THE KNOWLEDGE BANK

Understanding People.
Building Better Brands.

An ongoing project of evidence-based guides to marketing science, consumer psychology and designing better strategy. Why? We want to take decades of research and make it as simple as possible (but no simpler.)

Knowledge is porridge.

Featured

Marketing Science

What is a Category Entry Point?

The buying moments that open the door into your market.

Latest Guides

Brand Memory

What are Distinctive Brand Assets?

The shortcuts your brain uses to recognise brands fast.

Behavioural Science

What is Costly Signalling?

Why the most believable messages are the hardest to fake.

Consumer Psychology

What is the Hot–Cold Empathy Gap?

Why your customer isn’t the person who made the plan.

Consumer Psychology

Why Don't Consumers Remember Our Ads?

Human memory simply doesn't work the way marketers assume it does.

MARKETING SCIENCE

What is Mental Availability?

Customers don't perform exhaustive research every time they buy coffee, insurance or whisky.

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

Should We Lower Our Prices?

Customers don't buy prices. They buy explanations. Price doesn't exist on its own.

CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Why Do People Copy Each Other?

Humans copy because copying is usually smarter than starting from scratch.

MARKETING SCIENCE

What is the 95–5 Rule?

Why most of your future customers are not buying today

CULTURAL EVOLUTION

What is The Value of Influencers and Creators?

Creators aren't magical persuasion engines, but they are useful in a different way.

BRAND THEORY

What is a Brand, Really?

Why brands live in people’s minds and why companies can influence their brands but never fully control them.

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

What is Low Involvement Processing?

Why advertising often works below conscious attention, building memory over time.

MARKETING SCIENCE

What is The Double Jeopardy Law?

Why bigger brands have more customers who are also a bit more loyal.

TECHNOLOGY

Why does AI Reward Expertise Rather Than Replacing it?

Why what you can imagine depends on what you know.

STRATEGY

What is Chesterton's Fence?

Why businesses should understand why something exists before removing it.

MEDIA

How Much Do I Invest in Brand Building and Performance?

Performance marketing harvests demand. Brand building grows the crop

MARKETING SCIENCE

How Do Markets Really Work?

The NBD Curve and why 'light' buyers matter.

CONSUMER PSYCHOLOGY

What Are You Really Signalling?

Customers don't just buy products. They use brands to send signals about taste, status, identity and belonging.

STRATEGY

What Is The Halo Effect?

When a company succeeds, we start assuming everything about it is brilliant.

OPINION • ALCOBEV

Moderation Isn't The Threat.

The real battleground isn't the shelf. It's the occasion.

Culture & Technology

Gaming. From Entertainment to Infrastructure.

Games are no longer simply products or stories. They are persistent social worlds.

INNOVATION

What is the MAYA Principle

Why every successful innovation carries something recognisable.

GROWTH

Why Reach Matters, Whatever The Size of your Business.

Reach isn't only for big brands. People can't buy from a business they have never heard of.

MEASUREMENT

Can You Really Measure Advertising ROI?

Advertising ROI sounds precise, but measuring it is difficult. Advertising effects are buried inside noisy real-world behaviour.

MEDIA

Why Almost Everything Is Becoming a Media Company

Retail media is not just another channel. It is changing where buying decisions happen.

AI SEARCH

Can You Optimise Your Brand For AI Search?

Yes. But probably not in the way people are selling it.

MARKETING SCIENCE

The Science Of Getting Booked

What marketing science and human evolution can teach hospitality businesses about growth.

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