Discovery Diaries: Lydia Hinchliff

23 June 2026
lydia-hinchliff

“You can be everywhere and still not get picked”


This is Discovery Diaries - our Q&A series in which our experts give us their views on the current marketing landscape, and advise brands on how they can thrive in this terrain. In our latest interview, we hear from our VP of Strategy, Lydia Hinchliff, who tells us why brands often mistakenly attribute growth issues to a lack of visibility, where trust really lies today, and what the biggest discovery red flags are.

Describe in as few words as possible what brand discovery means to you


Being found, understood and chosen.

What do you believe makes a brand genuinely understood?


A brand is understood when people don’t have to think about it.

They instantly know:

  • What it is

  • Who it’s for

  • Why it’s the right choice


That only happens when the same signals show up everywhere, consistently – not just in ads but in search results, reviews, content, and what other people say.

So if three different places describe you in three different ways, you’re defined poorly, and that makes it difficult for people to interpret you. You need to remove contradiction across the system – for instance, let’s say you’re constantly having sales that devalue the brand, while still stressing the quality of your product.

It’s a vicious cycle with that particular example, because when spend fails to work hard once your audience reaches your site, it’s often because you’re not clearly differentiated from competitors. As a result, marketing defaults to a price battleground, forcing your brand to rely on constant discounting.

When it comes to discovery, what’s one insight or approach you’ve learned that others often overlook, and how can brands use this to their advantage?


Most brands think they have a visibility problem when they actually have an interpretation problem. They’re showing up… but people don’t get them clearly, quickly, or confidently. 

In discovery, that’s everything. The moment someone encounters you, there’s a split-second decision: do I understand this, and is it for me? If the answer isn’t obvious, you’re out.

How do you think brand discovery has evolved over the last five to ten years?


It’s flipped directions.

Before, brands would push messages out. That would shape perception and then drive demand.

Now, people pull information before forming opinions, and brands are the ones having to react.

Three shifts drove this:

You simply can’t control discovery anymore - you have to earn your chance of being discovered.

What do you believe the difference is between visibility and actually being chosen as a brand?


Visibility means you showed up. Choice means you made sense.

You can be everywhere… and still not get picked. Being chosen depends on:

  • Clarity (do I get this?)

  • Relevance (is it for me?)

  • Confidence (do I trust it?)


Take this example: Two brands appear in search. One is clear, specific, and backed by proof, while the other is generic. Both are visible, but only one gets chosen.

This is underlined by research from Marketreach, who found that 59% of consumers say trust plays a vital role in persuading them to consider a product or service, compared to just 5% who said they were simply motivated by seeing a single ad.

What would you say are the biggest discovery red flags you see in client briefs?


System failures can manifest themselves in a number of ways. They might come through looking like surface-level concerns like:

  • Margin pressures: Brands are facing intense pressure to increase product margins because of what they are spending on acquisition

  • “Channel problems”: e.g. brands claiming, “Our Facebook CPA is too high”

  • Competitor envy: Brands looking at competitors in their sector that occupy the same channels and perform significantly better. They can’t understand at a surface level why the competitor is winning and they are losing


And then are some major red flags that  are clearly discovery-related:

  • Skyrocketing CAC: When customer acquisition costs are increasing at an alarming rate

  • Plateauing growth: When your brand is blaming “channel saturation”. Saturation ultimately means there’s no room left within the current acquisition approach. Bolting on more channels is a symptom of the problem and very rarely a solution.

  • Limited new customer sources: This is the biggest flag of them all. If all of a brand’s new customers come from a single channel, it poses a colossal risk to both business stability and marketing effectiveness


And how do we pull those flags down? We create demand before it exists, reinforce it, and then convert while reducing as much journey leakage as possible. That means eliminating breaks in continuity, whether that’s ensuring the onsite experience doesn’t fail to match the ad’s expectation, the message doesn’t change no matter the surface, or that no context is lost.

The transition between an ad, a search result, the landing page, and conversion must feel seamless, coherent and frictionless.

How are we helping brands achieve success in this world?


We’re firstly advising clients to step back rather than launching straight into tactics. And then evaluate where their brand is showing up across the whole ecosystem - whether that’s in search, social, content or in third-party signals eg. earned media in relevant publications.

Then you need to measure whether you’re being a) encountered b) correctly interpreted and c) if you’re actually reinforcing that over time. And that’s across the whole ecosystem holistically - looking at this channel by channel will give you an incomplete view.

Our Discovery System helps to frame this for clients, and a key aspect of that is our proprietary measurement tool - Relative Discovery Score (RDS). 

It measures over 100 different touchpoints across an array of platforms from SEO to word of mouth to pinpoint a brand’s weakest layer, and we continue to use it to give clients a trajectory - not just a snapshot.

For example, last year we used RDS to diagnose that Gym King were being hindered by a low presence score. 

Focussing on a heavyweight awareness campaign allowed us to boost that presence score specifically, and Gym King’s overall RDS rose considerably, and so did revenue, with an 89% year-on-year upturn.

This is a clear indicator of the system’s ability to help brands uncover growth opportunities through prioritised holistic strategies which consider the complexities of the consumer’s journey today.

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Discovery Diaries: Lydia Hinchliff | Journey Further UK