Commercial challenge
Most businesses think growth comes from better marketing.
It doesn’t.
It comes from making it easier to be bought.
That sounds obvious. Yet over the past decade we’ve become obsessed with purpose, storytelling, performance marketing and customer personas, while quietly neglecting the commercial mechanics that actually drive demand.
At Cannes this year something unusual happened.
Mark Ritson and Byron Sharp stood on the same stage…and largely agreed.
That matters.
Because these are two people who have spent years publicly disagreeing.
Yet when asked what actually grows brands, the conversation came back to remarkably traditional thinking:
- Mental availability
- Physical availability
- Distinctive brand assets
- Consistency
- Broad reach
In other words…
A modern interpretation of the 4Ps.
Not because the industry is nostalgic.
Because evidence keeps pointing back there.
Byron Sharp has spent years showing that brands grow by increasing both mental and physical availability. Binet and Field demonstrated that sustained brand investment compounds over time rather than producing immediate returns. Ritson has consistently argued that too many marketers chase tactical wins while neglecting the foundations that create future demand.
But here’s where I think many businesses misunderstand what this means.
They hear “mental availability” and assume advertising.
That’s only part of the story.
Mental availability isn’t built by campaigns.
It’s built every single time someone encounters your business.
Packaging.
Sales presentations.
Website.
Retail environment.
Customer service.
Trade exhibitions.
Product design.
Email signatures.
Recruitment.
Everything either strengthens memory…
…or weakens it.
Andrew Tindall made perhaps the most interesting observation after Cannes.
Sharp and Ritson largely agreed on what matters.
They spent far less time discussing how brands actually build those memory structures. Creativity, emotion and repeated experience still matter enormously. Reach is simply the distribution system.
That’s an important distinction.
Because too many businesses still separate “brand” from “commercial.”
One sits in marketing.
The other sits in the boardroom.
In reality they’re the same conversation.
If customers remember you more easily…
you are chosen more often.
If you’re chosen more often…
you grow.
Perhaps the most important lesson from Cannes wasn’t that two marketing professors agreed.
It was that evidence has finally caught up with what many successful businesses have always understood.
Growth rarely comes from doing more marketing.
It comes from making your business easier to remember, easier to recognise and easier to buy.
That isn’t creativity versus science.
It’s commercial common sense.