Distinctive brand assets and category entry points
How memorable codes — colour, type, sonic, character — drive mental availability at the moment of purchase.
The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's work on Distinctive Brand Assets (DBAs) — colours, characters, typefaces, sonic logos, taglines — shows that the brands category buyers can rapidly recognise are the brands they buy. Mental availability beats persuasion: people don't deliberate, they default.
Category Entry Points (CEPs) are the cues that bring a brand to mind in a buying situation — 'something cold after the gym', 'a gift for a new dad'. The brands linked to the most CEPs, via the most distinctive assets, win disproportionate share.
The practical implication: protect your DBAs ferociously, evolve them slowly, and never let a campaign refresh strip away the codes that took a decade to build. Distinctiveness is an asset on the balance sheet, even if accountants don't list it there.
This summary is an editorial interpretation by Evolve. Please refer to the original source for the full study, methodology and attribution.