Greggs, Lucky Saint, Marks & Spencer, McDonald’s and Octopus Energy – what do they all have in common?

They’re all shortlisted for the Marketing Week Awards ‘Brand of the Year’ 2024.

None of them are from the world of construction, sadly.

As someone passionate to the point of nerdiness about construction and manufacturing, it is disappointing that we rarely see one of ‘our’ brands up there. We’ve had work recognised by the likes of Campaign and The Drum in recent years, including our ‘Life in Porcelain’ campaign for Brett Landscaping and the launch campaign for VELUX conservation range, and it’s been massively gratifying to see brands from our world go up against global tech and FMCG brands – and not just because it’s our work being judged.

That said, should we be surprised not to see a construction brand in the running?

I was fortunate enough to be on a panel with Terry Watts of the Chartered Surveyors Training Trust last year when he pointed out that for all of the big names in our supply chain(s), and the vital role they perform for the country and economy, the fragmented nature of the sector means that getting that level of transcendence to mainstream would be difficult, if not impossible.

Given that the laws of marketing hold true for all brands, and the mix of brands included in this year’s list, perhaps there’s some lessons for us all to learn and apply before we see a construction brand in future top 5’s.

Here’s some of the key actions these brands listed above have taken to improve their positioning, and how you can apply them to your brand – even in the construction supply chain:

Distinctive Brand Assets

Lucky Saint’s success has come from consistency and distinctiveness, sticking to its core brand identity rigidly, while applying it in exciting ways in year-round campaigns. The brand has used this mantra of ‘fresh consistency’ to build audience familiarity in a rapidly-growing category.

We marketers can be an excitable bunch, which is lovely, but it could be harming your brand. A 2022 study by Analytic Partners analysed more than 50,000 ad campaigns and that only 14 campaigns had been seen so frequently that they’d achieved ‘wear out’ – versus the 51,218 that hadn’t.

You read that right – 14 (fourteen) versus 51,218.

When we play around with our brand codes, not only do we dilute our messaging and make our brands less easy to recall, but we also do our audiences a disservice – in many cases we’re pulling the work before people have even had a chance to see it.

What Lucky Saint has done, and what we should all be doing, is committing to our brand messaging to create a consistent, complete brand universe where every new piece of communication builds on existing positive memory structures.

Strip everything else away and this is what marketing exists to do.

Physical Availability

Quite simply, making it as easy and convenient as possible for your brand to be purchased in buying situations. Greggs has increased opening hours, invested in drive-through and click-and-collect in an attempt to be easier to purchase. It’s worked, its consideration score on YouGov’s BrandIndex increased from 36.9 in 2022 to 39 in 2023 (beating its rivals) and, crucially, sales are up 20% over the period.

Granted, if you’re reading this it’s highly likely your brand doesn’t sell baked goods, but there must be things that you can do to make your brand easier to purchase from. Can customers purchase directly via your website? If not, can they interact with you to be nudged further down the funnel? Are you tracking all your leads through the funnel and creating convenient, timely communications that offer prompt to purchase? There’s plenty that construction brands can do to take advantage of physical availability laws, wherever they sit in the supply chain.

Customer Focus

Something I spoke about at length on the Build Up Podcast with Daniel Moore, positioning only works when the customer is the focus. In a, shall we say, less-than-popular home energy sector Octopus has managed to buck the trend of its peers by focussing on customer need in what has been a difficult time. The brand’s health score of 23.1 tops the sector by some distance (its next-highest competitor, Ovo Energy stands at 3.4), and they’ve leapt from nowhere to number one in market.

Let’s be clear here, if an energy firm can make this list, even after years of negative headlines, sky-rocketing costs, and company closures, then the construction sector has zero excuses.

Octopus’ focus on customers is not only admirable, but also a crucial lesson for all of us tasked with guarding brands – none of this matters without understanding our audiences. In fact, I’d go so far as to say market orientation is the only platform that successful marketing can be built from. Too often marketers fall into the trap of thinking about their brand and what it wants to achieve, rather than focusing on the only audience group that really matters.

How well do you know your audience and what they want? If you don’t have any tracking in place (brand tracker or NPS) I’d consider it. At the very least, some rough and ready ethnography – literally going spending time with your customers – is never a waste of time. There’s a good chance you’ll unearth some gems or be able to confirm what you know.

If nothing else, you’ll get to see just how important your brand, and your category, are to them.

So, there you have it. As straight forward as ‘follow these rules and you’ve nailed it’? Not quite. In most cases the brands listed at the start of this blog enjoy huge awareness and equity, and huge budgets. These things are hard to get by without, and there’s no point trivialising that. Is that any reason to disregard the lessons on offer? Only if you don’t want to grow.

Distinctiveness, mental availability, physical availability and market orientation are concepts that all marketers should be aware of and taking advantage of, regardless of sector, budget and market maturity. Who knows, your brand might be the one to break through…