Why brand matters more than ever

As execution becomes easier to replicate, the case for brand as a core business asset has never been stronger – or more urgent to make.

In B2B markets – where trust cycles are long, buying decisions are rarely made by one person, and functional differences converge fast – brand is one of the few things that compounds over time and belongs entirely to you.

The creative argument is now a commercial case

Kantar BrandZ‘s 20-year study found that the world’s strongest brands grew cumulative share price by 435% between 2006 and 2025 – outperforming both the S&P 500 and the MSCI World Index. That outperformance held through the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic. Strong brands fell less, recovered faster and ended higher.

The revenue picture is equally consistent. Research by Marq found that consistent brand presentation can drive revenue increases of up to 33%. Strong brands also reduce the cost of doing business – improving conversion, retention and pricing power under pressure.

But perhaps the most important thing strong brands do is compound. Performance activity delivers returns immediately. Brand builds over time – creating a cumulative reservoir of demand, trust and preference that future activity can draw from. The two are not in competition. But they operate on different clocks, and confusing them is where organisations can lose ground. Performance converts demand. Your brand creates it.

Sources: Kantar BrandZ 2025; Marq State of Brand Consistency Report, 2019

Brand in 2026

When AI can produce content and assets at scale, the execution gap between organisations narrows fast. Marketing teams gain capability, but so does every competitor. What AI can’t produce is a clear, differentiated position to build from.

Yet brand is often still treated as a downstream marketing function rather than a strategic business asset. This can result in inconsistent positioning, diluted differentiation and investment that never compounds. In reality, brand is not what you say. It is what your organisation does, consistently, over time – and how that behaviour is understood by the market. A visual system and a tone of voice are expressions of a brand. Important, but insufficient on their own.

In tighter markets, the pull towards performance is rational – it is measurable, attributable and fast. But amplifying messages before they’ve been simplified means that whilst activity accumulates, you might not see the cut-through. Brand creates meaning. Marketing amplifies it. When the position is clear, everything that follows works harder.

Brand and strategy are symbiotic – not sequential

A strong brand is not an abstraction. It is rooted in the reality of what the organisation is – its genuine differences, its actual strengths, the things it can credibly own in the market.

The hierarchy works like this – corporate strategy defines where the organisation is going; business strategy defines how it will compete; brand strategy defines how it will be understood; marketing strategy defines how that understanding is communicated. Each layer translates intent into action. Each is accountable to the one above it.

When brand is misplaced in this hierarchy – treated as an output rather than a driver – the system breaks. Decisions fragment, messaging becomes inconsistent, and the market experiences a version of the business that leadership never intended.

Brand is not the beginning of this chain, nor the end. It is the connective layer – and should be the litmus test for every significant decision. Does this reflect who we say we are? Will this feel consistent to our customers and clients? Are we reinforcing our strengths – or eroding them?

Brand operates across the whole organisation – not just marketing

Its reach extends well beyond communications. Brand shapes product and service design. It informs how you present to investors and partners. It underpins your employer value proposition – and in markets where talent is scarce and competitor offers are aggressive, that matters more than most organisations acknowledge. It determines whether innovation feels like a coherent extension of who you are, or a distraction from it.

Your brand is read simultaneously by clients, employees, prospective hires, regulators and the wider market. Each group carries different expectations. Each will notice inconsistency. Brand that only performs for one audience is not brand, it’s advertising.

Why this matters even more now

As AI reshapes client-facing interactions and functional differences become harder to sustain, decisions are increasingly made on familiarity, trust and feeling. Gartner predicts that by 2030, 75% of B2B buyers will prefer sales experiences that prioritise human interaction. Brand is what makes those interactions coherent, credible and worth choosing.

Binet and Field’s landmark IPA research recommends that B2B organisations allocate 46% of marketing spend to brand building. In tighter markets, that balance is increasingly hard to hold – but the evidence for doing so has never been stronger.

Brand cannot be retrofitted. The time to treat it as a strategic asset is before the market decides what you stand for – not after. Once a position has been taken externally, marketing can amplify it. It cannot correct it.

Sources: Gartner, 2025; Binet & Field, Effectiveness in Context, IPA, 2018

What it looks like when brand is working

Most leadership teams have a brand to work with. Fewer have a brand that is actually working. These questions are an honest place to start:

• Can your leadership team articulate your brand position in a single, consistent sentence – without referring to a document?
• Does your brand strategy predate your current business strategy, or were they developed together?
• When a significant decision is made – a new service, a partnership, a strategic hire – is brand considered from the outset, or consulted afterwards?
• Do your clients experience your brand consistently across every touchpoint, or does it vary depending on who they speak to?
• Can you draw a clear line between your brand investment and commercial outcomes – revenue, retention, pipeline?

When brand is functioning as a true strategic asset, the signs are clear (see our last article for more on that).

Leadership speaks about it with the same fluency they bring to financial or operational priorities. Brand strategy is revisited when the business strategy shifts – not on a separate, slower cycle. Marketing has clear direction because the position is already defined – it is expanding meaning, not creating it. New services, partnerships and hires are evaluated against brand fit as a matter of course. And clients, employees and investors would describe the organisation in broadly consistent terms – even unprompted.

That coherence is not accidental. It is the result of treating brand as a discipline, not a deliverable.