Titan Outdoor UK - Analysis | Opinion | Standing Out from the Crowd

Standing Out from the Crowd

Professor Andrew Ehrenberg, formerly South Bank University Saliency and remaining front of mind is key to brand’s success. A précis of Professor Ehrenberg’s findings looks at what Outdoor has to offer within the saliency theory.

We believe that brand advertising works, but not by persuading consumers that a brand is different or better than other similar ones - rather our thesis suggests that advertising works by publicising the brand and making it salient, familiar and reputable.

"Man more often needs to be reminded than informed"
Dr Samuel Johnson, 1750

Research has shown that most consumers have habitual split-loyalty brand repertoires and even wider consideration sets of brands they might buy. So being ‘front of mind’ is a key requisite for a brand. Which is where publicity comes in – it leaves memory traces for the brand and added associations in the individual consumer's mind (for example from memorable visuals). By doing this, advertising helps to keep the brand salient and maintain and perhaps to increase the number of consumers who might consider the brand as one they might buy or use.

Indeed, studies across products, countries and time consistently imply that brands' market shares vary with the number of consumers to whom the brand is salient. So while small brands survive without much or any explicit mass advertising, in general they remain small. The big brands are the ones that have been publicised big over a long time and that have done it well - with continuing impact, interest and memorability for the brand - and hence remain salient to more people.

Advertising in our view need not therefore strive to change directly what or how much consumers feel about the brand, since measures of this hardly vary across the customers of competing brands and, importantly, they vary little with increased sales. Instead the main competitive battle is one for attention, reminding experienced consumers of the brand - and at times informing them about new brands or new features.

So if Professor Ehrenberg is correct and a pre-requisite for brand success is keeping it front of mind, then Outdoor has a key role to play. Both traditional formats such as billboard posters in creating impact and stature for brands, making them famous. But also the newer generation of retail posters, where attention is maximised not only by the physical impact of the poster, but also by the fact that the advertising message is appearing at a relevant time and place for the consumer.