Does your brand measure up when it comes to mental availability?

For the last 12 months, most of my meetings have felt like Groundhog Day. Like clockwork, within the first 10 minutes, someone will passionately decree that “We must seek to obtain mental availability and dominate our category entry points at all costs.”

I take the bait.

“Can I ask, what exactly is your understanding of mental availability? And what, specifically, are these category entry points?”

I sit and wait patiently for the familiar scene to unfold.

“Well, it’s err, it’s sort of a bit like brand awareness. But, err, built around the entry points, which are a bit like, but not exactly like, the places people buy our stuff from.”

“Right. I see. And these are things that you regularly measure and track?”

That one generally kills things stone dead, and the conversation moves on to a more manageable topic like the weather or how they justify spending 80% of their money on performance marketing that does little to build mental availability.

Now, I’m sure I’ve just been unlucky and am meeting with the wrong people, but to relieve any doubt, mental availability is not brand awareness and category entry points (CEPs) are not the places we buy stuff from.

Getting the definitions right

Mental availability describes a brand’s propensity to be thought of in a buying situation, and CEPs are the cues category buyers use to access their memories in a buying situation. Like Ant and Dec, the two are inextricably linked.

For example, in the image below are three potential CEPs for streaming services. Below these, we have four category buyers that identify with one or more of these cues. For each of these CEPs, we have a set of brands linked with the cue, ie a list of brands we think of as potential candidates to answer this need.

It’s these brand links that must be created and refreshed to build and maintain mental availability, and it’s these links that, with the right research, can (and should) be measured and tracked to inform marketing decisions and monitor effectiveness.

To do this, you’ll need to begin by identifying your CEPs. You can achieve this with some quantitative research – a survey of category buyers designed to uncover the common motivations and behaviours behind category entry (for details on exactly how to do this, see our latest research, ‘Wanna Take This Outside? How to pick a fight with a category entry point and win using OOH‘).

With your CEPs established, it’s now time to go back in the field (as we have) with another survey. This time, present category buyers with your CEPs and ask them which brands (if any) they associate with each (again, there are more details on exactly how to do this in our new research).

Armed with all this data, now you can start to truly understand how much mental availability you have, how much your competitors have and what you might need to do to get more.

The key metrics

Our research covers three major categories: streaming services, soft drinks, and high-street fashion. For each of these categories, we analysed four key metrics as outlined by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute:

• Mental penetration: The percentage of category buyers with at least one CEP link
• Mental market share: The brand’s share of all brand CEP links
• Network size: The average number of CEPs among category buyers with mental penetration
• Share of mind: The share of CEP links among category buyers with mental penetration

Full analysis of all these categories (others to follow in the coming months) is available on request from Clear Channel, but here’s a small taste of the gems this kind of research affords:

From this one simple piece of analysis, you can glean a considerable amount of insight. For example, those brands on the far right of the chart above may want to review the level of reach their marketing delivers, as they seem to be penetrating a limited number of category buyers. It could also be indicative of a need to broaden the product offering; perhaps these brands simply don’t service some CEPs, which limits penetration (some more detailed analysis of network size and individual CEPs penetration will help to answer that).

As for some of those giants on the left? This is a good chance for them to check mental penetration against actual market penetration. If your mental penetration is significantly higher than your market penetration, then there’s a conversion issue. Also, it’s a good opportunity to size up the competition, to identify exactly where the battle for mental availability lies and who to take the fight to.

This kind of analysis not only provides valuable information for decision making, but with regular tracking (as we are doing) you can monitor exactly how effective your marketing efforts are in the fight for mental availability.

When you recognise mental availability for what it is – not some ethereal concept but something that’s there to be measured and studied – you’ll see these kinds of fights breaking out all over the place. Out of curiosity, we’ve been monitoring a few of our favourites.

Twix has its work cut out as it takes on a true heavyweight in KitKat:

Here’s Guinness, out of its comfort zone, but taking the fight to an army of strong opposition:

Winning these battles isn’t easy, but there are certain tactics you can employ that will tip the odds in your favour. We’ve identified seven of the most effective ways to land a knockout blow. Sadly, there’s not enough time to detail them here, but you can of course find them all in our latest research (did I mention that we had new research?).

When it comes to mental availability, talk is cheap. It takes both brain and brawn to win the fight. Choosing whether you fight or not, is not an option, you’ve simply got to dust off the gloves and get stuck in because product purchase hangs in the balance.

To quote Jenni Romaniuk and Byron Sharp: “To be bought, a brand must first be thought of – the breadth (how many) and strength (how strong) of the brand’s links to relevant cues determines the chance of this happening.”

Lindsay Rapacchi is research and insight director at Clear Channel UK.