SBP 223: The Sharp Cut - Brand Awareness Is The Wrong Metric

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