physical Availability and close the gap to the...

Why the CMO/CFO relationship is the most important in the C-Suite.

Martin Coyle shares what he found to be the most effective way to build a partnership with his CFO....

Mental Availability Assessments are a Critical Part of Market-Orientation

In this article we walk you through how to use the results to inform stronger hypotheses and objectives that ultimately...

THE BENEFITS OF A MENTAL AVAILABILITY ASSESSMENT PART 1 (VIDEO)

In this video we provide a step by step guide to understanding how easily your brand is recalled in buying...

A PUKKA approach to building links to multiple Category Entry Points

We haven’t been lucky enough to meet the nice people at Pukka, but we think not only do they how...

4 Steps to a More Effective Brand Strategy

We give you the 4 x Steps to be able to build a more effective strategy for your brand. A...

Brands Grow By Building Wider Fresher Networks

It's ok not to know the whole song, but don't get caught out miming after the first verse!...

Fame on Toast: The Key Findings From our Mental Availability Assessment of the Bread Category.

We recently completed a Mental Assessment of the brands in the bread category, we pause for a moment to salute...

HOW TO BUILD A BRAND STRATEGY AND NOT JUST A BRAND PLAN

The best brand leaders don’t spend months on brand planning, here’s why…...

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MENTAL AVAILABILITY BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK

We applaud anyone who puts their hand up and says I don’t think I understand as much as I should...

We Talk To Category Buyers Not Consumers

Mark tells us why the all-important Category Buyer is the focus at SmilingCFO. Sure, consumers influence (sometimes!), but our focus...

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