A man and a child playing chess | Ipsos
A man and a child playing chess | Ipsos

The Excess Factor

How Small Brands Can Leverage Equity to Challenge Leaders.

The Art of Winning without Scale: Tap or Click to downloadSmall brands do not need bigger budgets to win; they need excess desire.

For marketers under pressure to do more with less, this is a roadmap for outperforming category leaders without matching their spend – by designing brands that are more desired, more often, and easier to choose.

This paper reveals how “excess consumer demand” – when people want a brand more than its market share suggests – becomes a leading indicator of future growth and a powerful alternative to the classic “excess share of voice” model.

Drawing on three years of household purchase data across 430+ brands, matched with Ipsos’ Brand Desire equity metric*, our analysis shows that brands with excess equity grow, while those with a deficit shrink – and that this effect is especially explosive for small challengers.

Through cases like ON, Dr. Squatch, and Freshpet, the paper lays out a practical playbook for turning latent fandom into penetration by being more visible to the right people, building genuine emotional closeness, and engineering smarter availability.

*Brand Equity is a measure of a brand's current health, strength and/or ability to generate sales, or usage, among its target audience.

Key takeaways

  1. Excess consumer demand (equity greater than share) is a powerful, predictive growth signal for brands, especially small ones.
  2. Small brands often suffer from low penetration, not low desire - latent demand is their hidden superpower.
  3. Top small brands with excess equity can deliver double digit value sales growth year-on-year.
  4. Emotional closeness, built through authenticity, transparency, and empathy, is critical to turning awareness into true desire.
  5. Owning contexts, moments, and access points translates into penetration and share.

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