We get it – you are busy; here’s a 3-minute summary (but we recommend you read the full blog for interesting and useful case studies).
At the European Marketing Confederation’s recent webinar, Byron Sharp was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, joining a roll call that includes Simon Sinek (Start With Why) and Philip Kotler (the father of modern marketing). Where Sinek focused on purpose and Kotler on frameworks, Sharp has given marketers something just as vital: proof that growth depends on measurable science.
Always Be Measuring
Sharp argues that marketing works best when we think like scientists: collect data, look for patterns, test hypotheses, and predict outcomes. At Spark, that means using segmentation to understand who your customers are, tracking to measure distinctiveness and campaign impact, qualitative immersion to get closer to behaviour, and AI tools to make evidence faster and smarter.
Penetration and Availability
Sharp’s research is clear: brands grow through penetration, not loyalty. Big brands aren’t built by a few superfans, but by millions of light buyers. That means widening the base, not deepening devotion.
Growth also depends on winning the availability battle:
- Physical availability: are you easy to buy?
- Mental availability: do people think of you at the right moment?
Spark helps brands measure both, from campaign recall to distribution experiments.
Distinctiveness Beats Differentiation
Consumers don’t agonise over subtle differences; they make fast, habitual choices. What matters is distinctiveness: Specsavers’ line, Cadbury’s purple, Guinness’ surge and settle. Spark’s asset tracking shows whether your brand cues are really cutting through.
The Spark Takeaway
Growth isn’t guesswork. It’s science. At Spark, we help brands measure what matters, from segmentation and tracking to immersion and AI, giving you the clarity to grow penetration, win availability, and build brands that last.
Because at the heart of it all, Spark is about powering better decisions.
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Last week we tuned into the European Marketing Confederation’s webinar with Byron Sharp, where he was honoured with their Lifetime Achievement Award. It’s a fitting recognition for a thinker who has reshaped how brands understand growth.
It’s also a serious peer group. In 2024, the award went to Simon Sinek, whose now-famous book Start with Why encouraged leaders to put purpose before product. His argument, that people don’t buy what you do, but why you do it, has inspired countless organisations to think more deeply about meaning, vision, and motivation.
And in 2023, the award went to Philip Kotler, often called the “father of modern marketing.” Kotler’s textbooks and frameworks made marketing a discipline rather than an art form, embedding segmentation, targeting, and positioning into the DNA of business schools and boardrooms alike. His work gave marketers the tools to connect customer needs with company strategy.
So, when Byron Sharp joins this list, it’s a sign that the profession is recognising something fundamental: that growth doesn’t just come from inspiration or frameworks, it comes from measurable science.
At Spark, that’s a message we can’t resist because if you can’t measure it, you can’t claim it’s happened. And that’s where Sharp’s ideas connect beautifully with how we work.
Old-Fashioned Science in Marketing
Here’s the marketing version of the lab routine, or as Sharp reminded us, ‘The Scientific Method’:
- Collect the data.
- Look for patterns and conditions.
- Apply scientific thinking.
Ask: “I wonder if that would happen again if we did this…” He went on to tell an amusing anecdote about a “normal;” person who touches a hot kettles and having burned their hand thinks, “well I won’t do that again” as opposed to a scientist who thinks “I wonder what would happen if I did it at night/with gloves on/standing on one foot” You get the idea, it’s about experimentation. Swap the kettle for your latest promotional mechanic and we’re in the right area!
This is more than a process, it’s a mindset. Science doesn’t assume; it tests. It doesn’t cling to old beliefs; it updates them when the evidence changes. And it doesn’t celebrate opinions; it celebrates proof. In an industry often accused of chasing the shiny new thing, it’s refreshing to go back to basics. Marketing is not magic, and it’s certainly not mysticism. It’s measurable; but no less creative or fun because of it.
The Availability Battle
Marketing today is a fight for two types of availability:
- Physical availability: make your brand easy to buy, wherever and whenever it’s needed. As Sharp warns, “if you halve your availability, you’ll pretty much halve your sales.” Distribution really is destiny.
- Mental availability: be the brand that springs to mind at the right moment. This is about salience and distinctiveness, getting your story right and then telling it consistently, so that memory structures form and are triggered when they’re needed. Sharp recounted a story about a guy who proudly informed him “I bought an Aston Martin, and it was because of an ad…that I saw when I was 8!”. Mental availability has durability.
The brands that win don’t do one or the other, they do both, relentlessly.
Spark’s role here is clear. With tracking studies, we can show whether your assets are distinctive enough to drive mental availability. And with AI-enabled analytics and products, we can track how availability shifts across channels, geographies, and customer segments.
Penetration Beats Loyalty (Every Time)
One of Sharp’s most important points is that brands grow by increasing penetration, not loyalty.
The numbers tell the story: big brands don’t succeed because they have a small group of ultra-loyal buyers. They succeed because they have a very large base of occasional buyers. A light buyer who picks you up once or twice a year is just as valuable to penetration as a diehard.
This insight turns a lot of traditional loyalty marketing on its head. It suggests that brands should spend less time trying to squeeze more value out of their heavy buyers, and more time making themselves visible, distinctive, and available to the millions of potential light buyers who might never otherwise consider them.
This is where Spark’s segmentation work is so powerful. By analysing who your light, medium, and heavy buyers are, and what drives their decisions, we help you understand not just who you have today, but who you need tomorrow. That insight allows you to target penetration opportunities with precision.
Double Jeopardy: The Law That Bites Twice
Sharp also reminds us of the Double Jeopardy Law: small brands suffer twice, fewer buyers, and less loyal ones. Large brands enjoy the opposite, more buyers, and slightly more loyal ones.
The implication? Growth is not about building a cult following. It’s about reaching more people. Penetration drives loyalty, not the other way round.
Consider Specsavers. They don’t rely on a tiny base of super-fans. They build memory structures through consistent creative (“Should’ve gone to Specsavers”), they expand their physical availability through new locations, and they remain competitively priced. Result: a brand that dominates by reaching more people, more often.
Spark’s qualitative engagement programmes are invaluable here. By immersing with potential buyers, not just your core fans, we help brands understand what barriers exist to trial, and how to reduce them. Measurement tells you where the gaps are; immersion tells you why.
The Law of Buyer Moderation
The Law of Buyer Moderation states that heavy buyers regress toward average, while light buyers often buy more than expected. In other words, you can’t rely on heavy users to fuel growth forever.
This is why Spark encourages brands to think in terms of campaign tracking and longitudinal data. By measuring how penetration shifts over time, you can see whether you’re genuinely recruiting new buyers, or just over-serving the same old base.
Distinctiveness Beats Differentiation
Sharp challenges the old idea of differentiation. Most consumers don’t pore over subtle differences between brands, they make fast, habitual choices. What matters isn’t being unique but being distinctive.
Distinctive assets, Cadbury’s purple, Specsavers’ line, Guinness’ surge and settle, are measurable. Spark’s tracking solutions can show whether your assets are cutting through, being remembered, and being correctly attributed to your brand. That’s science applied to salience.
Boots: Science in Action
Pete Markey, Ex Boots CMO (he stepped down this Summer and was Marketing Week’s Marketer of the Year in 2023) was also on the webinar. He claimed that Boots’ run of 17 consecutive quarters of growth was built on three scientific principles:
- Customer obsession: laser-focused relevance in products, services, and communications.
- Distinctiveness: “With you for life” wasn’t a line; it was a unifying idea running across culture, services, and products.
- Data investment: Exploiting customer data and optimising activity.
Boots didn’t chase loyalty. They expanded penetration, fuelled availability, and ensured that measurement was the bedrock of decision-making.
Of course, there are other examples of brands who have done this very well. Let’s look at a few relevant ones.
Tesco’s Clubcard: Data Powerhouse
Tesco Clubcard is often described as a loyalty scheme, but it’s better understood as a penetration engine powered by data.
- Clubcard penetration in the UK hit 82%, Ireland 85%, Central Europe 87%.
- The scheme propelled Tesco ahead of Sainsbury’s in just over a year.
- Today, 20+ million UK shoppers use it regularly, giving Tesco a stream of data that informs ranging, promotions, and communications.
Clubcard didn’t make customers more loyal; it made Tesco more relevant. And relevance drives penetration. Spark’s can deliver Tesco-like clarity at scale, even for brands without Clubcard’s reach.
Aldi & Lidl: Physical Availability Done Right
Discounters have grown not through loyalty programmes or emotional storytelling, but through relentless expansion of physical availability.
- Aldi sits above 11% UK market share (same in Ireland), with sales up 6.7%, its fastest growth since early 2023.
- Lidl now holds 8.3%UK market share (13.8% in Ireland), attracting 419,000 new shoppers in just a few weeks.
- Households visiting Aldi reached a record 69%.
The lesson? Experiment with formats, optimise what works, and scale fast. At Spark, we help brands test availability experiments, from store presence to digital visibility, measuring what drives real-world growth.
Guinness: Distinctiveness Through Repetition
Guinness is a case study in mental availability (you can tell your friends that down the pub on Saturday evening!) Its brand assets, the pint, the surge and settle, the black-and-white creative, are hammered home year after year.
It’s a reminder that consistency beats novelty. Marketers may get bored of the story long before customers even hear it. Measurement ensures that the story isn’t just familiar, but effective. Note: There is no pint of Guinness in this image.
With Spark’s creative asset tracking, brands can evaluate whether their assets have that same staying power, or whether they need sharpening.
John Lewis: “Never Knowingly Undersold”
Another UK example of consistency is John Lewis. Its long-running promise “Never Knowingly Undersold” created trust for decades. Even as retail moved online, that phrase anchored its mental availability.
When John Lewis retired the slogan in 2022, it wasn’t because consistency had failed, but because the world had changed. Measurement showed the line no longer fit customer needs in a digital-first retail landscape. That’s science in action: test, review, adapt.
Ryanair: Relentless Penetration
Ryanair doesn’t build loyalty in the classic sense. It builds penetration. By focusing on physical availability (routes, frequency, low prices) and hammering a distinctive, if divisive, brand story, it has become Europe’s largest airline.
Its marketing might not win awards for purpose, but it wins on measurement: low fares + high visibility = penetration.
So What for UK and Irish Marketers?
What does all this mean if you’re running a brand in the UK today?
- Stop chasing loyalty as a growth strategy. Loyalty follows penetration.
- Invest in availability. Spark can help you test whether your physical and digital distribution is sufficient, and where to optimise.
- Measure distinctiveness. Use tracking to prove whether your brand assets really cut through.
- Balance long and short. Our campaign tracking ensures short-term activations are measured, while brand equity studies keep you honest over the long term.
- Know your customers. With segmentation and qualitative immersion, Spark ensures you understand not just the “what” of behaviour, but the “why.”
At Spark, we believe marketers should think like scientists:
- Segmentation tells you who your customers are, how loyal they are, and where growth will come from.
- Tracking measures distinctiveness, availability, and campaign impact.
- Qualitative immersion and engagement put you in your customers’ shoes.
- AI-driven tools make measurement faster, smarter, and more predictive.
The Spark Takeaway
Start thinking like a marketing scientist if you’re serious about growth:
- Always be measuring.
- Always be testing.
- Always be learning.
That’s how you grow penetration, win availability, and build brands that last. At Spark, we’re all about powering better decisions to help you get there.
For more on Byron Sharp’s work check out YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G53MkkQ5dBo
For more on the European Marketing Confederation: https://www.emc.be/ (www.mii.ie in Ireland or https://www.cim.co.uk in the UK)
