Mental availability isn't a campaign — it's a discipline
What you'll get
Three better questions for turning mental availability from campaign theory into an operating discipline.
How Brands Grow Vol. III reads like a book written by people who got tired of winning the debate. Mental and physical availability are no longer controversial. They're consensus. What's interesting is how poorly we translate consensus into operational decisions.
Sharp and his team make a simple observation: most marketing departments measure activity (campaigns shipped, content published) rather than presence (share of category conversations, unprompted recall, distribution at the moments that matter). It's the difference between counting emails sent and emails read.
Practically: what would happen if your team replaced half of its KPIs with three questions? Are we reaching more people in the category this year than last? Are we easier to remember in the buying situation that counts? Are we easier to find when someone actually goes looking?
None of that is revolutionary. All of it is unusual in an actual Swedish marketing plan in 2026.
My suggestion: read chapter six on category entry points and then try to describe your own without using any channel words. If you can't, your positioning work is still on the slide, not in the market.
Sharp's point isn't new — but the discipline of living by it remains rare. I meet teams who quote How Brands Grow in the pitch and then sign off a media plan optimised for CTR.
Mental availability is built by showing up the same way, in the same situations, over time. It's more boring than launching a new visual identity every year. It is also the only thing that actually works.
If I could pick one change for a Swedish CMO in 2026 it would be this: swap half the campaign calendar for a framework that guarantees the same distinctive assets get exposed three years running.
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