Powerful ideas from top nonfiction
Try Blinkist to get the key ideas from 5,500+ bestselling nonfiction titles and podcasts. Listen or read in just 15 minutes.
Start your free trial
Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
How Brands Grow summary
Byron Sharp
What Marketers Don’t Know
Listen to the first key idea
Key idea 1 of 9
4.4 (89 ratings)
18 mins
9 key ideas
Audio & text
What is How Brands Grow about?
In How Brands Grow, Byron Sharp tackles conventional marketing wisdom, disproving many of the conventional marketing myths with scientific facts and establishing some scientifically proven principles marketers should use.
About the Author
Byron Sharp is a professor of marketing science at the University of South Australia. He has written over a hundred articles on research in marketing and focuses mainly on establishing empirical laws that can be used in marketing practice.
Table of Contents
Key idea 1 of 9
Marketing practice should use evidence provided by marketing science, not rely on traditional beliefs.
For thousands of years, it was very common for medical doctors to practice bloodletting on their patients: just a few centuries ago, it was used as a cure for every health problem imaginable. Then, as science advanced and empirical evidence mounted, we came to learn that bloodletting is largely ineffective.
Similarly, marketing practice has long operated on the basis of beliefs that have no empirical foundation.
One of these established beliefs is that brands need to have an equal amount of loyal customers and customers who switch between brands (“switchers”).
Take, for example, the toothpaste brands Colgate and Crest. In 1989, a market analysis revealed that Colgate’s consumer base was made up of 21 percent loyal customers and 68 percent switchers, while Crest’s comprised 38 percent loyal customers and just 46 percent switchers.
For the marketing managers at Colgate, this data was worrisome enough to convince them that they should produce more persuasive advertising to keep their customers loyal.
However, like many maxims of marketing, this belief is wrong.
In marketing, there is a scientifically proven pattern known as the double jeopardy law which states that brands with a smaller market share have fewer customers and, what’s more, that those customers are less loyal than those of bigger brands.
This reveals that the buying behavior of customers is related to a brand’s size, and that it’s therefore only natural that Colgate, with its 19 percent market share, has fewer loyal customers and more switchers than Crest, which has a market share of 37 percent.
Thus, these figures shouldn’t concern Colgate’s marketing department, as they aren’t the consequence of a weak marketing strategy, but simply of the brand’s relative size.
As the above example illustrates, in order for it to be effective, marketing practice should ground itself in the findings of marketing science. That’s because marketing science can reveal the actual causes and effects of marketing.
Want to see all full key ideas from How Brands Grow?
Key ideas in How Brands Grow
More knowledge in less time
Read or listen
Get the key ideas from nonfiction bestsellers in minutes, not hours.
Find your next read
Get book lists curated by experts and personalized recommendations.
Shortcasts New
We’ve teamed up with podcast creators to bring you key insights from podcasts.
Who should read How Brands Grow
- Anyone working in marketing
- Anyone interested in how science can affect marketing practice
- Anyone who wants to know how advertising works
Categories with How Brands Grow
Books like How Brands Grow
What our members say
Sven O.
It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality. Added to that the apps ability to suggest kindred interests opens up a foundation of knowledge.
Thi Viet Quynh N.
Great app. Good selection of book summaries you can read or listen to while commuting. Instead of scrolling through your social media news feed, this is a much better way to spend your spare time in my opinion.
Jonathan A.
Life changing. The concept of being able to grasp a book's main point in such a short time truly opens multiple opportunities to grow every area of your life at a faster rate.
Renee D.
Great app. Addicting. Perfect for wait times, morning coffee, evening before bed. Extremely well written, thorough, easy to use.
Start growing with Blinkist now
25 Million
Downloads on all platforms
4.7 Stars
Average ratings on iOS and Google Play
91%
Of Blinkist members create a better reading habit*
*Based on survey data from Blinkist customers