Brand identity: customers buy the brand that comes to mind

1. In short: being remembered wins the sale, and identity gives the reason to remember.

Most purchases go to the brand customers think of first and can easily find, not to the one that feels most like them. In the research firm Millward Brown’s BrandZ data, on average only 18% of people who would consider a brand saw it as different [1]. Identity weighs more where the choice is seen and says something about who you are [2]. It makes the brand worth remembering and worth paying more for.

A small company builds a brand by deciding on a core, choosing two or three assets of its own and showing up with them for years. Brands that stopped advertising lost 28% of their market share in three years, smaller brands most, according to the Journal of Advertising Research in 2023 [3].

Small creators delivered a return on investment (ROI) of about 18, against 5 for the largest, according to the Journal of Marketing in 2024 [4]. When it was recognised within two seconds, the effect on brand memory was nearly three times as large (+196%), according to a study TikTok co-authored [5].

2. What is brand identity? What you decide the brand should be, not what customers think of it.

Brand identity is the picture of the brand that the company itself decides: the promise, the values, the personality, who the customer becomes and the symbols people should recognise. Brand image is what customers actually think of the brand [6]. Positioning is the part of the identity you stress against competitors [7]. Brand awareness is whether people recognise and remember the brand at all [6].

Mats Urde at Lund University puts an identity core at the centre: the brand’s promise and core values [8]. Swedish trademark law says a trademark can be any sign that sets your goods apart, including colours and sounds, and that this can be acquired through use [9].

Kevin Lane Keller starts his model of strong brands with the customer recognising and remembering the brand. Only then comes what it means [10]. So identity has two sides: what the brand stands for, and whether it is remembered at all.

3. Why do customers buy a particular brand? Out of habit, and because it comes to mind first.

Customers mostly buy a particular brand because it is the habitual choice that comes to mind first and is easy to buy, not because it feels unique. Habits are cued by the situation, and intentions steer purchases mainly when habits are weak [11]. Where the choice is seen and says something about who you are, people also buy what the brand signals [2].

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute in Australia has seen the same pattern in category after category: brands grow mainly through more buyers, not more loyal ones. The change in the number of buyers was about three times the change in loyalty [12], and the 20% who buy most account for a little over half of sales, not 80% [13].

Byron Sharp told the Swedish business site EFN in 2025 that loyalty is about memory, not passion [14]. Growth comes from physical availability, how easy the brand is to find and buy, and mental availability, whether it comes to mind (section 5).

4. Do customers buy an identity or a product? Identity weighs most when the choice says something about you.

Customers buy both an identity and a product, but to different degrees. How well a brand fits your self-image correlates with how you judge it at 0.31, according to a meta-analysis in the Journal of Business Research in 2012 [15]. The link is moderate and mostly measures attitudes, not purchases.

The link is strongest where the choice is seen and says something about who you are. In a pilot with 51 students, 67% chose an unusual option for their favourite CD, but 6% for dish soap (Figure 1) [2]. What the choice said about the person predicted it, not visibility on its own. As income rises, more of it also goes to goods others can see [16].

Show the identity, don’t say it

In five studies, the message “this brand is you” lowered the wish to buy, compared with only hinting at it [17]. Insiders prefer quiet signals [18]. And an identity everyone has stops signalling: students stopped wearing a wristband when a group they did not want to resemble started wearing it [19].

5. What are mental availability and distinctive brand assets? What makes a brand easy to recognise.

Mental availability is the likelihood that a brand comes to mind when buying. Distinctive brand assets are the colours, shapes, characters, sounds and phrases people link to your brand alone, even without the name [20]. Jenni Romaniuk at Ehrenberg-Bass picks them by how many buyers link them to the brand and how few competitors they call to mind. A new asset only becomes famous by being used the same way for a long time [20].

Across more than 400 brand elements, marketers overestimated how famous they were and underestimated how unique [21]. So show the asset without the logo to category buyers and ask which brand it is. Leading questions can inflate the result by up to 20 percentage points [22].

A famous asset is costly to change: when Tropicana changed its carton in 2009, unit sales fell by 20% in about seven weeks [23]. It also has to be precise. In 2019 the EU Court of Justice upheld that Red Bull’s colour marks were invalid, as their arrangement was not defined [24].

Among 365 US grocery brands, those that stopped advertising lost 10% of market share in one year, 20% in two and 28% in three, and smaller brands lost more (Figure 2) [3]. Australian beer and cider brands likewise lost 16%, 25% and 36% of sales [25].

6. Emotion builds the brand over time, and that is where identity makes the difference.

Les Binet and Peter Field analysed 996 campaigns from the British advertising industry’s databank. After three years or more, 43% of the emotional campaigns reported very large profit effects, against 23% of the rational ones [26]. Campaigns that made the brand famous and talked about were more than four times as efficient (1.4 vs 0.3) [26]. This is where identity earns its keep: it gives the advertising something to feel.

The evidence is campaigns entered for effectiveness awards, mostly from large brands, and the 60/40 rule of thumb between brand and sales is, by Binet’s own account, no iron rule [27].

7. Red Bull and On show the pattern: an ideal, many people and a product everywhere.

Red Bull sold 13.969 billion cans in 178 countries in 2025, according to the company itself [28]. Its assets are the bulls, the slim blue and silver can and “Red Bull gives you wings”. Beneath the sports stars, more than 4,000 students have handed out samples and won new users since 1987 [29].

The shoe brand On grew from 267 to 3,014 million Swiss francs in sales in 2019–2025, spending 10.7–13.9% on marketing (Figure 3) [30, 31, 32, 33]. Its 2021 prospectus said it relied mainly on grassroots marketing, with local athletes as ambassadors [30]. Roger Federer had become a co-owner in 2019. Celebrities such as Zendaya came when the brand was already big, and 58.2% of 2025 sales went through other retailers’ stores [33].

Four niches, two patterns

The first pattern is one face against many. Rhode, Hailey Bieber’s skincare brand, sold USD 212 million in a year through its own website [34], and Byredo was built around its founder Ben Gorham [35]. Gymshark grew with early YouTubers, but its pre-tax profit fell from 27.8 to 6.9 million pounds in three years [36, 37]. Björn Borg does both: a legendary name, hundreds of influencers and 35,500 runners in the same shirt in the Midnattsloppet race [38]. Fjällräven promises durable, timeless outdoor gear [39].

The second pattern is that availability decides. Celsius’s sales rose 102% in the year after a distribution deal with PepsiCo [40]. Oatly, which built its “Post-Milk Generation” through cafés [41], was valued at around USD 10 billion at its 2021 listing but has made losses for years [42, 43]. The Swedish NA-KD’s valuation fell from 5.3 to 1.2 billion kronor in 2022 [44]. Identity makes people want the brand. Availability lets them buy it.

8. Is one big ambassador or many smaller creators better for the brand? Both, but they do different jobs.

It depends on the goal. Smaller creators feel more similar to the buyer, are trusted more and sell more per krona. Big names bring more reach and recognition [4, 5, 45]. On purchase intention, influencers and celebrities were about equal, according to a 2025 meta-analysis of 135 experiments [46].

The ambassador carries the ideal

Grant McCracken described how a famous person transfers their cultural meanings to the product [47]. But the person has to fit the brand. A poorly fitting celebrity was the worst option in a meta-analysis of 46 studies [48], and the celebrity can be remembered instead of the brand [49]. The ideal can also be carried by the brand’s own character. In ad-testing firm System1’s tests of Super Bowl ads, such characters scored 3.7 stars, against 2.8 for celebrities [50].

Creators make the ideal reachable

People connect with brands used by groups they belong to, and by groups they want to belong to [51]. In Sweden, 43% of people follow influencers [52].

A study of actual sales followed 1,881,533 products through 2,808 personal discount codes. The smallest creators sold €0.265 per follower, against €0.049 for the largest, and returned 17.85 against 4.67 on what they were paid (Figure 4) [4].

Still, when the goal is awareness, the researchers write, “using high-followership influencers probably still makes sense given their broader reach” [4]. Engagement peaks with mid-sized accounts [53]. The meta-analysis advises: “For brands with the budget, the optimal strategy may be to use both in concert” [54].

9. How do you use influencers to build a brand? Make it recognisable within two seconds.

Let many relevant creators show the product in their own voice, but with the same two to four brand cues within two seconds, and have them say the name out loud. Across 1,217 paid TikTok ads, early branding nearly tripled brand memory, while engagement rate had no link to it, according to a 2026 study by TikTok, System1 and WPP Media [5].

Only 61% of creator ads showed the brand within two seconds, and only 29% beat an average ad the brand made itself (Figure 5). When the brand was both shown and said, 53.1% recognised it early, against 25.7% when it was only shown [5]. The study covers paid ads and was read through trade press.

Early branding has a cost. In 1,650 YouTube videos it drew more attention to the brand but made viewers like the video less [55]. The answer is a cue early, not a sales pitch: the product, the colour or the name said naturally.

10. The worksheet turns your identity into one page and a brief for creators.

The worksheet (Figure 6) turns your answers into two texts to copy: your identity on one page and a brief for creators. The rules in the brief rest on the study of 1,217 TikTok ads, Romaniuk’s research on distinctive assets and the Swedish Marketing Act [5, 20, 56].

The brief always has the same rules: the brand recognisable within two seconds, the name said out loud, the same assets in every video, the product visible throughout, the creator’s own voice and no sales pitch first, one code per creator, and “Reklam för” (“Advertising for”) and the brand’s name first in the caption. Green words without proof and status pressure on under-18s are ruled out.

For everyday purchases, put less into who the customer becomes and more into assets and buying situations. Two things are assumptions: that 20–30 buyers are enough for a first test, and that you keep your assets for several years.

11. What can’t you say about the environment and sustainability in marketing? Generic green words without proof are banned.

Since 27 September 2026 the EU has banned generic environmental claims such as “eco-friendly” or “green” without proven excellent environmental performance, “climate neutral” claims based on offsetting, and home-made sustainability labels without certification [58]. The Swedish amendment is not yet passed, and the inquiry SOU 2025:124 proposes 1 January 2027 [61]. The inquiry holds that the bans already apply, so plan for them now. In 2023 the Swedish Patent and Market Court already barred Arla from marketing milk as “net zero climate footprint” [62].

The explanation must sit right next to the claim, according to the Swedish Consumer Agency [63].

Advertising has to look like advertising

It must be clear that it is advertising and who is behind it [56]. In the Kissie case in 2019, “#samarbete” (“collaboration”) was not enough, because it did not say anyone had been paid [57]. Gifts count as payment, and the brand carries the main responsibility, which it cannot contract away, says the Swedish Consumer Agency [64].

You may not use a famous person’s name or image in ads without consent [65], and ads to young people must not suggest that anyone without the product is left out [59]. A breach of the Marketing Act can bring a market disruption fee of up to 4% of turnover [56]. This is not legal advice.

12. About the evidence: strong on memory, weaker on identity and price premiums.

Every source is tagged by what it is, including figures from vendors and from TikTok.

There are gaps. No study measures whether many creators make a brand easier to remember, and the rule of the same assets in every video is our inference. No study compares one ambassador with many creators over time. Identity research mostly measures attitudes, and the support for identity bringing a price premium is the weakest in this guide.

Swedish data are thin, and the cases show patterns without isolating causes. The link to Collabify in the conclusion is an analogy, not a measurement.