Broad Reach, Misunderstood

Two Theories, One Term, and How Marketers Get It Wrong. Inspired by Alice Salisbury

Introduction

“Broad Reach” has become a fixture in marketing discussions, especially when brand teams face pressure to grow. It is cited in boardrooms, briefs, and budgets as a guiding principle for effective advertising. Yet despite its frequency of use, the term is often misunderstood. More specifically, it is treated as a singular idea representing two distinct schools of thought, each with its rationale, application, and expected outcomes.

Over the past six months, three major consultancies have presented strategies under “broad reach,” only to conflate two fundamentally different logics. The result is not just semantic confusion. It leads to flawed planning, misaligned creativity, and disappointing results. Brand managers walk away with a strategy that promises scale and speed but delivers slowly, if at all.

This article, based on Alice Salisbury's analysis, clarifies the difference. It examines the two main theories behind broad reach—one rooted in emotional priming over time, the other in buyer penetration at scale—and explains how marketers can avoid mixing the two unintentionally. Understanding which definition you’re using isn’t academic. It determines your creativity, timeline, and whether your strategy delivers its promises.

The Problem with ‘Broad Reach’ as a Single Concept

At first glance, “broad reach” seems straightforward: reach as many people as possible with your advertising. This idea is often repeated confidently yet rarely questioned. The real issue is not whether broad reach matters—it does—but whether marketers and advisors are clear about why it matters and how it works.

In practice, there are two dominant schools of thought behind the concept. One focuses on the need to build memory structures in audiences who are not currently in the market. The other target is penetration, which is achieved by exposing the brand to a broader audience of exceptionally light buyers. Both advocate for reaching many people, but they are based on different assumptions about buying behaviour and deliver results on various timescales.

Despite this, broad reach is often treated as a singular strategy. Presentations jump from one logic to another without acknowledging the shift. A brand might hear that most growth comes from new or light buyers — a key tenet of Ehrenberg-Bass — and then be advised to run a long-term emotional campaign aligned with Binet & Field. Each idea is credible, but combining them without understanding their differences leads to inconsistent planning and misaligned expectations.

This creates a strategic blind spot for brand managers. When broad reach is seen as one idea rather than two, it becomes difficult to assess whether the approach fits the brand’s goals, category, or timeline. And that confusion can prove costly.

Reach Over Time

The first school of thought comes from Les Binet and Peter Field, whose work in The Long and the Short of It has significantly influenced brand strategy. Their view of broad reach is grounded in how advertising works over time. The central idea is that most people are not actively shopping for a category at any given moment. Infrequent purchase cycles, low consumer attention, and category inertia contribute to this. As a result, the primary job of advertising is to ensure the brand is remembered when a buying decision eventually arises.

This approach calls for building “mental availability” not through constant persuasion but emotional connection and brand salience. Campaigns should aim to create lasting memory structures — mental shortcuts that make the brand feel familiar and meaningful when a consumer enters the market.

Broad reach, in this model, is about temporal coverage. Since you cannot predict when someone will need your product, you aim to be visible to as many people as possible, as often as possible, to build and refresh memory structures. The focus is on long-term impact, not immediate conversion.

This type of advertising tends to favour emotionally resonant storytelling, brand-driven rather than product-driven messaging, and sustained investment. Results typically accrue over time and are best measured through brand metrics like awareness and consideration rather than short-term sales lift.

Reach for Scale

The second interpretation of broad reach comes from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, notably Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow. Unlike Binet & Field’s emphasis on memory and emotional priming, this school focuses on sales mechanics and buyer behaviour. The central claim is that most brand growth comes not from loyal customers, but from light or occasional buyers. To grow, a brand must increase its penetration — in other words, sell to more people.

This leads to a different rationale for broad reach. Here, the goal is not long-term emotional influence but wide-scale exposure to increase mental availability across as many potential buyers as possible. The assumption is that everyone is a potential buyer, and your next customer is likely someone who barely knows your brand or engages infrequently.

Broad reach in this context is about scale. It’s about repeatedly and consistently placing your brand in front of a mass audience, particularly through distinctive brand assets that can be quickly recognised. Frequency still matters, but the emphasis is more on breadth of exposure than emotional depth.

This school prioritises simplicity in messaging, recognisability in execution, and high reach in media planning. While long-term effects are acknowledged, the model leans towards strategies that can yield steady gains through regular category buyers switching or trialling the brand.

Understanding this version of broad reach is vital for performance-oriented marketers. It ties closely to volume growth, distribution coverage, and media efficiency, especially for brands seeking measurable results in the short to medium term.

The Strategic Risk of Mixing the Two Unknowingly

It is increasingly common to see marketers and consultants blend the two interpretations of broad reach without acknowledging that they operate on different assumptions. This mixing is rarely deliberate. It usually stems from the appeal of each framework’s strongest arguments — the scale and sales logic of Ehrenberg-Bass combined with the emotive, creative emphasis of Binet & Field. The problem arises when the strategy is built on one theory, but the execution is lifted from another.

A typical pattern involves citing Ehrenberg-Bass to justify the need for reach—“growth comes from light buyers”—and then proposing an emotionally led brand campaign as the solution. On the surface, this seems coherent: reach more people with a compelling message. But underneath, the mismatch is apparent. Ehrenberg-Bass logic calls for distinctiveness, frequency, and availability. Binet & Field strategies take time to deliver and are focused on mental priming for future consideration. The underlying mechanics are different.

This confusion leads to two critical risks. First, regarding timing, Ehrenberg-Bass-inspired growth expectations are often tied to quarterly or mid-term sales metrics. However, if the media and creative are structured around long-term brand building, the ROI may not materialise on the expected schedule. Second, in terms of messaging, if the objective is broad scale and salience, but the execution is highly emotive with unclear brand linkage, effectiveness is likely to suffer.

For brand teams, clarity on which logic underpins the strategy is essential. This logic affects the type of media, creative, KPIs, and budget phasing required. When the logic is muddled, the outcomes often are, too—not because either theory is wrong but because they are being applied in ways that don’t fit the intended goal.

Timeframes Matter

One of the most apparent distinctions between the two schools of thought lies in their respective timeframes. Ehrenberg-Bass’s approach to broad reach is anchored in driving steady, near-term penetration gains. Increasing the number of people exposed to your brand, especially light or non-buyers, creates more short- and medium-term buying opportunities. Success is typically measured through sales lift, market share, and penetration data.

By contrast, Binet & Field argue that the most substantial returns come from consistent brand-building efforts over more extended periods. The emotional priming their model advocates is slow to develop but accumulates value over time. The impact is typically seen in future buying decisions, brand consideration, and pricing power. Measurable outcomes often lag the investment.

Confusing these timeframes leads to predictable frustration. A brand may fund a campaign expecting near-term growth based on Ehrenberg-Bass logic, only to deliver Binet & Field execution that takes longer to show results. This mismatch can result in campaigns being pulled early, budgets reallocated, or creative misjudged as ineffective.

For brand managers, it is critical to match expectations with an approach. Not every campaign needs to deliver quickly, but every campaign should be judged against the right timeline.

Messaging and Creative Implications

The idea of broad reach is often misunderstood in creative development and media planning. One common misstep is to assume that reaching a wide audience means crafting messages that appeal universally. This can lead to overly general creative that lacks distinctiveness and fails to resonate with anyone in particular.

The Ehrenberg-Bass model emphasises the need to reach all category buyers, pushing marketers to think broadly about who their audience might be. But the goal is mental availability, not bland universality. Distinctive brand assets — colour, tone, characters, logos — play a central role in this approach. The message does not need to speak to everyone similarly, but it must be recognisably yours and easy to process, even at low attention.

Binet & Field, by contrast, focus on emotional resonance. Their framework supports storytelling that creates strong memory structures and positive brand associations. These campaigns often target universal themes but are executed with cultural and emotional nuance to build enduring impressions.

Problems arise when the logic of scale is applied to the creative and the media, resulting in work that is broad in scope but weak in impact. The assumption that “everyone is a target” can lead to a levelling effect, where the creative loses any distinct voice.

Not every category requires the same approach. Some, like FMCG, may support a more universal tone. Others, such as financial services or tech, benefit from a more nuanced articulation of broad relevance. The key is not to flatten the message, but to ensure it’s designed for the role it needs to play.

Where the Theories Overlap.

And Where They Don’t

Despite their differences, the Binet & Field and Ehrenberg-Bass models share common ground. Both reject the idea that brands grow primarily through loyalty. Both argue that segmentation is often overused, leading marketers to narrow their reach unnecessarily. And both maintain that brand growth requires speaking to a large audience, not a finely sliced target group.

However, their overlap ends at the level of principle. In execution, they diverge. Ehrenberg-Bass centres on scale, frequency, and distinctiveness. Binet & Field prioritise emotional impact, long-term memory, and brand storytelling. The role of creativity, the expectations on timing, and the definition of success differ.

Confusing these differences does not lead to theoretical debate — it leads to flawed plans. Understanding where these theories align and where they don’t enables brand managers to make more grounded, consistent choices in planning and execution.

Practical Implications for Brand Teams

For brand managers, clarity on which interpretation of broad reach they’re working with isn’t optional—it shapes everything from media buying to creative briefing and performance evaluation. The decision should be based on the brand’s current challenge, category dynamics, and time horizon.

If your brand operates in a low-frequency category, where purchase decisions are rare and hard to predict, the Binet & Field model offers a stronger fit. It supports long-term investment in brand salience that pays off when the buying moment eventually comes.

The Ehrenberg-Bass approach may be more suitable if you are in a competitive, high-switching category with broad appeal. It focuses on reaching light buyers quickly and often, using clear, recognisable branding to prompt action.

In either case, alignment is critical. Mixing long-term creative strategy with short-term growth expectations — or vice versa — leads to inconsistent results. The most effective plans start with a coherent view of what broad reach means for the task.

Conclusion

Broad reach remains critical in brand growth, but using the term without precision carries risk. The frameworks of Binet & Field and Ehrenberg-Bass both endorse reaching large audiences, yet for different reasons, with other tactics, and on different timelines. Confusing them leads to strategic drift and misplaced expectations.

For brand managers, the task is not to choose one school over the other, but to apply each with clarity and purpose. Broad reach is not a strategy in itself — it is an output of one. Understanding which roadmap you’re following ensures that the creative, media, and metrics all head in the same direction.

Inspiration: Alice Salinsbury's LinkedIn post.