It does beg the question: why? Why does Coke advertise so much? Why does Coke do holiday bottles and spend millions of dollars on holiday commercials? For that matter, have you ever wondered why a brand like Coke, that is identifiable all over the world, still advertises so much and so often?
If you have insomnia, then you’re probably very familiar with late-night TV. Infomercials for products that seem to be scams dialed up in someone’s garage when they too cannot sleep. These 40-minute commercials are equal parts annoying and mind-boggling. But there they are — live audiences on the edge of their seats, just waiting for the newest, the latest, the most special new thing to be introduced so they can have it and shout about it.
When I am in one of my insomnia swings and I am couch-pudding, watching these infomercials, I always wonder: When will it stop?
By that, I don’t mean the commercial; I don't want that to stop, because then I’d be alone in my apartment with nothing to entertain me. No, I mean, when does the advertising stop? Or does it ever stop?
I think about a brand like Coca-Cola. Is there anyone, apart from the Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island — who have lived for thousands of years in isolation — who doesn’t know what Coca-Cola or Coke is? Probably not. In the southern parts of our great nation, people often use the word "Coke" to refer to any carbonated beverage. It’s kind of shocking when you ask a waitress for a Coke and she says, “What kinda Coke you want? We have Sprite, Ginger Ale, and Orange Crush.” None of those is a Coke, but the name has become so ubiquitous that it is used for any soft drink. That’s confusing to me. Then again, so is fried chicken and waffles, so it doesn’t take much.
It does beg the question: why? Why does Coke advertise so much? Why does Coke do holiday bottles and spend millions of dollars on holiday commercials? For that matter, have you ever wondered why a brand like Coke, that is identifiable all over the world, still advertises so much and so often? Does a brand ever hit the point where they just don’t need the ad budget because every single person who doesn’t live in the Sentinel Islands knows who and what they are? Can a brand ever get so big that they need only advertise once a year or once every few months? How big does that brand have to be, and why doesn’t Coke stop?
Coke, the Brand That Never Sleeps
Coca-Cola might be the most universally recognized brand on Earth. You could drop the logo in the middle of any country, any city, and someone would nod in recognition. The red. The white script. The glass bottle shape. Even the sound of a can opening feels like Coca-Cola’s property. It’s that deep.
And yet, despite this near-total global recognition, Coca-Cola spends billions every year reminding us they exist. Holiday commercials, limited-edition bottles, music partnerships, sports sponsorships — there’s never a moment when Coke isn’t in the mix. For a brand that has effectively won the awareness game, this seems unnecessary, almost excessive. But it’s not.
Because Coke isn’t really advertising soda anymore, they’re advertising feeling. They’re selling moments — togetherness, nostalgia, joy. Their ads aren’t meant to inform; they’re meant to reaffirm. Every snow-dusted polar bear and Santa Claus isn’t pushing a beverage; it’s pushing belonging. Coke isn’t in the refreshment business anymore — it’s in the ritual business.
Even the way people talk about Coke proves it. In the southern U.S., asking for a “Coke” might mean you want a Sprite, a Dr Pepper, or a Fanta. The brand has become language itself. That’s power — and it’s also a trap. When your name becomes the default, you can’t afford to let the meaning slip. You have to keep shaping it.
So Coke keeps showing up. Not because we’ve forgotten them, but because we remember them differently every year. They don’t advertise to stay seen; they advertise to stay felt. In a way, Coca-Cola has become the perfect metaphor for modern branding: the world’s most famous company, still wide awake, still talking — because even the biggest brands know that silence is the first step toward being forgotten.
Awareness Isn’t Enough
Most brands think their goal is awareness. Get the name out there. Make people recognize the logo, remember the tagline, maybe even hum the jingle. But awareness is only the beginning. It is not the destination. A brand can be known by everyone and still be ignored by almost everyone.
Coca-Cola proves that. No one on the planet is unaware of Coke. The brand’s challenge is not recognition; it is relevance. Advertising keeps it alive in the mind, but more importantly, it keeps it alive in the heart. Coke’s job now is to keep the feeling attached to its name as strong as the name itself.
This is where psychology comes in. People do not make brand choices through logic alone. They rely on shortcuts, memories, and emotions. The simple truth is that we like what we see often. Psychologists call this the mere exposure effect—the more we encounter something, the more we trust and prefer it. Repetition builds comfort, and comfort builds loyalty.
That is why advertising does not stop after we already know the product. The purpose changes. It shifts from introduction to reinforcement. Every new Coke commercial does not tell us something new about the drink. It tells us something familiar about ourselves. It reconnects the brand to joy, friendship, summer, family dinners, or childhood holidays. It restores the emotional bridge between the company and the consumer.
Brands that stop at awareness risk becoming trivia answers. They live in memory but not in meaning. True branding begins only after recognition. The challenge is to keep the feeling alive long after the first impression fades. Awareness gets a brand noticed; emotion keeps it chosen.
The Memory Loop: Why Brands Keep Talking
Every brand lives inside a loop of memory. People notice, remember, forget, and rediscover. It is not a straight line from awareness to loyalty; it is a circle that must be completed over and over again. Most brands assume that once people know them, the work is done. In truth, that is when the real work begins.
Memory is not permanent. It is fragile, slippery, and deeply emotional. We remember what matters to us, not what merely exists. The brain filters out most of what it sees each day. Think about how many logos, ads, and taglines you encounter in a single morning. Maybe a hundred. By lunchtime, you have forgotten ninety-five of them. The few that stick are the ones that managed to connect meaning to repetition.
This is the essence of the memory loop. Every time a brand advertises, it reclaims a spot in the mental landscape. It reminds people that it still exists and still matters. The more often that message appears, the more likely it is to become instinctive. You do not think about which coffee brand to buy or which search engine to use; the answer rises automatically because your brain has been trained to supply it. Advertising is the rehearsal that keeps that reflex alive.
Coke knows this. Nike knows it. Apple knows it. They do not advertise to inform; they advertise to reinforce. Each time Nike tells us to “Just do it,” it is not about shoes—it is about identity. Each time Apple shows a photo taken on an iPhone, it is not about pixels—it is about creativity and belonging. Each repetition deepens the groove in memory, carving out space that competitors cannot easily enter.
Even the most powerful brands cannot rely on history alone. Attention is a living thing, and it constantly moves toward what feels new. That is why advertising never really stops; it evolves. It is the process of translating old familiarity into fresh relevance. When Coke updates its holiday campaign, when Nike launches a new athlete story, when Apple releases a minimalist spot that feels nothing like last year’s, they are performing maintenance on the same loop. They are polishing the memory so it stays bright.
Silence, on the other hand, lets dust settle. The loop does not freeze; it weakens. Without repetition, the emotional bond begins to loosen. People may still recognize the name, but it no longer occupies a clear place in their minds. Recognition without recall is the slow death of a brand. Once the loop breaks, rebuilding it costs far more than maintaining it ever did.
Advertising, then, is not an act of persuasion—it is an act of preservation. It keeps the brand’s meaning active in culture and in consciousness. It keeps the story moving so that when a person reaches for a product, the choice feels natural rather than forced. Brands that understand this do not shout endlessly; they simply keep the conversation going.
In the end, the brands that talk the most are not insecure. They are awake. They understand that memory is a garden that must be tended. Stop tending it, and it overgrows with someone else’s story.
The Silence Effect
Silence feels calm, but in branding, it is almost never peace. It is decay. When a brand stops talking, it does not fade gracefully into the background; it drifts out of relevance. The process is quiet and invisible at first, which is why it fools so many companies. They mistake recognition for resilience. They assume that because people know their name, people will always care. They forget that awareness without activity is just memory without meaning.
The market never stands still. While one brand rests, others move. Competitors fill the silence with noise, messages, and offers. Culture keeps changing its language. The world keeps asking new questions. A brand that is not speaking stops being part of that conversation. The pause may begin as a cost-saving measure or a leadership decision to “wait for the right time,” but in the consumer’s mind, waiting feels like absence. And absence feels like irrelevance.
History gives us examples. Think of Blackberry. Once the symbol of professional power, it dominated a category it practically invented. Then it stopped communicating its value. Apple and Android spoke louder, clearer, and more emotionally. Blackberry’s silence created space for others to redefine what a phone should mean. The product did not fail first—the message did.
Or consider Toys “R” Us, once a name every child could sing. Its marketing voice quieted just as digital play began to rise. While competitors adapted, Toys “R” Us leaned on nostalgia instead of narrative. The silence around its brand story made it seem frozen in time. The world moved forward, and the brand stayed behind.
Silence does not erase a logo; it erases emotional presence. People might still recognize the name, but the feeling tied to it weakens. When that happens, the brand becomes a ghost—visible, but no longer alive. Recognition turns into residue.
There are rare exceptions. Some brands thrive with little or no traditional advertising, but even those are not truly silent. Tesla is often cited as a company that does not advertise, yet its founder’s constant public presence is the advertisement. Word of mouth, controversy, and spectacle all fill the space where paid ads would normally go. Even silence must be replaced by story.
In psychology, this mirrors what happens in relationships. When communication stops, connection erodes. The other person may still know your name, but they no longer feel your presence. A brand is no different. It needs dialogue to stay alive. That dialogue can take many forms—ads, content, social moments, product innovation—but it must exist.
The danger of silence is not that people will forget you instantly. It is that they will forget why you mattered. Once that reason disappears, the brand becomes something people used to like. And there is no advertisement strong enough to bring that back easily.
Advertising is not just an economic act; it is an act of continuity. It tells the world, “We are still here, still relevant, still listening.” The moment a brand stops saying that, the world starts listening to someone else.
Challenger Brands and the Infomercial Instinct
When I am awake at two in the morning, watching another overly confident host pitch a revolutionary mop or a miracle pan, I am always struck by the same feeling. These people are not tired. They are on fire. They believe with their whole being that what they are selling matters. They have energy, conviction, and a kind of desperate charm that only comes from hunger. That is what I call the infomercial instinct—the refusal to stop talking, no matter how late it is, because silence might mean no one is listening.
That instinct is what keeps challenger brands alive. When you are not Coke or Nike, or Apple, you do not have the luxury of silence. You have to fight for every second of attention. You have to earn your place in the conversation again and again. Challenger brands do not whisper; they knock on the door until someone answers. Their ads are often loud, emotional, and sometimes even awkward, but that noise is the sound of survival.
Infomercials are a pure form of this. They repeat, they exaggerate, they make grand promises, and yet they work because they never stop believing that the next sentence might finally convince someone. The same psychology drives the best up-and-coming brands today. Think about how newer companies like Liquid Death, Dr. Squatch, or Feastables approach the market. They are bold, funny, slightly absurd, and endlessly present. Their ads are not just selling products; they are building personality. They know that attention is their currency and that silence is bankruptcy.
Even established brands could learn from that kind of hunger. Coke does not need to shout anymore, but it still speaks often. It keeps some of that infomercial energy alive by constantly finding new ways to remind us that it belongs in our moments of joy. The packaging changes, the campaigns refresh, the partnerships shift, but the intention is the same—to keep people feeling connected.
The infomercial instinct is not about being loud; it is about staying alive in people’s minds. It is about the will to keep communicating even when the world seems full. It is the drive that says, “Someone out there still needs to hear this.” For small brands, that mindset creates growth. For big brands, it prevents decay.
What late-night hosts and legacy brands share is simple persistence. They both understand that silence is never neutral. Either you are speaking and shaping the story, or you are being shaped by someone else’s version of it. Every great brand, no matter how established, needs a little of that restless, infomercial energy—the kind that keeps them talking long after others have gone to bed.
The Takeaway
When I am awake in the small hours of the morning, the TV still glowing and another infomercial still promising to change my life, I sometimes think about how strange it is that advertising never really ends. It is always there, whispering, persuading, reminding. Somewhere, a new product is being pitched, a new story is being told, a new brand is asking to be remembered. It does not matter if it is a soda, a car, or a mop. The rhythm is the same.
The truth is that advertising never stops because people never stop needing to feel something. Awareness fades, feelings shift, attention drifts. The brands that stay alive are the ones that keep showing up, not out of desperation but out of care. They understand that connection must be renewed constantly. Even Coca-Cola, with its century of cultural dominance, keeps talking because it knows the world changes every day, and it wants to stay part of the conversation.
Silence might seem dignified, but it is risky. The moment a brand stops speaking, someone else starts telling its story for it. That is the real reason marketing matters. It is not noise—it is participation.
At ThoughtLab, we often say that brands are living systems. They grow, breathe, and evolve through communication. When we help a client think about how and when to show up, we remind them that advertising is not a campaign to complete but a conversation to continue. The goal is not to be the loudest voice in the room, but the one that never disappears from memory.
So, when does it stop? Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it should not. Maybe the moment the world finally goes quiet and no one is selling anything to anyone is the moment when no one is really paying attention anymore. Until then, someone somewhere will keep talking, and a brand somewhere will stay awake, keeping the light on.
