Why Brand Strategy Matters

The financial case for brand strategy: Why CFOs should care. Branding isn’t just about looking good.* It drives real financial impact (* if done strategically) Yet, many companies still see it as a cost rather than an asset that increases enterprise value, reduces waste, and boosts profitability. Here’s what most businesses get wrong: - They see branding as expense, not an investment. - They focus on short-term lead generation over long-term equity. - They underestimate how much a strong brand lowers acquisition costs, improves pricing, reduces churn and attracts talent. Here’s how: 01 - Brand Strategy Increases Market Value: Brands are intangible, but they drive real financial value. Today, 80–85% of the S&P 500’s market value comes from intangibles like brand equity. Corporate reputation alone is worth $16 trillion globally. Companies with strong brands deliver 2× higher shareholder returns over 20 years than the MSCI World Index. Why? A strong brand builds trust, reduces risk, and increases pricing, partnerships, and M&A leverage. 02 - A Strong Brand Lowers Marketing Costs: Weak brands must pay to be noticed, they have to keep buying attention…spending millions on ads and lead gen. Strong brands generate attention. Tesla, for example, spends $0 on traditional ads, while competitors spend $495 per vehicle sold. Tesla’s brand, combined with a touch of Elon, drives WOM, earned media, and loyalty...saving hundreds of millions in marketing costs. (And yes, I know it works both ways, for better or worse) 03 - Branding Improves Profit Margins & Pricing Power: A strong brand lets you charge premium prices and avoid price wars. Apple sells iPhones at 40%+ gross margins, while competitors struggle, even with similar hardware. Why? Customers aren’t just buying a product, they’re buying into a brand. Data shows: - Consumers pay 11% more for trusted brands. - Brand-loyal customers pay 38% more, even price-sensitive ones pay 14% more. - Without strong branding, companies must compete on price alone. 04 - Strong Brands Retain Customers Longer: Retention is one of the biggest profitability drivers. It costs 5× more to acquire a new customer than to retain one. A 5% increase in retention boosts profits by 25–95%. Brand loyalty reduces churn, increases lifetime value, and creates repeat buyers without ads spend. 05 - Resilient Brands Outperform in Crises: In downturns, weak brands suffer revenue losses and resort to discounting. Strong brands hold their value & recover faster. During 2020, while most businesses struggled, the top 100 most valuable brands grew by +5.9%. A well-built brand acts as financial insulation, stabilising revenue. The Hard Truth: A strong brand isn’t a luxury, it’s a financial strategy. If your CFO still sees branding as a cost center, send them this. Sources: McKinsey, Interbrand, BrandZ, Bain & Company, Nielsen, Kantar, Invesp, Unilever, Tesla, industry reports on brand valuation, CAC, and shareholder returns.

Brand strategy isn’t about making things look pretty. Design, campaigns, and visuals are part of strategy. And very few businesses actually operate this way. A real brand strategy is far more than a logo or a fancy tagline. It is the financial blueprint that guides every decision. It is the promise customers rely on. It is how every interaction, from pricing to messaging to service, feels intentional, consistent, and valuable. Marketing executes the strategy. It delivers clarity and value to the right audience at the right time. Without a strong brand strategy, marketing is just noise. With strategy in place, marketing becomes measurable influence, trust, and revenue growth. A great leader thinks in terms of strategy first. Every campaign, post, and decision must support the brand’s positioning and business goals. It is not about chasing likes or impressions. It is about driving financial outcomes and market credibility. When leadership invests in brand strategy, results compound. Teams work smarter. Budgets are allocated effectively. Customers respond with loyalty and higher lifetime value. Brand strategies that succeed are deliberate, profitable, and consistent. Marketing amplifies the impact. The two cannot exist without each other, but strategy always comes first. P.S. Are your brand decisions increasing revenue or just keeping your marketing calendar full?

Consumer Brand Marketing Leaders, Lately, I’ve had the chance to work with a different sector of companies: PE-backed, lower middle market, more B2B...and always growth-minded. And it’s brought a new lens and sharper focus to something I learned long ago: 👉 Brand isn’t window dressing or a style guide. It’s a Revenue lever. It drives conversion. It supports pricing. It builds loyalty. 𝘼𝙣𝙙 𝙞𝙩 𝙪𝙣𝙡𝙤𝙘𝙠𝙨 𝙜𝙧𝙤𝙬𝙩𝙝. In my time leading and expanding brands in CPG and PE-backed companies, we talked plenty about positioning and differentiation—but we also brought it down to earth.🌍 We nurtured our Brands as the 𝙘𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙙𝙧𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙣𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡 𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙨 💰 they are: ✅ Higher conversion rates ✅ Greater pricing power ✅ Stronger consumer stickiness ✅ Permission to stretch into new segments And to add some light industry validation: 📊 McKinsey: Strong brands retain customers 𝟯𝟬–𝟱𝟬% 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 📊 Bain: Buyers pay 𝟭𝟬–𝟮𝟬% 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 when brand signals trust and reduced risk 📊 WARC/IPA: Brand-led strategies drive 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝟵𝟬% 𝗵𝗶𝗴𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗥𝗢𝗜 over time For PE-backed or fast-growing businesses under pressure to deliver revenue now AND create long-term value, 𝘉𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘭, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘨𝘺. These principles apply whether you're selling cereal, makeup brushes, or sealing equipment. What matters most is 𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙮 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙠 𝙗𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙪𝙡𝙩𝙨. I’ll be sharing more in the coming weeks...in the meantime, if you’ve had success connecting Brand to commercial performance—I’d love to hear about it! --- 💡 I’m Elizabeth, and I help CPG and PE-backed brands harness insight, positioning, and brand strategy to drive relevance and growth. Let’s connect if you’re thinking about brand stretch, the shifting consumer landscape, or how to turn strategy into impact.

Here's what most businesses get wrong: they obsess over their products, services, and internal processes without clearly connecting them to what matters to their customers. "A brand strategy is simply the bridge between what a business does and why people should care." Think about it this way: Your business exists in one world — the world of what you create, build, and deliver. Your potential customers exist in another world — one filled with problems, desires, and needs. Brand strategy is the bridge between these worlds. Without that bridge, you're just shouting into the void. With it, you create a path for people to walk straight into your business's story. So what exactly makes up this bridge? - Identity: What makes your brand unique and recognizable - Positioning: How you want customers to see your brand compared to competitors - Messaging: The core message you want to share with your audience When these elements work together, magic happens. Your marketing becomes more effective. Your customer communications feel more authentic. Your team aligns around a shared vision.

A new logo and visual identity won’t help your brand if… 🤔 You don’t know who you’re targeting. If your audience is vague, your brand will be too. Design can’t fix poor segmentation. 🤔 You haven’t defined what you stand for. A logo is not a strategy. Without clear positioning, you’re just decorating confusion. 🤔 Your leadership team isn’t aligned. If the people at the top disagree, the brand will fracture no matter how polished it looks. 🤔 You’re chasing trends instead of building meaning. What looks fresh today becomes irrelevant tomorrow. Strong brands play a longer game. 🤔 Your product or service doesn’t deliver real value. No identity can compensate for a weak offer. Branding amplifies reality, it doesn’t replace it. 🤔 You’re treating branding as a cosmetic exercise. Surface-level changes don’t solve structural problems. They often just hide them. Branding doesn’t start with design. It starts with decisions. It starts inside out, with an aligned leadership team, clear choices about who you serve, and what you want to be known for. Because in the end, branding is not decoration. It’s a strategic endeavour to outmanuver the competition and add unique value to an audience. #brand #branding #strategy #brandstrategy

Brand strategy is changing, AGAIN… And most marketers haven’t noticed, yet. AI is compressing the entire buyer journey. Instead of clicking through five websites, reading comparisons, watching demos, people are asking one question and getting one answer. That answer is an AI summary of the ENTIRE category. Which means something very big has changed. Your brand isn’t competing page by page anymore. It’s competing idea by idea. If AI can’t clearly explain what you solve, YOU DISAPPEAR from the answer. This is the core reason why brand strategy is shifting away from differentiation. Customers were never searching for “the most differentiated company.” They were searching for the SOLUTION to a problem. And AI is making this reality clear as crystal. In this environment, the brands that win will do four things: 1- Solve a clear customer problem 2- Position their brand around that solution 3- Tell that story so clearly that AI can’t miss it 4- Own it consistently and don’t waiver into featuritis In other words, brand strategy is becoming ‘problem strategy.’ And the brands that figure that out first will dominate AI search. Cheers.

Brand is one of the last business moats. Brand = Reputation. The market’s critical-mass gut-feeling about a company. What creates reputation? Everything that's perceived & judged by others over time. “When you create a brand, you’re not creating one brand—you’re creating many. Each customer or audience member has a different brand of you. That’s OK as long as you have it corralled mostly where you want it." —Marty Neumeier Building brand is a function of these components in harmony: Culture: Underpins everything Product: The core element Environments: Places people learn about the product & purchase Communications: Marketing & content This leads to: First impression conversion: Is this brand so interesting that I MUST try their product once? Perceived value: Is this more or less valuable to me than direct alternatives? Audience affinity: Do I want to associate with this brand publicly? Duration of recall: Did this brand make a mental impression on me that will last long-term? In a global market inundated w/ marketing, where product becomes commoditized—companies must answer: "why should I care or trust you?” “Getting people to pay more for the same old sh*t is not a rational thing. It’s emotional. The key to pricing power is to get people to feel strongly about your brand, to disengage the rational & make people want the thing at any price” —Les Binet —— Why Brand Matters: 95:5 heuristic: Only 5% of potential buyers who see your content are in-market to buy now. That means 95% of buyers you reach are out-of-market & won’t buy for months or years. More efficient funnel: Building the brand in the consumer's mind increases the probability that they will choose you when they are in-market, rather than spending more time in the consideration phase & potentially buying from a competitor. Creates revenue resilience: Aim for 50-70% of new customer acquisition to be generated organically—rely less on promotions & direct-response advertising to hit revenue goals. More efficient GTM: A larger “owned” audience leads to a stronger ability to lean into innovation & product diversification. Gross margin expansion: As brand builds, price sensitivity wanes, allowing for new products at higher price points & margins. Better partnerships: Ability to reach adjacent audiences more efficiently. —— 2024 Principles: No mediocre products. Pre-internet, brands could wrap mediocre products in glamorous “look & feels.” Today, mediocrity is rapidly outed. No mediocre content. Build this as a core competency—make stuff that's truly entertaining instead of sales-focused. Leadership as an angle. Dr. Squatch, MUD\WTR, NUDE PROJECT & Stan leverage their founders in content, humanizing the brand. —— Brand KPI's: -Repurchase rate YoY -% of Revenue on Discount Decreasing YoY -% Revenue from Organic Sources -Contribution Margin Lift YoY -Branded Search Lift QoQ -% Traffic from Organic Sources -Content Engagement Metrics -Reduced Price Elasticity

After 20+ years helping startups build breakthrough brands, I keep seeing the same costly pattern: rushing to market without a solid brand strategy. Even amazing products with strong teams end up joining the 90% failure club within the first five years in business often, in part, because of this easy-to-avoid pitfall. The rush to market often means skipping critical brand foundation work — like building a skyscraper on sand. It might look impressive at first, but without a solid foundation, cracks will show, and the whole thing risks collapse. Smart investors are starting to require brand strategy work upfront to protect their portfolios. Why? Because brands with no there there burn through too much funding trying to reach — and effectively speak to — their market. What gets sacrificed when startups skip brand strategy? 🎯 Clear market position  💰 Premium pricing power 🤝 Team alignment on vision 📈 Efficient customer acquisition ⭐️ Authentic differentiation Here's what I've learned: Getting brand strategy right early doesn't have to be complex or expensive. With focused frameworks, you can build a rock-solid foundations in 2-4 weeks — without typical agency bloat. For investors, it's one of the lowest-cost ways to protect and maximize portfolio value. 

𝗡𝗼 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗮 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗶𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄: 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗮 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱, 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗼. I feel like a broken record, but y’all keep skipping brand strategy, throwing spaghetti at the wall, and wondering why nothing sticks. Because a mission by itself is not a strategy. And good intentions are not a brand. I see it constantly. Founders investing in the logo before they know who they’re talking to. Websites that look incredible but say nothing. Marketing campaigns that feel like noise because there’s no clarity underneath. Brands with meaningful missions that still leave people confused about what they actually do, why it matters, and how it all connects back to the brand. 𝗪𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆, your branding is decoration. Your marketing is guessing. Your storytelling isn’t landing. Because the visuals, the messaging, the website, the campaigns, all of it is supposed to express something real. Something clear. 𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱, 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿. And when that clarity is missing, people don’t lean in. They scroll past. They misunderstand. They move on. That’s why this work matters. Strategy before aesthetics. Clarity before creativity. Substance before style. It’s not enough for your brand to have meaning. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝘁. #BrandStrategy #Branding #PurposeDrivenBusiness #BusinessForGood

“Should we invest in brand before launch… or ship an MVP and worry about brand later?” 🤔 We talk to founders who ask themselves and us this question constantly. A lot of people believe that “brand” is something you layer on after you validate the product. Your earliest moments in the market can set the trajectory of your entire business. There are three key reasons why you should enter the market with thoughtful, strategic brand positioning from day one. 1. You only get one first impression, and it shapes your pricing and perception. Early customers don’t just buy the product. They buy the story they believe they’re buying into. If your MVP looks and sounds half-baked, people will assume the product is too even if the science or tech is world-class. A strong brand puts you in the right perceptual bracket from the jump. It’s much harder to climb up in perception later than to start where you want to play. 2. Early adopters define your reputation and they need a clear, meaningful narrative to champion. Your first 500 customers will talk about you more than your next 5,000. But they can’t evangelize something that’s confusing, generic, or forgettable. A good brand strategy gives early adopters something to repeat, share, and rally around. It turns customers into distribution. Without it, you’re relying on luck, not momentum. 3. This may be the most important...strong positioning focuses the entire company — especially the product roadmap. Founders often think brand follows product. In reality, brand is what helps teams know what not to build, what to prioritize, and how to make decisions that ladder up to a coherent direction. A clear strategic foundation saves months (and sometimes millions) of wandering around in the “we could do anything” fog. AKA the "WHAT IF RIFF" Brand isn’t decoration. It’s direction...