Madame Tussauds London recently unveiled a second lifelike waxwork of the unrivalled naturalist Sir David Attenborough, 30 years after his first. It is no accident that his waxwork wears a blue short-sleeve shirt and khaki trousers. Sir David has always worn them to help continuity of his nature series, given filming happens thousands of miles apart and in doing so, he has created highly distinctive brand assets (DBAs) that prompt our brains to instantly recognise and remember him.  

In the world of marketing, where mental availability is king, DBAs are critical levers. They’re “cues that category buyers use to access their memories when faced with a buying situation”(i) and help brands get noticed and, perhaps more importantly, recalled.

B2C brands have been wearing their crisp blue shirts and khakis for decades. Think of McDonald’s home delivery campaign which didn’t even need to show a full golden arch to be attributable or Mattel who this summer, merely nodded to a particular Pantone shade of pink to promote the Barbie movie. Neither brand showed a full logo in their campaigns.  

That all sounds peachy. So, how are DBAs doing in the land of B2B?  Helpfully, the brilliant B2B Institute has just commissioned one of the largest ever studies on B2B branding in partnership with Distinctive BAT, analysing over 300 brand assets from 59 brands across 6 of the biggest B2B categories. It turns out that most B2B companies don’t appear to have any brand assets. At all. In fact, for the four biggest B2B tech categories, whilst respondents often claimed to recognise an asset, they couldn’t then attribute it to the correct brand, which in mental availability terms is not ideal.    

There are the odd success stories like Salesforce’s character Astro, who increases brand attribution by 40% (ii) but ultimately there is a huge opportunity with a neon flashing light positioned overhead for B2B marketers to engage DBAs to gain a competitive edge. 

Uncomfortably for most B2B C-Suites, DBAs are a world away from technical product stories yet they play a vital role in the narrative of a brand and its future growth.  Customers buy the brands they remember and DBAs build memory structures that get tucked away in the brain, in turn helping brands come to mind first and ultimately get chosen.  

So, make DBAs distinctive, relevant and use them consistently to reap the rewards. At the end of the day, there are plenty of other talented broadcasters who could try and copy Sir David’s nature series but it would be tricky for them to do so wearing a blue shirt and khaki trousers.