The era of brand awareness is over

Fast Company

22-05-2025

Brand awareness is a shallow metric. It tells you if people recognize your name, but it doesn't tell you if they care, feel inspired, and want to take action. That's a huge problem.
Just ask Kmart, Kodak, or any number of legacy brands that everyone still recognizes but have been pushing up daisies for years. They were household names that became stagnant and lifeless. Awareness couldn't make up for their complacency and lack of strategic vision. People knew who they were, but grew bored and just stopped caring.
Clearly, recognition alone doesn't cut it. So why are so many marketers and agencies still using awareness as a critical benchmark? It's probably because they've been relying on it for decades as proof that their campaigns are working and they just don't know what else to do.
They'll tell you that brand awareness gives them a sense of where they stand in the marketplace, and they use metrics like brand recall and share of voice to spot gaps in campaign effectiveness and to refine their strategies. Or they have habitually been using awareness as a stand-in for loyalty and trust, creating an equivalency between people knowing about their brand and people actually caring about their brand.
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This approach fails to take into account the behaviors of 2025 consumers. And it is providing companies with a blurry and incomplete picture of marketing effectiveness and their overall brand health. Instead, they need to take a fresh view that looks at the energy and excitement around a brand and its future trajectory.
They need to start tracking brand momentum.
CONSUMERS TO BRANDS: YOU'RE BORING ME
It's hardly news that consumer behavior has totally transformed over the past several years. Technology has shrunk attention spans, and the advertiser response has been to deliver a never-ending barrage of branded messaging everywhere you look. Instead of claiming space in the memory of the collective culture, traditional advertising is having the opposite effect: It's creating consumer fatigue and disenchantment.
This is brand boredom. Exposing consumers to the same information and messages repeatedly leads to a lack of interest and engagement. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the overuse of familiar narratives and clichés which fail to capture consumers' evolving aspirations and needs.
It's not simply that people are ignoring ads from brands they're not interested in. When my company surveyed consumers in mid-2024, we found that 30% actually ignore ads from brands they're interested in. When they feel like they've heard this message before, consumers stop listening because they already know what to expect.
The rise of brand boredom underscores the need for content that is both relevant and valuable. But when brands fail to deliver, they lose their audience, and repetitive messaging extracts an emotional toll. In our survey, consumers exposed to the same content reported feeling frustrated (29%), disappointed (19%), resentful (16%) and discontent (19%).
FROM MINDLESS TO MINDFUL
In response to brand boredom, there is a critical need for brands to inject energy and vitality into their communications. Today's consumers are seeking messages that are not only relevant but also invigorating and meaningful. But our study revealed that only a small fraction—13%—feel genuinely moved by current advertisements.
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Traditional marketing tactics—and traditional marketing benchmarks—are no longer sufficient to engage today's audience. Brands must explore new and creative ways to deliver their messages. To effectively capture consumer attention, they should focus on producing fresh and innovative content, crafting messages that resonate emotionally with their audience,
Just think about the brands that have inserted themselves into today's cultural conversations: the unexpected collabs of Liquid Death; the unhinged social posts of Nutter Butter; the buzzy, of-the-moment campaigns for Skims; or the surprising sports sponsorships of Olipop. These campaigns don't simply increase awareness and share of voice. Instead, they intentionally and mindfully engage with their audiences in unexpected ways that break through the clutter. They change and evolve their messaging constantly so that they cannot be ignored.
You can't have this kind of marketing success if all you're trying to do is expand your brand awareness. Nor can you be culturally relevant if you're just looking at conversions. What marketers need is a way to identify if their messaging is actually connecting with consumer expectations. This is where brand momentum comes in.
YOUR BRAND IN MOTION
In physics, momentum is calculated by multiplying mass times velocity. The same is true in marketing, where mass is the size of your brand's presence, and velocity is the energy and excitement propelling it forward.
Brand momentum examines the dynamic and continuous process of maintaining consumer interest and engagement through relevant and resonant messaging. While the limits of brand awareness make it feel stagnant, brand momentum creates a sense of movement and progress that keeps consumers connected to the brand.
Using key metrics and consumer feedback, brand momentum assesses campaign performance in three key areas: Attention : Are people noticing the brand? Is it holding onto that attention? Is it creating good buzz and piquing curiosity? Do people feel moved?
: Are people noticing the brand? Is it holding onto that attention? Is it creating good buzz and piquing curiosity? Do people feel moved? Animation : Does the brand make consumers energized with creativity and innovation? Is it refreshing? Is it rebellious? Does it evoke curiosity? Does it make you feel something different?
: Does the brand make consumers energized with creativity and innovation? Is it refreshing? Is it rebellious? Does it evoke curiosity? Does it make you feel something different? Amplification: Is the brand part of cultural and social conversations? How much are consumers connecting with the brand? Are consumers advocating for the brand and spreading the word organically?
The brand momentum score framework goes deep into all aspects of these categories. It takes the concept of brand momentum from a one-dimensional question within a brand tracker and turns it into a multidimensional score crunched from data from 18 separate analyses to deliver the value of brand growth.
What all of this does is shift the conversation around marketing effectiveness. If awareness is about 'I've heard of this brand,' then momentum expands the context into 'I'm engaged with this brand; it makes me feel something.' That's the most effective way to use creativity and vitality to combat brand boredom.