The Double Jeopardy Law
Professor Byron Sharp, in his legendary book “How Brands Grow” (a book every marketing manager must know by heart), coined a concept that is important to internalize: the “Double Jeopardy Law”. This law states something simple yet cruel: brands with a small market share have two problems hitting them simultaneously:
1. They have far fewer customers.
2. The customers they do have are slightly less loyal and buy less frequently.
On the other hand, giant brands do not enjoy some “crazy love” or loyalty that is several times greater than small brands. They don’t have a cult of blind consumers. They simply enjoy having many more customers who buy them occasionally. Recent studies from Marketing Week reinforce this time and again with real data: established brands grow mainly by increasing market penetration and acquiring new audiences, rather than by increasing purchase frequency or loyalty programs.
The Paradox of Light Buyers
The thing is, it’s hard for us to swallow this. After all, we are in love with our heavy buyers. The ones who buy from us every week, react to every story, and recommend us to friends on WhatsApp. We build flashy customer clubs for them, send them a coupon on their birthday, and target them over and over with aggressive remarketing.
But the painful truth is that these customers are already “in your pocket”. Their growth potential is limited to non-existent – they are already buying the maximum they need. You can’t squeeze this lemon forever. The truly big money is with the Light Buyers. These are the people who buy products in your category, but buy your brand maybe once a year, or even once every two years. They are the silent majority. They are the massive audience you simply ignore because you are busy “retaining” the existing audience. For the brand to truly grow and make a leap forward, you must ensure these light buyers remember you at the moment of truth in front of the shelf.
So, how do we translate this to digital tomorrow morning?
• Let go of the pixel and open up audiences: We all love to sit in our comfort zone and target the tight 1% Lookalike, or those who added a product to their cart two days ago. It feels safe and efficient, but in reality, we are just recycling the same people within a closed ecosystem. To grow, you have to go out to completely broad audiences. Yes, it will hurt a bit at first, because your CPA will likely go up in the short term, but this is the only way to pump “new blood” into your marketing funnel.
• Always On presence: Stop turning campaigns off and on just based on promotions. Your “light” customers don’t follow you religiously and aren’t waiting for you to announce a Black Friday sale. They will buy the product exactly when they need it, and that could happen on a random Tuesday in March. If you are only live during the holidays, you’ve lost them. The goal is to create “mental availability” – making sure that the moment they open their wallet, your brand’s name jumps to their mind first.
• Simple and memorable messages: When you appeal to a completely new audience, don’t tell them the company’s emotional history from 1994. They are scrolling through their feed frantically and have no attention span for you. They need a short, punchy message, and most of all – one that is extremely branded. Use your visual appearance (Distinctive Assets), colors, logo, or sound that are uniquely identified with you. That way, even in a half-second of exposure, their finger will instinctively stop.
The bottom line: Next time you sit over the annual budget pie, leave a little money aside to pamper existing customers – that is understandable and important. But take the critical mass of the money, effort, and creative outside. Be hungry, be aggressive, and go get the massive audience that doesn’t yet know what they are missing.
