By James Lawrence

In April, I joined a packed room of Australian marketers at FWD Sydney to hear the legendary Professor Byron Sharp speak on ‘The Future of Marketing?’.

For just under an hour, the room listened intently as Sharp shared his evidence-based marketing wisdom, many of them drawn from his landmark book How Brands Grow – one of the most important marketing books ever written.

Feeling inspired, I posted a short LinkedIn update sharing my eight favourite takeaways from Byron’s talk, paired with some quick personal reflections.

What happened next caught even me by surprise – the post seemed to strike a real chord, amassing over 66,000 views by marketers globally and inundated with comments and reposts by marketers who recognised themselves in the challenges and opportunities Sharp so clearly outlined.

Even Sharp engaged with the post, suggesting that the insights hit a raw nerve because in a world of constant marketing “disruption,” the fundamentals still matter more than ever.

Below are the eight quotes I shared, alongside some thoughts and practical examples on how marketers can put them into action:

1. Even growing brands lose customers.

Attracting new customers drives more growth than cross-selling to existing ones.

Real-world example: A global FMCG brand like Coca-Cola sees regular churn among buyers but sustains growth through constantly refreshing brand love and recruitment campaigns, not by desperately trying to upsell Diet Coke to Classic Coke drinkers.

2. Great creativity resonates with the whole market.

A pause for thought on the promise of hyper-personalisation.

Real-world example: Think of Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign. It’s simple and universally resonant creativity that speaks to amateur photographers and professionals alike. It’s not hyper-targeted. It’s great, broad creativity.

3. Don’t always assume targeted messages work better.

Brands aim for efficiency with hyper-targeting. But when most sales come from light buyers, this can be a mistake.

Real-world example: Spotify’s playful mass campaigns (“Thanks 2016, it’s been weird”) worked precisely because they didn’t target niche micro-segments; they appealed widely and built brand salience across casual and core users.

4. Evidence-based marketers of the future will have to reach…remind…reach…remind.

Get in front of as many people in your category as possible, and keep doing it.

Real-world example: Insurance brands like AAMI or NRMA relentlessly advertise, even though most people aren’t looking to switch insurers. They invest in brand salience so that when you are ready to choose, they’re top of mind.

5. Light buyers will matter enormously to revenue and growth.

Most buyers of a brand are light or infrequent users; there’s less opportunity to cross-sell or upsell than we often presume.

Real-world example: Fashion retailers like H&M thrive not by turning casual shoppers into brand loyalists, but by consistently attracting new light buyers into their stores or onto their websites.

6. Brands destroy value by optimising the wrong things.

Loyalty and short-term wins shouldn’t be at the expense of reach and long-term growth.

Real-world example: In the early 2010s, Target leaned heavily on discount-led catalogues and loyalty promotions to drive short-term in-store traffic. While these tactics delivered bursts of efficiency and were easy to measure, they failed to sustain brand growth. Target primarily engaged existing customers with price-driven messaging, rather than expanding reach to new buyers or building long-term brand equity. Meanwhile, competitors like Kmart
focused on consistent brand storytelling and value-focused positioning with a broad reach, growing market share as a result. Recognising this, Target embarked on a strategic brand reset.

7. B2B is hard.

Sharp acknowledged that while the core principles from How Brands Grow do apply to B2B marketing, they are significantly harder to execute in that context. Many of the comments on my LinkedIn post came from B2B marketers questioning whether these principles are truly relevant in their day-to-day work. I believe they absolutely
are. Concepts like Double Jeopardy, mental availability, and the importance of broad reach still hold true in B2B.

However, applying them is more complex due to longer buying cycles, multiple decision-makers, fewer purchase occasions and more challenging attribution. During the presentation, Sharp used breakfast cereal to illustrate the law of buyer frequencies. He made the point that households typically make purchases of similar value and volume each time. In contrast, B2B purchasing behaviour is far more variable, with significant differences in both purchase value and frequency.

Real-world example: Salesforce, Hubspot and Atlassian are all massive B2B success stories, and continue to invest heavily in brand advertising, events, and emotional storytelling, not just sales-enablement materials that demand generation or account-based marketing.

8. The biggest search engine in the world is between your ears.

This quote from Jenni Romaniuk reinforces the idea that brand will always matter – customers will make buying decisions based on brand when the time comes to purchase.

Real-world example: Ask someone why they buy Nike instead of another brand. The rationalisations – “they fit well” or “good quality” – often come after an instinctive, emotional brand choice…which is precisely what this quote gets at.

James Lawrence is the co-founder of Rocket Agency