When people try something new, most of them start with a name they already know. That's brand familiarity at work: in Nielsen's Global New Product Innovation Survey, 59% of people said they prefer to buy new products from brands they're familiar with.
59%
of people prefer to buy new products from brands they're already familiar with.
It's worth being clear about what the figure is. Nielsen asked more than 30,000 people in 60 countries about their preferences, back in 2015. It's what people say they prefer rather than a record of what they bought, and it's about new products in particular. But the pattern is one most of us recognise in ourselves: faced with an unfamiliar choice, we lean towards the name we've seen before.
How is brand familiarity built?
Nobody becomes familiar with a brand from a single advert. Familiarity comes from seeing the same thing again and again: the same colours, the same type, the same tone of voice, turning up in the places people already spend their time.
For a lot of people, one of those places is social media. In GWI's survey for DataReportal's Digital 2025 Global Overview Report, half of social media users said they go there to learn about brands and see what they post. Every post you publish is a chance to become a little more familiar to them.
Brand recognition: it only counts if people can tell it's you
Here's the catch. Familiarity only builds if people recognise the brand. A post with the wrong font, a stretched logo or colours that are nearly right doesn't add to the picture people have of you. At best it's forgettable. At worst it looks like someone else.
So the most useful question to ask of a post isn't only "is this good?" but "does this look like us?" A plainer post that's unmistakably yours does more for recognition than a clever one nobody can place.
Why do brands drift off brand?
Brands rarely drift on purpose. It usually happens because:
- more people are making content: marketing, sales, the founders, the new starter who's handy with a design app
- deadlines beat the design queue, so someone makes do
- templates get copied, resized and tweaked until they no longer match the original
- the brand guidelines live in a PDF that nobody opens when they're in a hurry
- AI tools make it quick to produce posts that look like everyone else's (more in Is AI diluting your brand?)
None of that is anyone being careless. It's what happens when making content is easy but staying on brand is hard. (We compare two ways of handling it in BrandStudio vs Canva.)
Make the familiar version the easy version
The fix is to make the on-brand post the quickest one to make. That's what we built BrandStudio for. We turn your guidelines into templates with your fonts, logos, colours and layouts fixed in place, in every size you post. Your team changes the words and pictures, never the brand, so your two hundredth post looks as much like you as your first.
In short
- Most people prefer to buy new products from brands they already know (59%, Nielsen, 2015).
- Familiarity comes from repetition, and repetition only counts when people recognise you.
- Make the on-brand post the easiest post to make, and consistency looks after itself.
Questions
What is brand familiarity?
Brand familiarity is how well people recognise a brand and feel they know it. It builds through repetition: seeing the same name, colours, type and tone again and again, in the places they already spend their time.
Does brand familiarity affect buying decisions?
It seems to, especially for new products. In Nielsen's 2015 Global New Product Innovation Survey of more than 30,000 people in 60 countries, 59% said they prefer to buy new products from brands they're already familiar with. It's a stated preference rather than a record of purchases.
How do you build brand familiarity on social media?
Post regularly, and make every post recognisably yours: the same fonts, colours, logo and layouts each time. Familiarity only builds when people can tell a post is from you, so consistency matters as much as frequency.