Byron Sharp — Professor of Marketing Science, Director of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute at the University of Adelaide, and author of How Brands Grow — joins us at Cannes fresh off his sold-out Bassey Theatre session with Mark Ritson (a thousand people queued to get in).

We dig into the five fundamentals he and Ritson agreed on and, more usefully, where the industry keeps getting them wrong. Byron explains why mental availability is not the same as brand awareness, why “search advertising” was a branding con that confuses purchase availability with memory-building, and why your media metrics are lying to you about reach.

Along the way: the retail-media gold rush (sorry, Marriott Media), the AI hype bubble he expects to pop, why Elsa buried every other Disney princess, and the “non-artificial intelligence” agent Ehrenberg-Bass is building to stop corporate AI from breaking marketing’s laws of physics.

A masterclass in thinking clearly about what your marketing money is actually supposed to do.

Chapters:

00:00 - Welcome: Byron Sharp at Cannes, and why impact (not academic prestige) drives Ehrenberg-Bass

01:39 - The “two festivals” of Cannes: creativity awards vs. the serious fringe; the sold-out Ritson session

04:03 - What’s being sold to marketers on the Croisette — and the retail-media land grab (Marriott Media)

05:26 - Fragmentation, monetizing inventory, and why ~80% of this year’s AI vendors will be gone

07:02 -The five things Byron agreed with Ritson on

10:21 - #1 Mental availability — and the critical mistake of confusing it with awareness

12:27 - “You overestimate your reach”: fleeting exposures and inflated media metrics

14:19 - Why calling it “search advertising” was a disservice: purchase vs. mental availability

15:27 - #2 Distinctive brand assets — why a logo checkbox isn’t enough

17:46 - #3 Consistency — everyone agrees, nobody does it

18:50 - The “big idea,” category entry points, and the Frozen/Elsa problem

21:42 - Inside the How Brands Grow executive program

23:46 - “Non-artificial intelligence”: the AI agent Ehrenberg-Bass is building

25:20 - Wrap

Links:

Ehrenberg-Bass Institute: https://marketingscience.info/

Professor Byron Sharp: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professorbyronsharp/

How Brands Grow Live: https://marketingscience.info/learn-with-us/learning-opportunities/how-brands-grow-live-for-executives