Brand awareness is one of the most reported metrics in marketing.
It's in almost every board deck.
Almost every brand tracker.
Almost every agency review.
But what if it's measuring the wrong thing?
In this Sharp Cut, Marc and V explore why mental availability matters more than awareness, why Category Entry Points (CEPs) outperform personas as a planning framework, and why marketers should stop asking "Who is our customer?" and start asking "What buying situations do we need to own?"
Topics include:
- Mental availability vs brand awareness
- Why awareness often fails to predict growth
- The power of Category Entry Points
- Creative as a targeting system
- Why Meta is moving away from hyper-targeting
- The measurement framework marketers should actually use
If you've ever presented a rising awareness score alongside a flat business result, this episode is for you.
Chapters:
00:00 - Welcome to Sharp Cuts
00:35 - Why Brand Awareness Is Misleading
02:00 - Mental Availability vs Awareness
03:45 - What Should We Measure Instead?
05:15 - Category Entry Points Explained
07:10 - The Seven Whys Framework
08:00 - Why CEPs Changed the Conversation
09:00 - Creative Becomes the Targeting Tool
11:00 - Why Meta Is Broadening Audiences
12:30 - Two Performance Marketers Confess
15:30 - Where CEPs Go Wrong
16:30 - The Three Cs of Prioritization
17:30 - Distinctive Assets & Memory
18:30 - Bailey's Case Study
19:00 - Stop Measuring Brand Love
20:30 - The New Measurement Framework
21:30 - Final Takeaways
