Here’s a thought experiment: close your eyes and think of Netflix.

You didn’t think of a film, did you? You heard two sounds: “Ba-dum.”

Nobody sat down and deliberately memorised it or studied it. Nobody had it on their revision list. And yet it is one of the most recognised sounds on earth; a sonic fingerprint so deeply embedded in popular culture that hearing it even once is enough to make your brain immediately go: Netflix.

The stuff brands are actually made of

Research by Havas Media, surveying consumers across 30 countries, found that people would barely notice if 77% of brands disappeared tomorrow.

The brands that survive that cull, the 23% that actually matter to people, share something in common – a set of consistent signals that fire in the brain before conscious thought even kicks in. Marketers call these “brand codes.” I’ll translate: they’re the stuff that makes you recognisable without you having to say your name.

Colours, characters, sounds, a particular visual style, a way of doing things. These aren’t decorative extras bolted on after the real work is done; they are the brand, in the way it lives in a customer’s memory.

Ipsos ran an analysis of over 2,000 video advertisements and found something that should make you wake up in the middle of the night yelling, “Eureka!”. Ads that people actually remembered and correctly attributed to the right brand used these kinds of signals 52% more frequently than the adverts that didn’t land.

Now compare that with the frequency with which those same ads said or showed the brand name? Barely made any difference at all – just 3%.

Let me say that again. Showing your brand more often made almost no difference. Using your distinctive signals made a massive difference.

The list that will grow your brand

Here’s something that every estate agent can use, when you appraise the effectiveness of your marketing.

The Ipsos research ranked every type of brand signal by how much it actually affected whether people remembered who they’d seen. The results form a hierarchy, and if you’re like most estate agents, you’re probably spending most of your energy at the wrong end of it.

From bottom to top:

Logo, font, and slogan – the things most agencies spend their rebrand budget on – sit at the lower end of the scale. Useful, necessary, but not where the magic happens. Your logo is the last thing someone sees before they decide. It’s not the thing that made them think of you in the first place.

Colour – a step up, and genuinely valuable if used consistently enough across enough touchpoints to become instinctively associated with you. Most agencies use colour, but few use it with enough discipline across every piece of content, every board, every piece of social media for it to do real work.

Visual style – now we’re getting somewhere. This means having a consistent creative look that someone would recognise even before they spot your name. Think of the way Apple’s advertising has looked for two decades, or the Red Bull animated style that tells you exactly who you’re watching before a word has been spoken. In agency terms: does your video content, your photography, your graphics all feel like they came from the same place? Or does it look like a different person made each one?

Character – and by character, I don’t necessarily mean a cartoon mascot. Sure, you could have your very own Tony the Tiger, but it could just be a consistent, recognisable human presence. The Ipsos data found that ads featuring a branded character were six times more likely to be remembered correctly than those in the bottom group. Six times. The reason is simple: a character belongs entirely to you. Nobody else can use them – they can’t turn up in a competitor’s ad. In estate agency, that character is almost always the agent themselves – if they show up consistently, look the same, sound the same, and have the same energy in everything they produce.

Sonic brand cue – here’s the one almost nobody is doing, and the data is extraordinary. Ads featuring a distinctive audio identity – a signature sound, a musical sting, a recognisable motif – were eight and a half times more likely to be remembered. Eight and a half times, on an asset that barely registers in estate agency at all. It doesn’t need to be a full jingle. It just needs to be yours, every time – the same few notes at the end of every video. Netflix built one of the world’s most powerful brand signals out of two notes; Intel did it with 5; Domino’s are trying to do it with the most annoying earworm ever… but it’s still working. There’s a version of that available to any agent willing to commit to it.

What agents actually do

Look at that list and ask yourself honestly where your marketing effort goes. If you’re like most agencies, it’s the logo rebrand, the new colour palette, the updated signage. All of which sit at the bottom of the scale.

The most powerful signals – your face, your voice, your consistent presence, a sound people associate with you – cost almost nothing to build. They just require two things most agencies struggle with: consistency and patience.

Every time you change your thumbnail style, swap your intro music, update your brand colours, or decide to try a completely different tone of voice for a few months, you’re resetting the clock. Recognisability compounds. Inconsistency cancels it out.

The hardest bit

Here’s perhaps the most counterintuitive part of all this. When you look at your content from three years ago, the urge is to think: “that looks dated, time for a refresh.” Sometimes that’s right. But often, what you’re actually doing is discarding equity – familiarity that took years to build – because you’re bored of it before your audience even is.

Before you torch it, ask whether you’re solving a real problem or just scratching a creative itch.

Toby Martin is an industry consultant, marketer, and trainer.