Why brands should be paying more attention to their brand recall in advertising

Advertising exists to sell a product or brand (either in the short term, long term or both), which is why brand recall is such an important metric to pay attention to. 

You want your ad to be creative, stand out, convey key associations and drive emotion — but it’s a wasted effort if audiences don’t connect all of that work to your brand! 

If people are unable to remember the brand being advertised after watching your ad, it will either do nothing to reinforce or build mental availability for the brand or (even worse) strengthen a competitor. 

As part of our research into the state of creative effectiveness in 2025, we wanted to get a read on the current state of brand recall in advertising today. Read on for an overview of the three key learnings we discovered from our study of over 4,000 US ads, how you can ensure your brand is remembered and some brands that do it well. 

To start, we found that the average brand recall in the US is just 68%. 

This means that right off the bat, one third of media spend is being thrown away!

On top of that, since this was measured in a testing environment, that means it’s likely to be even lower in the real world. 

Digging even deeper, we found that for 5% ads, not even half the people can recall seeing the brand that was being advertised.

💡 Takeaway: Brands should be investing more time and research to ensure their brand is coming through and remaining memorable in their advertising in order to have real business impact.

Interestingly, we also found that while distinctiveness and overall emotion decrease with age, unaided brand recall actually increases on average as people get older. 

Having built up representations of brands over time, older demographics perhaps have more shortcuts to identify the brand via the distinctive assets, tone of voice and more in advertising.

💡Takeaway: While it’s great to see older demographics have better brand recall, brands should make sure they’re building up the same cues for younger generations.   

We also found a difference in brand recall based on the gender of the viewer that’s worth calling out. 

As you can see from the unaided brand recall row in the chart above, women (70%) have a higher overall brand recall than men (66%). 

💡Takeaway: Keep your target audience in mind when thinking through branding in your advertising. If it’s largely men, it may be worth spending more time in this area.  

To be effective, your creativity has to be harnessed for the brand. There are many ways to ensure your brand is remembered, but here’s a look at our top three recommendations to keep in mind:

Let’s go through each a bit further:

1. Give your brand a role: Your brand or product should play a key role in the story, so that the story can’t be played back without mentioning the brand. It can be a hero in the story, the solution to a problem or a trigger for the action, etc. But if you removed the brand from the story entirely, it should no longer make sense.  

2. Use distinctive brand assets (DBAs): DBAs can help your brand play a role organically and allow for more creativity in the story, especially when you’re advertising an intangible product. For example, your brand character can be the protagonist of the story and still cue your brand. 

3. Create a consistent tone, feel or brand platform across campaigns: If your ads always feel like your brand, they’ll bring your brand to mind over time without needing your brand to play a huge role in the story. 

Now let’s go through a few examples. 

Here’s a few examples of brands who had great brand recall from their advertising: 

1. Doritos 

A true lesson in giving your brand and product a role, Doritos’ “Abduction” was the winning spot in the brand’s revived Crash the Super Bowl contest, which gives creators the opportunity to enter their own Doritos ad into a competition for a chance to be selected as the brand’s Super Bowl ad. And what better way to engage fans than to have them participate in the making of the ad itself? 

“Abduction” was created by Ohio-native Dylan Bradshaw, and features a man fighting to save his bag of Doritos from being abducted by aliens. The man and the alien ultimately shared a bag together in the end. 

The whole story revolves around Doritos being so desirable that even an alien wants them — and a human would fight hard not to let them go. Ultimately, you can’t play back the story without talking about the role of Doritos.

2. Aldi

A wonderful example of DBA usage is everyone’s favorite carrot: Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot.

Aldi has included Kevin the Carrot in their Christmas ads for more than nine years, fully establishing him as a brand asset that viewers immediately recognize. 

As soon as viewers see him appear on screen, they already know it could only be an ad for Aldi. And while he began as a feature of Aldi’s Christmas ads, Aldi has been able to use him successfully outside of Christmas — even featuring him in an ad for the 2024 Olympics. 

Consumers have developed a love for Kevin the Carrot over the years, which results in high Love and Like reactions as soon as he appears on screen — a great thing to have consumers feeling when they see an ad from your brand. 

And because of this, as an added bonus, it provides creative freedom for the brand to create fresh and compelling storytelling without “forcing” it.  

3. KitKat

KitKat has been using “Have a break, have a KitKat” since 1958. Talk about consistency! That said, the brand has successfully evolved the idea of “having a break” and grounded it in real consumer insights over time — ensuring that it always feels relevant and never feels stale. 

Recently, KitKat played with the idea that it’s difficult to truly take a break in today’s world. In “Break Better,” we see a young man sitting at his desk in a bustling office. When he stands up to take a break, all his post-it notes, pens, laptop and even whiteboard start trailing behind him and eventually sticking to him as “I Want to Break Free” by Queen starts to play. Eventually he opens a KitKat and all the items fall off of him, allowing him to truly take a well-deserved break. 

It’s a clever way to visually show how hard it can be to disconnect — and feature KitKat as a hero in that story. It works because KitKat has owned “having a break” for 80 years, so it feels consistent but also fresh for audiences.

While brand recall isn’t the only KPI brands are tracking today, it’s still one that holds great importance. After all, if viewers can’t even remember that was your ad, then what was the point?  

For more on how to create memorable ads that win with consumers, download our report for a deeper dive into our findings, including: 

• How creative effectiveness varies among different ages and genders 

• The impact of various advertising characteristics on effectiveness, like the use of celebrities, music, AI, etc.

• Strengths and weaknesses of different categories including CPG food, QSR, alcoholic beverages, financial services, telecommunications and more

• Helpful tips and examples to help you develop your most effective creative — including guidance from our partners at VaynerMedia, an integrated strategy, creative and media agency