Growth That Outpaces Advertising
The biggest growth stories of our time — Tesla, Airbnb, Shopify, Netflix, Stripe — didn’t become multi-billion-dollar empires by out-advertising their rivals. In fact, their advertising spend lagged far behind their explosive growth.
What set them apart was first-mover advantage by design. They pioneered business models that combined unmet needs into new buying scenarios, creating relevance where no competitors existed. That’s the innovation process: not just new products, but new ways of serving multiple motivators together.
Advertising still played a role, but it was amplified by the structure of the business itself. Once innovation created fresh buying scenarios, marketing had more doors to open — multiplying mental and physical availability far beyond what ad budgets alone could achieve.
The Limits of Existing Theory
If we stay with established thinking, there are two obvious explanations for brand growth.
First, Category Entry Points (Romaniuk, Ehrenberg-Bass). The more situations in which a brand comes to mind, the more it will be bought. This is backed by decades of evidence. But CEPs only describe what already exists — they don’t explain how entirely new situations get created in the first place.
Second, Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne). Here the logic is that by innovating a business model, you can create uncontested markets. That’s true — and it’s powerful. But Blue Ocean is focused on differentiation and competition, not on how those moves translate into mental and physical availability at scale.
This leaves a gap. CEPs explain salience within categories. Blue Ocean explains value creation outside categories. Neither fully explains how a new business model can multiply the contexts in which a brand is thought of, recalled, and chosen — or why this effect is so disproportionate compared to the advertising investment that followed.
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The Shepherd® Theory
Growth isn’t just about advertising more cleverly. It begins with how the business is designed to serve people’s needs. When a business model resolves multiple motivators at once — functional, emotional, social, or situational — it doesn’t just compete in existing categories. It creates new buying scenarios that expand the contexts in which the brand is relevant.
For example, Tesla combined the functional need for sustainable transport, the emotional thrill of high performance, and the social motivator of prestige. Airbnb blended affordability, adventure, and local authenticity into a single offer.
We call these growth combinations: deliberate bundles of motivators built into the business model. Each combination unlocks fresh buying scenarios that competitors aren’t addressing, multiplying the chances for a brand to be remembered and chosen.
This is how companies like Tesla, Airbnb, and Shopify grew far beyond the scale of their advertising. They engineered first-mover advantages through growth combinations, which in turn created entirely new doors for mental and physical availability. Advertising and distribution then amplified those doors, but the foundation was structural.
Innovation creates the opportunity. Availability captures and scales it.
The Shepherd® Process
First-mover advantage doesn’t come from chance. It comes from a repeatable way of designing and scaling growth combinations. At Shepherd®, we have developed a six-step process:
1. Scan motivators
Map the full range of functional, emotional, social, and situational needs in your market. Pay special attention to the motivators competitors leave unmet. For e.g. in food: convenience, health, price, taste; in transport: speed, cost, comfort, status.
2. Map buying scenarios
Translate those motivators into real-world contexts. Ask: when, where, and why might people need this? Look for scenarios that don’t yet have a clear brand leader. For e.g. “midweek healthy dinner in under 30 minutes,” “late-night ride home after a concert,” or “affordable family holiday with a local feel.”
3. Design growth combinations
Bundle multiple motivators into a single coherent offer. These combinations create new buying scenarios and set the stage for first-mover advantage. For e.g. HelloFresh combining convenience + health + variety into one subscription; Stripe bundling ease of use + reliability + developer friendliness.
4. Prototype and test
Launch a minimum viable version to check if customers experience the bundle as one solution. Early signals show whether the combination can hold together in the market. For e.g. Netflix testing streaming alongside DVD rental before going all in; Shopify opening an app marketplace to see what merchants built first.
5. Track adoption
Look beyond sales — track whether people begin associating your brand with the new scenarios you’re targeting. Uptake that runs ahead of advertising spend is the sign of a strong combination. For e.g. Airbnb spreading through word-of-mouth and hosts listing faster than paid ads could drive.
6. Expand deliberately
Once a growth combination is anchored, layer in additional motivators or scenarios. Keep the offer coherent while broadening the brand’s relevance over time. For e.g. Netflix layering personalisation, originals, and cultural moments after streaming was established; Tesla moving from Roadster to Model S, Model 3, and energy solutions.
This process doesn’t replace the principles of mental and physical availability — it feeds them. Growth combinations open new buying scenarios; availability ensures those scenarios convert into memory, salience, and sales.
Implications for Strategists
The lesson isn’t that advertising is irrelevant. On the contrary, advertising is essential — but it can only amplify the opportunities the business model creates.
For strategists, this means two things:
- Design before you advertise. Growth starts with building an offer that resolves more motivators and opens more buying scenarios. If those scenarios don’t exist, no amount of media spend will create them.
- Treat availability as execution, not discovery. Once growth combinations are in place, the task is to scale them through mental and physical availability. Advertising, distribution, and distinctive brand assets all play their role — but only after the innovation work has been done.
This perspective also reframes first-mover advantage. It isn’t about being the first to launch a product; it’s about being the first to own a combination of motivators that expands buying scenarios in a way competitors can’t immediately replicate. That’s the edge that propelled Tesla, Airbnb, Shopify, and many others from challengers to global empires.
Conclusion
The world’s fastest-growing companies didn’t win because they advertised harder. They won because they designed business models that combined unmet motivators into new buying scenarios. That structural innovation created first-mover advantages — and with them, opportunities for advertising and distribution to work at a scale that outpaced their budgets.
But innovation alone isn’t enough. The advantage only becomes sustainable when it’s paired with mental and physical availability — the science of making sure your brand is thought of and easy to buy. Growth combinations open the doors; availability ensures customers walk through them.
For entrepreneurs and strategists alike, the takeaway is clear: if you want to build something that lasts, don’t just chase campaigns or channels. Start by asking which motivators you can bundle into a new buying scenario. That’s where first-mover advantages are forged, and where the path to building global empires begins.
References & Further Reading
- Mats Georgson, PhD – Demand Point Constellations (2024). Conceptual framework presented on LinkedIn and in shared working papers. Georgson’s work examines how fast-growth brands build mental availability disproportionate to advertising through business model innovation.
- Byron Sharp (2010). How Brands Grow. Oxford University Press. Foundational text on the laws of brand growth, including mental and physical availability.
- Jenni Romaniuk (2018). Building Distinctive Brand Assets. Oxford University Press. Framework on brand salience and Category Entry Points.
- Les Binet & Peter Field (2013). The Long and the Short of It. IPA. Evidence on brand building vs activation and the role of sustained availability.
- Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur (2010). Business Model Generation. John Wiley & Sons. Introduced the Business Model Canvas for mapping and innovating business structures.
- Oliver Gassmann, Karolin Frankenberger & Michaela Csik (2014). The Business Model Navigator. Pearson. Identified 60+ patterns of business model innovation.
- W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne (2005). Blue Ocean Strategy. Harvard Business Review Press. Introduced the idea of creating uncontested market space through value innovation.
- Clayton Christensen et al. (2016). Competing Against Luck. Harper Business. Popularised Jobs to Be Done theory for uncovering functional, emotional, and social drivers.
