What Is Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness is the degree to which consumers recognize and recall a specific brand within a product category, and it is a critical first step in the consumer decision journey—especially for mid-market CPG brands competing against legacy players and private label.

What Brand Awareness Is

Brand awareness is measured in two primary ways:

• Aided awareness: Whether consumers recognize your brand when it appears in a list (e.g., “Which of the following snack brands have you heard of?”). This indicates that your brand has at least registered in memory when prompted.
• Unaided awareness: Whether consumers can name your brand without any prompt (e.g., “When you think of kombucha brands, which ones come to mind?”). This is more powerful and strongly correlated with market share.
• Top-of-mind awareness: When your brand is the first one named in a category. This is typically associated with category leaders.

According to McKinsey’s consumer decision journey research, brands that make it into a consumer’s initial consideration set are up to three times more likely to be purchased, which makes awareness the essential starting point in the path to purchase.

Why Awareness Matters for CPG Brands

In CPG, purchase decisions are made in seconds at the shelf. If a consumer has never heard of you, they are unlikely to pick you up, build loyalty, or pay a premium.

For mid-market CPG brands, awareness is even more important because you are:

• Competing with legacy giants that have decades of media-driven awareness.
• Competing with private label brands that benefit from retailer visibility.

Even the most famous brands (e.g., Coca-Cola) do not have 100% awareness, which means emerging brands doing $10–20M in revenue should assume that only a small fraction of their target market has heard of them. The upside: awareness is buildable over time.

How Brand Awareness Actually Works

Aided vs. Unaided Awareness

• Aided awareness shows that a consumer recognizes your brand when they see it in context. It’s useful for understanding whether your brand has at least entered a consumer’s mental database.
• Unaided awareness indicates that your brand occupies real mental real estate. When consumers can recall your brand spontaneously, they are more likely to consider and purchase it.
• Top-of-mind awareness—being the first brand named—is the strongest position and is closely tied to category leadership.

What Really Drives Awareness for Emerging CPG Brands

Contrary to the assumption that big media buys are the primary driver of awareness, for smaller and mid-market CPG brands the most powerful drivers are:

1. Retail distribution (the #1 driver)

For emerging brands, simply being on the shelf is often the most effective awareness engine:

• Shoppers in-store are in discovery mode, scanning shelves and open to noticing new products.
• Each new retail door is not just a sales point but an awareness vehicle.
• Media mix analysis for CPG brands often shows that distribution drives more awareness than paid media channels.

1. Product trial (the #2 driver)

Getting the product into consumers’ hands—via in-store sampling, demos, or trial programs—creates a deeper, more durable memory than most ad impressions:

• Physical experience (tasting, touching, using) cements awareness.
• For limited budgets, investing in distribution + trial usually yields a higher awareness return than spreading spend across many paid channels.

Awareness Is the Foundation, Not the Goal

Awareness alone does not guarantee purchase. It is the necessary first step, but without brand equity—the positive associations, perceived quality, and emotional connection that justify preference and premium pricing—awareness is just name recognition.

You can have:

• High awareness, weak equity: A brand many people recognize but few prefer or reach for.
• Strong equity, low awareness: A brand deeply loved by a small group but unknown to most of the market.

For mid-market CPG brands, the most attractive position (to investors and acquirers) is strong equity with low awareness:

• It signals a resonant product and loyal base.
• It implies large upside because awareness can be scaled with investment, while equity is much harder to build or buy.

Examples of Brand Awareness in CPG

1. Liquid Death’s awareness-first strategy

• Created a marketing video before having product in market.
• Generated millions of views and over 100,000 Facebook likes pre-launch.
• Built unaided awareness through viral content and earned media, then converted that into retail distribution (ultimately over 133,000 stores).

1. Kombucha brand’s first Whole Foods placement

• Before regional Whole Foods authorization, awareness was limited to farmers market shoppers and social followers.
• Once on shelf in ~30 Whole Foods stores, thousands of target consumers encountered the brand weekly.
• That shelf presence built more awareness in a month than months of social ads.

1. In-store sampling that compounds

• A craft hot sauce brand demos at several Kroger locations, reaching hundreds of shoppers per store.
• Those shoppers now have a sensory memory of the brand, even if they don’t buy immediately.
• This trial-driven awareness increases future consideration and purchase likelihood.

Brand Awareness vs. Brand Equity

Both concepts are related but distinct:

The ideal trajectory is strong equity with growing awareness—your brand means something powerful to those who know it, and you’re steadily increasing how many people know it.

How to Build Brand Awareness for a CPG Brand

1. Prioritize Distribution Above All Else

For brands under ~$10M in revenue:

• Focus on gaining more retail distribution points in the right channels for your target consumer.
• Treat each new store as both a sales and awareness engine.
• Ensure your packaging is distinctive and noticeable on shelf.

2. Invest in Trial and Sampling

Once distribution is in place:

• Run in-store demos, sampling events, and digital trial programs.
• Aim to move consumers from “never heard of this” to “I’ve tried this and know what it tastes like” in one interaction.
• Prioritize trial over incremental ad frequency when budgets are tight.

3. Build Consistency Across Every Touchpoint

Awareness compounds when every exposure reinforces the last:

• Align packaging, social, website, and retail presence around a consistent visual identity and story.
• Use repetition and consistency so that each encounter strengthens memory rather than creating confusion.

4. Don’t Measure Awareness Too Early

For brands below ~$10M in annual retail sales:

• Formal awareness studies will mostly confirm that very few people know you yet.
• Instead, track proxy metrics that actually drive awareness at your stage:
• Number of distribution points
• Rate of sale per store
• In-store demo / sampling conversion rates
• Social reach and engagement
• Invest in formal awareness tracking once you have enough distribution and marketing spend to move the metric meaningfully.

MorningAI helps mid-market CPG brands build consistent, distinctive brand presence across every channel. See how autonomous marketing works →