Attention Is Cheap
Memory Is Expensive.
Why your marketing looks busy, but your growth looks stuck.
The dashboard looked healthy.
Website sessions up. CPM stable. Content output on track. Followers climbing.
Revenue was flat.
Pipeline quality was slipping. Sales said, “We are getting more leads, but fewer buyers who already trust us.” Finance asked why CAC kept rising if “awareness” was improving. The team had plenty of activity and not enough leverage.
Nobody could answer one basic question.
In the moments that trigger buying, are we the first brand people recall, or just another brand they once saw?
That is the hidden problem. They were renting attention, not building memory.
“Memory” in practical terms
In executive terms, brand memory is retrieval.
It is the probability your brand comes to mind quickly in a buying situation.
That is what the evidence base calls mental availability. It is built by linking the brand to Category Entry Points, the recurring situations and triggers that prompt people to enter a category and consider options. (business.linkedin.com)
A Leadership-friendly definition:
Mental availability: How likely we are to be thought of early when the need appears. (business.linkedin.com)
Category Entry Points: The buying situations that trigger category consideration, which we can choose to own in memory. (business.linkedin.com)
One example, with both consumer and work context cues.
If you are a fintech trying to grow deposits and investment adoption, the entry points are not “features.” They are moments such as a new-year money reset, first salary hit, tax-year planning, an unexpected bill, or “I need my savings to do something.” For B2B fintech, a work-context cue might be “new compliance requirement,” “board risk review,” or “cashflow volatility forcing a treasury change.” The job is to become the default brand linked to those cues.
Not all cues are equal. The LinkedIn B2B Institute recommends prioritising entry points using the 3Cs: Commonness, Competitiveness, Credibility, so you focus on cues that happen often, that you can credibly own, and that are not already dominated by competitors. (business.linkedin.com)
What this looks like in a weekly dashboard
Most dashboards measure exposure. Leaders need a dashboard that also measures retrieval.
Three practical measures are enough:
Share of Search
IPA work on Share of Search presents branded search share as a useful signal for tracking demand and evaluating advertising performance. (ipa.co.uk)Cue-based recall trend
Run a simple quarterly pulse: “When you think of [CEP], which brands come to mind first?” Trend it over time by cue. The B2B Institute CEP work is designed to build and measure these links over time, not campaign by campaign. (business.linkedin.com)Sales retrieval check
Code sales calls and win-loss notes for two fields: “what triggered the search” and “who was already in the head.” It is imperfect. It is directionally honest.
This does not replace performance reporting. It prevents performance reporting from being mistaken for brand strength.
The economic case leaders miss
A large body of effectiveness research finds that short-term activation and long-term brand building are different mechanisms, and that durable growth tends to come from balancing both rather than running entirely on short-term response.
IPA EffWorks analysis of four decades of case studies concludes that, across contexts in the IPA Awards dataset, the optimum budget split for positive business outcomes is just over 60 per cent brand building and a little under 40 per cent activation. (ipa.co.uk)
The implication is not “ignore activation.” The implication is that over-indexing on activation often creates a cost spiral. You keep paying to reintroduce yourself.
IPA works on ESOV, extra share of voice, also argues that investing in a share of voice above your share of market is a proven lever to increase market share over time. (ipa.co.uk)
Here is the founder rule, written as a diagnostic you can use in one meeting:
If acquisition cost keeps rising while impressions and clicks grow, you are paying for attention that has not turned into memory yet.
That is what weak retrieval looks like on a P&L.
A simple visual to make the shift obvious
Picture one flow with two gates:
Attention (rented) → Memory (owned) → Cheaper activation
The first gate is exposure, clicks, and reach. The second gate is retrieval, share of search, cue-based recall, “first brand mentioned.” The third outcome is efficiency, steadier CAC, higher conversion quality, and less discount dependence.
This diagram is not claiming that any single metric causes profit. It is showing a management logic. If attention rises but memory does not, costs rise. If memory rises, activation has something to compound on.
Turn strategy into a decision rule
Most companies write strategy. Few install constraints. Constraints create behaviour.
Use these three rules:
One sentence, 12 words or fewer
What do we want to be remembered for. If it cannot be compressed, it cannot be recalled.Five buying situations, committed for 18 months
Pick your entry points and stop rotating them every quarter. CEP work is a repetition game. Your job is to build links over time. (business.linkedin.com)Three proof assets, amplified until boring
Proof makes memory believable. Repeat it. Codify it. Make it unavoidable.
If this feels repetitive, that is the point. Memory is built through repetition.
Monzo’s “Get Your Money Moving”
Most fintech advertising is loud. It competes on generic claims about ease, speed, and “better rates.” Loud brands often end up leaning harder on incentives and promotions because nothing sticks.
Monzo’s “Get Your Money Moving” campaign is a cleaner illustration of memorability.
The work anchors to a clear entry point, the January reset moment when people are motivated to change habits, and it frames the desired behavioural shift as moving from passive saving to active engagement with money. That intent is described in campaign coverage, quoting Monzo’s marketing leadership. (Campaign Live)
It also links the message to tangible proof assets inside the product, such as the 1p Saving Challenge, which is designed to build a daily saving habit and has a clear outcome number, £667.95 over a year, described by Monzo in its own materials. (Monzo)
Notice what makes this more memorable than a typical fintech “noise” campaign.
A stable cue. January reset.
A stable story. Money should not sit idle.
A stable proof asset. A simple automated habit system that turns intent into action.
This is how a brand reduces reliance on constant promotional pressure. Not by abandoning activation. By making activation cheaper because the market already remembers.
How to implement this in your next QBR
Bring three slides.
Memory definition and CEP list
Your one-sentence promise, plus your five entry points filtered by the 3Cs. (business.linkedin.com)Memory dashboard
Share of Search, cue-based recall trend, sales retrieval check. Ground the conversation in retrieval, not output. (ipa.co.uk)Budget logic
Your current split versus a tested starting point from IPA EffWorks, then a plan to sustain the five CEPs for 18 months. (ipa.co.uk)
The truth
Platforms will change. Formats will change. Algorithms will change.
Decision-making will not.
Attention is rented. Memory is owned. Owned assets compound. Rented ones inflate.
If your brand is forgettable, it is fragile.
If it is fragile, it will get expensive.
