Does AI Experience Brand Salience

Customers Do. Good Loyalty Programs Reinforce It.

AI in business is creating a lot of hype, yet the human mind works in ways machines cannot replicate – we experience unconscious mental processes, emotional responses, and personal memories. These factors shape how we perceive and interact with brands.

For example, the smell of suncream might bring back memories of childhood beach vacations, immediately recalling a specific suncream brand, or a long, hot day at work may trigger the craving for a particular beer brand. 

These associations are not accidental; they are the result of strategic brand building efforts that establish mental availability. When brands successfully embed themselves in memory structures, they become easily retrievable in relevant moments (such as purchasing decisions).

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute discusses the importance of this mental availability, which is also known as brand salience. This concept extends beyond awareness: brands need to be easily remembered to be considered. 

Brands with high salience create multiple mental connections in consumers’ minds. Take your favourite brand of beer, for example. It doesn’t just come to mind when you want a drink – it is also linked to moments like unwinding after work or enjoying a hot summer day. Even when you are not actively thinking about beer, the brand stays relevant by embedding itself into these experiences.

This convergence of inputs is a category entry point (CEP); the mental cues that trigger the brand to be recalled in different contexts, making it more likely to be chosen.

The occasions that lead a customer to think about your category are the most important opportunities to associate your brand, making it the dominant, default, fast choice if a purchase results. The other 95% of the time, the customer is not thinking about your category or brand, so building mental availability is harder and more expensive.

• The CEP is the trigger ("I need something for this situation")
  

• Brand salience determines which specific brand(s) get activated by that trigger
  

• Mental models are the frameworks consumers use to understand how products, categories, and consumption situations work
  

• Reward programs associated with a category increase brand salience, adding additional attributes to the mental model – points pressure, endowed value, and even simple FOMO.