Mark Ritson: We know what distinctive marketing looks like. Now let’s agree what to call it

That last factor surprises many marketers. After all, isn’t the brand behind the ad bleeding obvious? But clients and agencies lack market orientation. They forget the mismatch between how ads are made – with focus, attention to detail, over many months – and how they’re consumed by audiences over a few seconds, paying little attention, and already deluged with ads from every other direction. And the divergence matters. Most studies conclude that less than half the ads audiences see can be attributed to the correct brand after the ad ends. An astonishing failure rate.

Source: System1/Effie

The fix is relatively simple. You need to repeatedly brand your ad so consumers know that it’s you. Tindall’s data is fantastically clear. The magic number is seven. On average, if you brand your ad with recognizable references seven times during a thirty-second spot, brand recall rises to 100%.

But that’s not the point of this column. This column is about what happened when I gave a talk on this topic. Because to prescribe a fix for the branded recall issue, I had to explain what these references were and what they were variously called. And in a move of remarkable irony, the conceptual name for the thing that makes something distinctive is not very distinctive. In fact, it’s one of the most confused terms in the marketing playbook.

The redoubtable Magda Adamska from Brandstruck saw my talk and noted my frustration at having to mention four different concepts to make one simple point. She later observed on LinkedIn that “when a discipline does not use a unified vocabulary, it makes us look less rigorous and a bit silly.” She’s right. I’d add that we also confuse the fuck out of new marketers who lack confidence at the outset of their careers and get into bother trying to work out the difference between terms that appear – and actually are – the same thing.

Old Fathead struggling to define his terms (top row) to make his point

Of course, there will always be marketing philistines who accuse anyone discussing concepts of being obsessed with terminology at the expense of practical application. Who cares what concepts are called! Keep marketing simple! Get on with it! Navel gazing! But my point is that we don’t keep it simple with the current conceptual overlap. And we make marketing harder as a result. And that we can do something about it.

I propose we kill concepts and pick a winner. Let’s do it because it makes for an easier, more intuitive discipline. Let’s do it because Adamska is right, and we all look silly until we do. And let’s do it because we can. There are four competing terms. All we need is a single victor and we can do a bit of disciplinary housekeeping.

Here’s a quick précis, in historical order, of the competing terms.

Well Branded / Branded Recall

This is the simplest of the options. It owes its origins to the early days of ad research in the 1960s, when researchers began establishing whether an ad was attributed to the brand behind it. The concept became particularly prominent through brand tracking studies with the rise of television advertising, effectiveness testing, and consumer research in the US and UK from the 1960s to 1970s. The first marketing textbook to rigorously define “brand recall” as a specific brand awareness measure was Advertising and Promotion Management by John R. Rossiter and Larry Percy. Today, “brand recall," “branded recall,” or whether the ad has been “well branded” remain core measures of effectiveness. And you will often hear – especially more senior marketers – remarking that an ad was “very well branded.”

Advantages: Longest established. Well tested. Widespread among American marketers.

Disadvantages: Refers more to the subsequent ad than the contributing elements. Less applicable to non-advertising tactics like packaging or windows. Confusingly generic.

Brand Codes

At the start of the new century, I was working in high fashion in Paris. Yes, I appreciate this seems unlikely, but there I was, working with brands like Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Marc Jacobs. My major challenge was creating a brand management approach that would work for luxury brands and my client LVMH. As I built that approach, a central element that I stole from fashion was the role that codes played for each maison.

Codes were defined as the sensual identifiers clients recognized immediately. They consisted of a brand’s logo but also other distinctive elements: the specific grey of Dior, the signature base scent of a Guerlain fragrance, the bottle shape of Dom Pérignon. Every brand had codes that could be identified, articulated, and used to distinguish the brand in windows, packaging, and advertising. For older brands, the opportunity to play with these codes, like when Louis Vuitton turned its monogram multi-colored under artist Takeshi Murakami, became a potent chance to reinforce history and revitalize the brand simultaneously. After I left LVMH, I kept teaching the concept of brand codes to MBA students at LBS, MIT and other places. And eventually on the MinMBA.

Advantages: Speaks about the asset, not the media. Pushes the idea of codification. Includes the opportunity of code play for older brands.

Disadvantages: Less well known. Non-empirically identified. Originated from a specific sector – luxury.

Distinctive Brand Assets

Professor Jenni Romaniuk at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute originated and defined distinctive brand assets. Romaniuk first popularized the term in her book Building Distinctive Brand Assets and subsequent journal publications, describing these assets as the “non-brand name elements that trigger brand recall in the minds of category buyers.” Distinctive brand assets include colors, shapes, logos, sounds, mascots, and taglines that, through repeated, consistent use, become mental shortcuts for consumers, evoking a particular brand identity even without a verbal prompt.

To qualify as truly distinctive, Romaniuk emphasizes two criteria: fame (the proportion of buyers who immediately link the asset to the brand) and uniqueness (the asset’s ability to evoke only that brand, not competitors). This empirical, test-driven approach set the global marketing standard for managing and measuring distinctive brand assets and transformed modern brand identity strategy.

Advantages: Empirical clarity. Simplest, most explanatory name. Ehrenberg-Bass muscle behind it.

Disadvantages: Part of a broader dogmatic paradigm. Over-emphasis on visual stimuli. DBA application is monotonous, never playful.

Fluent Device

System1 formalized the concept of the fluent device, particularly through Orlando Wood’s research and writing, to describe recurring creative elements – such as brand characters, mascots, as well as well-worn advertising scenarios – that underpin long-running campaigns and rapidly signal the brand to audiences. The origins trace back to classic advertising, where familiar characters and storylines like the Comparethemarket Meerkats or the Gold Blend Couple were used not just for recognition but to create memory structures and emotional bonds across years of creative work ad different media.

What sets the Fluent Device apart is that it doesn’t just make branding more noticeable; it creates a constant, enjoyable shorthand for the brand, helping campaigns work better across media, especially as attention fragments. System1’s research shows that brands using fluent devices achieve stronger long-term results – higher recall, quicker recognition, greater business impact – because these devices combine the power of familiarity with the alchemy of emotion.

Advantages: Includes distinctive storylines. Proven impact via System1 data. Clarity on relative power of various devices.

Disadvantages: Very ad-centric. Newest concept. Fixed approach to application.

The Verdict

We simply have to pick a winner. And three losers. I’ll make the case against option 1 and calling something “well branded.” It’s too generic and puts the focus too much on the medium rather than the assets, codes, or devices that achieve the distinctive effect. Testing for “branded recall” is the outcome of the process, not the engine of its achievement.

That leaves three options. As the originator of brand codes, I’d be entirely open to retracting it and adopting one of the other two alternatives. When I make my MiniMBA modules for 2026, I am ready to reconceptualize and retrain the 40,000 alumni I’ve trained in brand codes. I’d make the case, however, for the inclusion of code play as something missing from the other two approaches – and something the successful approach should adopt.

Source: LinkedIn interaction

For Ehrenberg-Bass, there’s an opportunity to embrace the broader marketing community and open itself to different perspectives and a change in conceptualization. Or to insist that their distinctive highway is the only highway and plough on down it regardless. I think we all know which way they’ll go. A recent interaction between System1’s Andrew Tindall and the Dark Lord of Penetration himself suggests Ehrenberg-Bass will insist their concept becomes predominant, while probably denying any other concept – or indeed anything ever invented outside the Institute – has any merit at all. To be fair to Jenni Romaniuk, her book is the dominant text and would prove most difficult to alter at this stage.

Then there’s System1. Would the company consider rebranding Fluent Devices for the good of marketing? They would lose an important bit of corporate IP. And again, I’d argue a facet of the Fluent Device concept should be retained in the victorious concept. Namely, the addition of a specific advertising narrative as a form of distinctive asset or code. No other concept accounts for the recurring theme of a Specsavers ad in so quickly and efficiently identifying it as being from a specific brand. With this concession, would Orlando Wood and his merry band of ad testers consider a shift to an alternative conceptual name?

Is there a way forward? A Yalta-style event in which the future direction for distinctiveness is hammered out? Or shall we all simply fall into line and accept the inevitability of marketing science and coalesce around Distinctive Brand Assets without a debate? Shall we have a vote? Can someone ask Kotler for a preference?

I think it’s time for simplicity. For unification. For distinctiveness for the tools by which distinctiveness is achieved.

Mark Ritson teaches a whole module on brand codes on his wildly successful MiniMBA in Brand Management. But by April 2026, when the course next runs, who knows what that module will be called.