Our Mental Availability Assessment findings:
We recently completed a Mental Availability Assessment of the brands in the bread category. You are probably not surprised to learn that Warburton’s had the strongest set of scores amongst the 20 brands included in the research. But it is worth pausing a moment to understand that behind the entertaining advertising is a carefully considered strategy that serves as a compelling case study for how brands grow.
Brands grow as a result of building strong Mental Availability, Physical Availability and Emotional Resonance. In other words, if your brand is easy to think of and easy to buy, you have a foundation for fame.
Warburton’s cast Hollywood icons to entertain. If you look through the archive, you will see that Samuel L Jackson stars alongside ‘Toasties’, Robert De Niro co-stars with Warburton’s bagels and the Muppets showcase crumpets. The clever bit is that these different products are suitable for different buying situations and prompt a variety of memory retrieval cues (Category Entry Points) that make the brand easier to be thought of. As a result, Warburton’s is the only bread brand in the top 3 that has a Mental Advantage across multiple category entry points. Source: SmilingCFO database.
There is perhaps one area where this brilliant marketing team might want to focus, and that is in the area of Physical Availability. The distribution is strong, but the opportunity for that next phase of growth might lie in the consistency of packaging design. Whilst beautifully represented on Warburton’s website, the gorgeous simplicity of the orange design doesn’t always translate across the range and onto the shelf.
Credits:
How Brands Grow: Byron Sharp 2010.
Les Binet Three ingredients for effective marketing: 1) Emotional Resonance
Professor Jenni Romaniuk ‘Better Brand Health’ 2023
Recommended Video:
Find our more about the Benefits of a Mental Availability Assessment from our partner Martin Coyle in our latest video
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