Mature brands have many buyers who already have a reason to choose them: they know what the brand stands for, they have used it, they know why they might pick it. That makes broad reminding very productive for them. A challenger may face a different limit. If too few buyers have a reason to choose it yet, copying the leader’s current mix can mean amplifying too little underlying demand. This module puts both brands in one market, with the same money, and shows what happens when the small one copies the big one.
Reach and familiar cues. Makes an existing reason easier to recall when people buy, and slows how fast they forget it. Some of it may also create new reasons. How much is the open question below.
Changes the reason itself: the proposition, the product experience, a real difference, the price for what you get. Gives someone who has no reason to pick you one. Not all of it is media.
Both invest $300K a month in a market of a million buyers. The only difference is how many buyers already have a reason to choose them. Each brand’s mix below is the one that earns it the most over five years.
From an even split, another $10K a month returns $1438K over five years on getting remembered and −$134K on building a reason, after paying for itself.
From an even split, another $10K a month returns $198K over five years on getting remembered and $144K on building a reason, after paying for itself.
Nothing about the two jobs changed between the cards. What changed is how many reasons each brand already holds. In this model, much of what reach does works on reasons a brand already holds, so its relative advantage grows as those reasons become more plentiful. That is why the leader leans on it much more heavily, while the challenger needs a more balanced mix.
Same challenger, same budget, same five years. One version runs its own best mix. The other runs the leader’s.
Copying the leader costs the challenger $6.9M — 44% of what it could have made. It ends up with 18% of buyers holding a reason instead of 29%. The extra weight on reach was being applied before the challenger had accumulated enough underlying reasons for that weighting to pay.
The challenger’s best mix is not zero reach. As its reasons grow, getting remembered pays more. The weighting should follow the brand’s own stock of reasons, not the leader’s.
Set how many category buyers already have a reason to choose your brand. The line shows the best five-year mix at every starting point.
Starting at 4%, the best mix is 50% on getting remembered. Five-year value: $15.6M.
Twelve brands started in different places. Each ran its own best mix for five years. This is what you would see if you studied them now.
The bigger brands spend more on getting remembered. Read cold, the chart says reach makes brands big. In this model the arrow runs the other way: each brand chose its mix because of its size. A study of brands that have already settled can describe them precisely. It cannot tell you the route, because the route is the part that has finished.
This is the number the decision rests on. If broad reach creates reasons as well as it reminds, the challenger can lean on reach much as the leader does. Move the dial and watch the cost of copying.
This dial moves every number on the page. The better reach is at creating reasons, the less copying costs. So the claim is not that reach can’t build a brand. It is that how productive reach is depends on where the brand starts, and for your brand that is something to measure before you copy the leader.
If the best mix depends on a brand’s current size, a snapshot of brands’ size and mix today cannot show which actions made them that size. It records what is best once you are big, not what got you there.
The core structure: much of what reach does works on reasons a brand already holds, so its value rises with them. That is the thesis under test, set by the dial above. Also assumed: one fixed mix for five years, diminishing returns, no competitor reaction, no category growth. All numbers are illustrative.
How many category buyers already have a reason to choose you. Whether your reach creates reasons in people who had none, or mostly reminds people who did — test it on non-buyers and buyers separately. And how fast reasons fade without reminders.
Don’t copy a leader’s current route without checking the stock that makes that route pay. The leader’s mix is right for the leader. Whether it is right for you depends on how many buyers already have a reason to choose you, and how well your reach creates new ones. Both can be measured. The leader’s mix can’t tell you either.
Numbers illustrative