Photo: Getty Images
That headline was hard to read, and even harder to write. For marketing and communications professionals, branding reigns supreme, but what if that’s the wrong approach?
Professor Byron Sharp is a leader in the field of marketing research and his book How Brands Grow: what marketers don’t know establishes the scientific laws of buying and branding was the first to establish scientific laws for marketing. As director of the world’s center for marketing research, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, his effort to show marketers how the real-world works has brought him world renown.
“We can market the real world, science studies the real world, we should be able to find law like patterns like everyone else has,” Sharp said on Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman. “And we have.”
Through his and his colleagues' research, Sharp found that a product’s location is more important than the customer’s knowledge of a brand. This is something marketing professionals often miss, since they know both their brands inside and out. As guest host Gayle Troberman, chief marketing officer for iHeartMedia points out, marketers also know their competitors brands very well too.
“We are so enamored of our brands,” she said. “We think that translates into the real world.”
Consumers see brands as interchangeable, and they don’t know much about the brands they aren’t buying. Sharp explains that bank customers don’t know what experiences every other bank offers, and they don’t care as long as their needs are met.
Listen to “Byron Sharp: ‘Highly restrictive targets are a fantastic way to shrink brands’” to hear the full discussion on the scientific laws of marketing. Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing with Bob Pittman releases new episodes every Thursday, find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you want to be sure you’re listening to the podcasts everyone else is checking out, iHeartRadio has you covered.
Every Monday, iHeartRadio releases a chart showing the most popular podcasts of the week. Stay up to date on what’s trending by checking out the chart here. There’s even a chart just for radio podcasts featuring all your favorite iHeartRadio personalities like Bobby Bones, Elvis Duran, Steve Harvey, and dozens of others.