If you’ve ever sat in a meeting where people are nodding along to “great brand work” that just isn’t moving products off shelves, you’re not alone. One of the most common (and costly) confusions in marketing is the conflation of brand marketing and shopper marketing.
They are not the same. They serve different goals. And if you’re mixing them up, you might be wasting a whole lot of time, money, and creative energy.
Let’s dig into why.
What is Brand Marketing?
Brand marketing is all about building emotional connections. It’s designed to create mental availability, that is, to make your brand top-of-mind when people are in a buying situation. Think of it as playing the long game
At its best, brand marketing:
- Tells stories
- Evokes emotions
- Creates cultural relevance
- Builds memory structures
- Differentiates at a psychological level
It’s not designed to close the sale in the moment. It’s meant to make the brand feel familiar, trustworthy, and maybe even aspirational, so that when the shopper arrives at the point of sale, your brand is already winning the mental race.
A great example? The Guinness “Surfer” ad from 1999, all art, emotion, and storytelling. It didn’t show a product shot or price point. But it firmly planted Guinness in the mind of millions as something iconic, brave, and worth savouring.
Think of kind of work as building mental availability, the likelihood that a buyer will think of your brand in a buying situation.
So that’s brand marketing. Now...
What is Shopper Marketing?
Shopper marketing, by contrast, is all about converting the sale. It focuses on the shopper mindset in the moment, when they’re in Tesco, scrolling Amazon, or waiting at the Costa till. Shopper marketing is the art and science of nudging behaviour in real-time.
It’s less about emotion and more about behavioural triggers. It needs to work in three seconds flat. It’s context-specific, decision-oriented, and laser-focused on the how, when, and why someone chooses one brand over another at the point of purchase.
Good shopper marketing answers questions like:
- “Why should I choose this now?”
- “What’s the reason to pick this up?”
- “How can I navigate this shelf with less mental effort?”
- “What’s new, better, or on offer?”
As Malcolm Pinkerton puts it in Shopper Marketing: How to Increase Purchase Decisions at the Point of Sale: “It’s not about who the shopper is, it’s about what the shopper does.” (Pinkerton, 2015)
Key Differences Between Brand and Shopper Marketing
Let’s break it down clearly.
Why the Confusion Happens
Marketers (and especially designers) often create beautiful work; ads, displays, packaging, etc. that gets labelled “shopper marketing,” when in reality, it’s still just brand marketing wearing a different hat.
It might carry the right colours. It might use the brand tone of voice. But if it’s not grounded in the shopping context, it’s not doing the shopper job.
Here’s an example: imagine a gondola end in a supermarket with a huge, cinematic photo of a model drinking bottled water under a waterfall. It’s lovely. It’s on-brand. But is it helping someone decide which bottle to pick up? Probably not.
Now contrast that with a simple shelf strip that says: “Grab your Hydration Now"” That’s shopper marketing.
When Things Go Wrong
Here’s what happens when brands blur the line:
- Inefficient spend: You’re investing media budget into touchpoints that don’t fit the job you need them to do.
- Confused creatives: Designers aren’t sure what success looks like; are we evoking feelings or driving sales?
- Missed sales: You’ve got a gorgeous brand campaign that does nothing to help people choose your product over the one next to it.
- Blame games: The brand team says the campaign didn’t work because of in-store execution. The shopper team says the creative didn’t speak to the shopper. And around we go.
We’ve all seen it. And it’s fixable, but only if you’re honest about which job you’re trying to do.
A Quick Self-Test: Brand or Shopper?
If you’re looking at a campaign and not sure which side of the line it sits on, ask yourself:
- Does it build long-term preference, or trigger a short-term choice?
- Is it designed for broad reach or a specific context?
- Would it work without a price, offer, or CTA?
- Does it make sense if you’re already in buying mode?
If it’s all brand codes, but no behavioural cues, it’s probably brand marketing masquerading as shopper.
Why This Distinction Matters in 2025
Today’s path to purchase is fragmented and fast. Shoppers are bombarded with options and often make choices with limited attention and minimal loyalty. We know from behavioural science that most people don’t make rational decisions at shelf, they rely on shortcuts: availability, price, placement, packaging, and social proof (Kahneman, 2011).
If your creative doesn’t address these realities, you’re not competing in the real world.
Shopper marketing has evolved from just being “in-store stuff” to becoming a strategic discipline rooted in psychology, data, and behavioural insight. And it needs creative work that respects that.
Designers, Take Note
Designers are often caught in the middle, asked to “make something beautiful” that also “sells hard.” And that’s not fair unless we give them the tools and clarity to know which job they’re doing.
That’s why every creative execution should be reviewed through a lens of shopper effectiveness.
Ask:
- Does this design help someone decide?
- Does it reduce friction?
- Does it stand out in a busy environment?
- Is it aligned with the shopping mission (e.g. top-up shop vs planned bulk buy)?
And that brings me to a brilliant tool I highly recommend.
Use This Tool to Audit Your Shopper Creative
If you want to quantify how much your creative is focused on shopper marketing vs just repeating the brand campaign, there’s a fantastic behavioural audit tool developed by Adcock Solutions.
This tool applies behavioural science principles to evaluate your shopper assets, asking not just “is it pretty?” but “does it work?” It breaks down attention, perception, decision-making and helps you score creative across the key shopper effectiveness criteria.
Honestly, this kind of analysis should be standard practice in every brand and agency review. It helps separate subjective feedback (“I don’t like the red”) from hard shopper logic (“this doesn’t aid decision-making”).
Final Thoughts
Brand marketing and shopper marketing are both essential. But they do different jobs. Think of them like two sides of a bridge, one attracts the customer, the other gets them to cross.
As marketers, we owe it to our budgets, our teams, and our creative partners to be clear on the distinction, and to give each discipline the respect and rigour it deserves.
So next time someone says “we need a shopper campaign,” ask:
“Are we driving emotion, or driving action?”
And if the answer isn’t clear? Audit it. And we've got a tool that does exactly that! Ask us for more details.
