Daniel Fox

Congratulations. Your brand has 80% awareness.
So what?

Will they actually think of you when it matters?  When they’re in the aisle, staring at Google, or telling their colleagues in the office what to order?

Awareness vs. Salience: Know the difference

Marketers love awareness, but it can be a bit of a vanity metric and, at worst, I’ve seen people use it like it’s some convenient get-out-of-jail card after blowing a load of budget.

“Look boss – 75% of our target market knows who we are!”
Brilliant. And 100% of them know who Elvis is. Doesn’t mean they’re buying his albums.

Awareness means people know you exist.
Salience means people think of you at the crucial buying moment.

Even in B2B, people rarely work from rational lists of brands and tight evaluation metrics. They buy (or at least enquire) with fast, lazy thinking. If you’re not in the mental shortcut, you’re out of the race before it’s started.

Real Salience: Sellotape & Pritt

I’ve been fortunate enough to work on two brands that prove what salience really looks like.
Think about Sellotape and Pritt.

These aren’t just brands people are aware of, they are the category.

• People don’t say, “buy some adhesive tape.” They say, “buy some Sellotape.”
• Teachers don’t say, “grab a glue stick.” They say, “get a Pritt stick.”

That’s the ultimate mental shortcut. Decades of consistent assets, clear usage occasions, and relentless memory building mean these brands are so salient, to the point that Sellotape has practically become a verb. It’s the dream: total mental availability. And it’s miles beyond mere awareness.

So, how do you build salience?

Anchor yourself to buying situations.
Tie your brand tightly to the moments people reach for a solution.

Car insurance? Own “unexpected bumps” or “renewal time dread.”
Coffee brand? Own “morning sluggishness” or “afternoon slump.”
Cybersecurity software? Own “data breach panic” or “compliance deadlines.”
Gym membership? Own “new year guilt” or “beach ready.”
Cloud storage? Own “lost laptop nightmare” or “running out of space.”

Paint brand? Own “refreshing tired walls” or “DIY bank holidays.”

Be obsessively distinctive.
Use the same colours, logos, taglines, shapes – relentlessly. Don’t get bored and swap them every year. You’re building memory structures, not chasing design awards.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.
The more people see you linked to a problem or occasion, the more likely they’ll instinctively reach for you.

Theres only one question that really matters

Stop waving awareness reports around like they prove anything and start asking:

“Will they think of us when it counts?”

Because if the answer is “probably not,” all those awareness charts and PowerPoint slides are nothing more than vanity.

Don’t burn budget measuring how famous you wish you were.