Why we need to rethink ‘Conversion’ in branding

“Conversion” is everywhere these days.

Whether it’s a brand campaign or a highly targeted digital push, marketers are constantly being asked to convert people. From non-believers to believers. From cold leads to warm leads. From customers to loyalists. It’s as if we’re missionaries, not marketers.

And that’s exactly the problem.

Marketing isn’t a religion

This language of “conversion” is misleading and, frankly, unhelpful. It assumes a world where people hold stable beliefs, make rational choices, and follow predictable behavioural paths. You’re either in or out. Loyal or not. A Coke buyer or a Pepsi buyer.

On the surface, market research backs that up. Ask someone if they prefer Pepsi over Coke, and you’ll likely get a confident answer. Track their responses over time, and sure, you’ll notice beliefs and behaviours shifting in tandem. From this view, the goal seems simple: spread the gospel of your brand and convert the non-believers.

But real life doesn’t work like that.

Beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re flaky

As the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has shown through re-contact surveys, people’s beliefs about brands aren’t nearly as fixed or consistent as top-line tracking data suggests. Yes, the overall numbers might stay stable. But dig deeper, and you’ll find that individual answers are all over the place. People don’t hold firm brand beliefs, they answer probabilistically. They lean. They sway. They’re influenced by mood, moment, and context.

“Advertising is in an odd position: its strongest protagonists think it has extraordinary powers and its severest critics believe them. Both are wrong.”
— Andrew Ehrenberg

Buying behaviour is just as messy.

We like to imagine people as tidy segments: the loyalist, the bargain hunter, the brand advocate. But in reality, premium brand buyers also pick up supermarket own-label. Health-conscious shoppers throw a chocolate bar in the basket. Coke drinkers buy Pepsi. The same person behaves differently from day to day, not out of confusion, but because life isn’t consistent.

We don’t choose, we drift

We don’t make brand decisions with unwavering conviction. We act out of habit. Out of convenience. Out of what’s on offer. That’s why rational messages, the ones that try to win people over with logic or information, often fall flat. People don’t think about brands as much as we’d like to believe.

And when brands grow, it’s not usually because a wave of consumers suddenly saw the light and changed their beliefs. It’s the other way around: behaviour drives perception. People buy, then justify. Not the reverse.

What to do instead: Nudge

So instead of trying to “convert” people, maybe we should aim for something more modest and more realistic. Like building mental availability. Nudging behaviour. Creating small, repeated preferences over time. Encouraging a slight bias towards us, again and again.

Because marketing isn’t religion. We’re not here to deliver people from darkness into light. We’re here to understand behaviour, embrace its chaos, and work with it – not against it.

A little agnosticism goes a long way.