If your marketing hinges primarily on communicating the quality and benefits of what you offer… you might want to sit down for this one.
WPP Media has released new research that changes the way we should all be thinking about how people buy. Their global study found that 84% of purchases are made by people who were already biased toward the brand before they started shopping.
This is called brand priming bias. It’s the cumulative effect of every brand experience and interaction a consumer has over time. This even relates to experiences consumers might be completely unaware of like seeing a product on a store shelf, or scanning a billboard while driving and barely registering it. All of these tiny exposures and micro-interactions inform our subconscious minds.
According to the study, these micro-moments build a kind of brand “gravity” that pulls people towards certain choices long before they’ reach the pointy end of the funnel’s ready to buy.
So what does this actually mean for businesses, marketers and leaders?
Likeability, affinity, and awareness matter more than you think
For years, businesses have poured enormous energy, time and money into performance marketing. This is the kind of advertising that’s set with the intention of an immediate sale, click, or conversion.
But if 84% of people already have a brand preference before they even consider options, performance marketing isn’t doing what most people think it is.
It’s not convincing undecided buyers. More often, it’s converting the people who were already leaning your way.
This is exactly what other researchers have seen for decades: brand awareness and familiarity act as decision shortcuts, even in categories where quality and price differences exist.
Consumers absolutely care about quality. But they use brand preference as the filter for which quality they even bother to examine.
Brand marketing makes your performance marketing more effective
One of the most important takeaways from this research is how brand biases change the effectiveness of lower-funnel campaigns.
If a consumer already feels positively aligned with your brand (even slightly) they’re far more receptive to your ads. Those “Buy Now,” “Request a Quote,” or “Book a Consultation” buttons gat her more clicks because the brand has done the heavy-lifting long before the ad appeared.
This matches what psychology research tells us, too: prior brand exposure creates “cognitive anchors” that shape how people interpret information that comes later.
Your conversion campaigns are more efficient when they’re built on top of strong brand foundations.
The smartest brands split their investment strategically
Brand investment widens the pool of people predisposed to choose you, increasing the effectiveness of every dollar spent on performance.
An even larger benefit is that you build long-term market advantage that competitors can’t quickly replicate.
The data shows us that both brand and performance marketing are essential. Investment across both enables both short-term sales and long-term growth.
Where this leaves marketers today
With saturated markets, rising ad costs, and consumers who now have near-infinite choice, the brands that win are the ones that:
- Build familiarity when people aren’t shopping
- Create emotional affinity long before the funnel exists
- Invest steadily in brand salience, memory building, and distinctiveness
- Use performance marketing to activate existing preference, not create it from scratch
This isn’t about abandoning performance marketing. It’s about recognising its dependence on brand.
