Why Meaningful Brands Outperform Others

Effective marketers know that people don’t shop rationally; yet many brand assets and pack designs are structured as if they do.

Our brains process millions of bits of sensory information every second but only handle a small percentage consciously.

The rest is filtered through shortcuts and heuristics that shape decisions without us realising it. For marketers, that’s not a problem to be fixed but an opportunity to use ethically.

People buy on shortcuts, not spreadsheets

Biases like the mere exposure effect make us like what we see often. Salience bias draws our attention to what is emotionally striking. Picture superiority means we recall images faster and longer than words.

These biases explain why a symbolic system of assets builds memory far more effectively than a collection of rational messages. They also explain why shoppers will happily pay more for a brand they recognise and trust in a split second on the shelf or on a screen.

A three-step way to build brands that work with the brain

The BrandOpus approach follows three steps:

1. Creative Brand Strategy digs into the brand’s history, its business ambitions and current associations using implicit research to help uncover what consumers really feel about the brand. This then informs the brand ladder including the all-important creative brand idea and three key associations that need to come to life.

2. Creative Development using symbolism to translate that strategy into visual metaphors and distinctive assets. This is where creative teams use colour, shape, characters and cues that trigger the intended associations in the minds of consumers, immediately, intuitively and irresistibly.

3. Activation applies those assets in a creatively repetitive way across every touchpoint, so the brand experience is consistent and memorable whether that be in-store, online or experiential

This process avoids the trap of treating packaging or retail media as stand-alone tactics and instead builds a whole brand world around the idea and associations you want to own.

Gradual change protects loyalty while attracting new buyers

Shifting perceptions is often best done in stages. Back in 2007, McCain appeared in Australian supermarket freezers with a “black box” identity that inadvertently cued frozen fast food.

Over time, we transformed the visual identity of the brand to the now iconic “sunshine” brandmark, completely shifting the meaning of the brand and opening the door to opportunities beyond frozen chips.

Why this matters now

For Australian marketers, understanding bias provides a language to defend long-term brand investment to boards whose key concerns are quarterly results.

It offers a practical way to make campaigns hit harder in shorter windows and across multiple channels.

Your brand will be not only seen but felt and remembered.