Increase your Chances of Winning - A Category Entry Point Case Study for Chocolate. ‘How to grow Market Share by building Mental Penetration’.
Before we transport you to the wonderful world of chocolate, here are a few headlines that informed our thinking while working on this category.
i) Mental Market Share is the primary measure of Mental Availability.
ii) There is a correlation between Mental Market Share and a brand’s actual Market Share.? Deviations here enable the potential cause(s) to be diagnosed.
iii) Mental Penetration is one of the diagnostic metrics below Mental Market Share. It measures whether a category buyer can make a mental link between a brand and a single category entry point (CEP). Our database shows that, on average, if a category buyer cannot make a CEP link to a brand, there is only a 4% chance that they will purchase this brand.?
iv) This case study shows that the brand in focus has a 27% chance of being purchased if the category buyer can link it to a CEP.
v) It is no surprise that our recommendation in this case study is for the brand to build its Mental Penetration.??
In this case study, we…
Background
In our study of approximately 200 FMCG brands, we have replicated the main premise of Jenni Romaniuk’s book Better Brand Health: You increase your chances of growing if your brand is thought of in more buying situations than its competitors; in other words, it has stronger Mental Availability.??
There are two major contributors to making your brand easier to recall in buying situations;?
i) Distinctive Assets – “the non-brand name elements that trigger the brand into the memory of category buyers – Romaniuk, 2016b; Sharp & Romaniuk, 2010
Guinness is probably the best-in-class example.
ii) Category Entry Points – “the mental pathways that link a brand to a buying situation” – Romaniuk 2022?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Here is an example of a Category Entry Point for laundry detergent taken from our research;
I have spilled something on my shirt (i.e., the ‘buying situation').
My brain will have an already formed mental pathway linking ‘removing a stain’, (the category entry point) and a brand like Persil or Vanish.? These brands are ‘easily thought of by me’ and assuming either one is ‘easy to buy’, then I don’t expend further mental energy on thinking about other brands.??
It is important to note, as we will demonstrate in this case study, that not all Category Entry Points are equal.? There is a hierarchy based on the number of mentions of each CEP by Category Buyers.?
For more detail on our methodology and how to complete a Mental Availability Assessment, follow this link. 6 Stages of a Mental Availability Assessment and how this is a critical part of being Market Orientated
Case Study:? The wonderful world of chocolate.
The importance of classifying the category correctly.
It is critical to classify the category correctly when assessing a brand’s Mental Availability and understanding how likely it is to be recalled in buying situations relative to the competition.??
Define too narrowly, and you may be skewing the results in your favour, which limits your chances of spotting new growth opportunities. Define too widely, and unless you are one of the market leaders, your brand could fail to register as many links as it should.
In our chocolate case study, it became clear that during the qualitative process, we needed to segment the category into ‘bars’ and ‘boxes’.? This enabled us to select a more accurate representation of brands to be included in the quantitative research.? This Case Study relates to the sub-category we defined as ‘chocolate boxes’.
Calculating a brand’s Mental Availability and identifying the Category Entry Points that present the best growth opportunities.
Mental Availability:
The benefit of a Mental Availability assessment is that you not only see your brand's results but are also benchmarked against a cross-section of brands in the category.??
The primary measurement of Mental Availability is called Mental Market Share.??
The power of measuring Mental Market Share is in its correlation with Sales Market Share.? Being thought of in more buying situations than your competitors will result in a higher Mental Market Share (MMS), which should then translate into higher Sales Market Share (SMS).
If a brand has high MMS but low SMS, then the brand’s potential could be restrained by poor Physical Availability.? We often see this with brands within smaller organisations that don’t have the sales and distribution infrastructure to build scale.? Conversely, if MMS is lower than SMS, then the brand might be over-reliant on Physical Availability, secured by price promotions, a strong salesforce and good routes to market being established, creating more ‘push’ than ‘pull’.? Clearly, the optimal position is to have a balance of Mental and Physical Availability.
Having understood the potential macro drivers influencing purchase, you are now at the point where you can dive deeper into the data, starting with Mental Penetration.??
Mental Penetration is a key diagnostic metric, indicating how many Category Buyers can link the brand to at least one Category Entry Point (CEP). ? Our research continues to identify small and mid-size brands that are trying to build deep relationships with a small number of buyers at the expense of achieving a critical mass of people able to link the brand to at least one Category Entry Point.? In short, this means the brand has no cut-through, and it is doubtful that these non-buyers will be ‘converted’ in the future without new intervention.
Network Size is useful as it identifies the average number of CEPs that are linked to a brand by a Category Buyer.? These Category Buyers do not necessarily buy your brand, but they can make at least one CEP link to the brand being evaluated.? As your Mental Penetration score gets higher, increasing your focus on Network Size will be important. Remember, brands grow by building wider, fresher networks. Ultimately, the goal is to maximise the chances of being thought of in buying situations by linking the brand to a wide range of category entry points.
The above chart plots 17 brands in the ‘chocolate box’ category. ? Our case study brand has a low? Mental Market Share score (vertical axis), low Mental Penetration (horizontal axis) and below-average Network Size (diameter of bubble).???
Whilst it can be insightful to understand what drives the success of the brands in the top right-hand corner of the chart, it is even more powerful to compare performance against the brands you will have to beat first.??
The Table below shows that by benchmarking our case study brand’s Mental Availability metrics against the five competitors surrounding it, the immediate priorities are more easily identified.? In this example, the purchase conversion of those with Mental Penetration is on par with the other five brands, as is Network Size.? Mental Market Share is lower, but this is driven by the low Mental Penetration.? The area of focus needs to be Mental Penetration.? That is to say, the brand needs more category buyers to be able to link it to a Category Entry Point.? The perfect illustration as to why Jenni Romaniuk considers CEPs to be the building blocks for strong Mental Availability.
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Benchmark your Mental Availability performance against the brands you are going to have to beat first.
Category Entry Points
When we complete a Mental Availability assessment for a client, we complete these five steps;
We pick up our Case Study story at point 3.?
(Quant. to understand the retrieval cues most frequently used by category buyers in buying situations).
The visualisation below shows the 14 most frequently mentioned Category Entry Points by all Category Buyers in the outer circle, with ‘Treat to make you feel happy’ accounting for 13.1% of all links to the researched brands and therefore ranking highest.? The inner circle shows the profile for our case study brand.? The CEP that it links to most is ‘Suitable gift for someone’.?
As we continue to analyse where our brand over and under-indexes against the total category, the next chart is even more helpful.? If the red square is above the blue dot then it has a higher percentage of links as a proportion of its total score compared to the category.? The opposite is true if the red square is below the blue dot.
As we hone in on potential opportunities such as ‘Happy’, ‘Gift’, and ‘Indulgence,’ we would then run further statistical analysis to review how these scores compare to the ‘expected’ scores for a brand of its size.??
Fast-forwarding the story, we land on 5 CEPs that are then validated against the Brand Positioning and Product Positioning.?
Our analysis informs a set of ‘must-win battle’ hypotheses that ensure precise objectives and a range of tactics that can be incorporated into the Growth Plan.??
As we work through the results of the assessment, hypotheses start to surface, the overarching one being the reasonable assumption that growth will come from building Mental Penetration to the level of the five competitor brands, which means increasing the number of category buyers who can link a Category Entry Point to our brand from 25% to 40%.??
The secondary task is to widen the brand's associations with more CEPs, extending its average score from 3 to 5 over the long term. (Note: In our database, the leading brands tend to have a Network Size between 5 and 8, but this is very much category-dependent. The brand leader in this chocolate sub-category has a Network Size of 5.5.)
There are some key variables that can influence future Mental Availability performance, as shown in this hypothesis table.
It is quite common for brands, such as the one featured in this article, to target too tightly and overinvest in reaching the same group of ‘loyal buyers’. While it is important to keep memories fresh by continuing to reach existing buyers, it is also imperative that brands reach light and non-buyers with their messaging.
As we have already stated, building a set of distinctive brand assets is an important facet of Mental Availability.? Yet, far too often, brands fail to build strong associations with Category Entry Points, not because the messaging is wrong but because the branding is weak.??
That said, in the pursuit of building a wider set of associations, too many new messages are developed before an association with the primary CEP is established.? This results in confusion and fewer buyers being able to make any links.? This was the main reason for our case study brand having low Mental Penetration.??
To tackle the issues and opportunities called out in the hypotheses analysis, we recommend using a GROW, FIX, DEFEND structure to develop precise objectives. These are headlined on the left-hand side of the visual below. On the right, you will see four of the tactics we recommended.
In our experience, brands that have completed a Mental Availability assessment are much better placed to write tight, compelling briefs that have the potential to excite and liberate an agency.
It is certainly not the case that incorporating CEPs into your communication strategy has to restrict creativity, as was hinted at in a recent LinkedIn Post citing the Peroni example above. https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/kevinchesters_advertising-agency-client-activity-7192145910460510209-ukh_?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
The post's author, Kevin Chesters, is vastly experienced and has written a really good book called The Creative Nudge, so I accept his premise that this is not a great ad. For associations to be embedded in memory, we need creative agencies to develop wonderful work that resonates emotionally with the category buyers. I think Effie Award winners Mini Cheddars and McVities are perfect examples of this and show how it is possible to convey Category Entry Points whilst entertaining and engaging an audience.
We believe Tactics like those shown are executed most effectively if they are part of a ‘Two Speed Plan’, a Mark Ritson creation inspired by the work of Binet & Field.? You will increase your chances of winning if the two-speed plan is not only built using an investment variable, for example, 50% of funds allocated to the long term and 50% to the short term, but by focussing on Mental and Physical Availability. Not only because of the extensive evidence that brands grow by being easy to think of and easy to buy, as summarised by Byron Sharp and The Ehrenberg Bass Institute and confirmed in SmilingCFO’s own database, but because the measurement of these two concepts can be hardwired to the business metrics that really matter.??
In our final case study slide, we show not only what the recommendations will deliver in terms of the brand metrics Mental Penetration and Mental Market Share but also what this could mean for the Sales Market Share. Getting to this point means the CFO is only two calculations away from seeing how this plan translates into incremental revenue.
By sharing this case study, we hope to have shown that incorporating the concept of Mental Availability into your strategy can complement the brand-building tools you already have.??
If you are responsible for a brand similar to the ones on the left of the chart, the chances are your primary objectives will be to build Prompted Awareness and Mental Penetration.? If you are a more established brand and think you may sit in the middle, then write objectives to strengthen Mental Penetration and increase Network Size.? If you are a custodian of a leading brand, you need to continue seeking opportunities that will widen the gap between you and the chasing pack.? So, ensure you have included these Mental Availability metrics in your brand tracking and are paying particular attention to your non-buyer data.
Good luck! You know where we are if you need any guidance on your journey to the top right-hand corner.
Credits:
The Ehrenberg Bass Institute for their scientific approach to identifying the growth laws of marketing.
Recommended reading:
Better Brand Health – Prof Jenni Romaniuk 2023
Mark Ritson: ‘Bothism’ is the cure for marketers’ fascination with pointless conflict ?Mark Ritson, Marketing Week, Sept 2020
The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies? Binet & Field.? IPA. 2013