Why brand investment is the smartest growth lever for business

One of the most instructive lessons I took from my time as Global Head of Brand at McLaren was that attention does not necessarily translate into advantage. We were extraordinarily visible. High engagement, strong reach, a constant presence across channels. By the prevailing definitions, it looked like success. And yet, when we examined unprompted recall, we were often behind competitors. We had become, in effect, a highly optimised broadcaster. Yes, we were seen, but we weren’t being remembered.

 

That gap between attention and memory is where much of modern marketing quietly fails.

 

 

Two interdependent disciplines

Performance marketing operates at the point of intent. It is incredibly effective when demand already exists, capturing and converting it with efficiency. But it does little to influence which businesses come to mind in the first place. Brand building operates earlier and shapes the mental availability that determines whether a brand is even considered. The two are not competing disciplines. They are sequential and interdependent, with one creating the conditions for the other to succeed.

 

Research from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) states that the most effective marketing strategies allocate 60% of resources to brand marketing and 40% to performance marketing in consumer industries.

 

While that same research shifts the split to 45% / 55% in B2B contexts, that’s where brand building should become even more pronounced. When purchase cycles are long, decisions are complex, and risk is high, it can take years before the right partner is even selected. When that moment finally comes, the shortlist is rarely assembled from scratch. Instead, it is drawn from memory – collating the brands that have been encountered consistently, coherently, and meaningfully over time.

 

In that sense, brand building is not a soft, abstract exercise. It is a very practical way to ensure you are remembered at the moment it matters.

 

The challenge is that the systems we use to measure marketing have been shaped by what is easiest to count, not necessarily what is most valuable to create. The industrialisation of social and digital media has given us a constant stream of metrics: views, clicks, engagement rates, conversion funnels...all useful, but partial. They tell us how content performs in the moment without showing what it leaves behind.

 

 

Integrating both worlds

Accepting that brands live in brains allows us to shift our lines of questioning. No longer just “how many people saw this”, but what did they retain? What was remembered? What will be retrieved later, often long after the original interaction has disappeared from any dashboard?

 

This is where integration becomes critical. A cohesive strategy is not about running brand campaigns alongside performance campaigns. It is about ensuring that every touchpoint, regardless of its immediate objective, contributes to the same set of mental structures. Distinctive assets, consistent signals, clear positioning and an emotional tone that can be recognised and reactivated. Performance channels do not stand alone; they are opportunities to reinforce brand.

 

This is the approach taken by The National Trust, where the digital magazine becomes more than an online version of an offline content piece, or a landing page for the performance marketing funnel, but more an opportunity to bring the brand to life with rich content. Turning articles into more deeply explored experiences, reinforced through video, sound and animation, bringing the National Trust visitor experience to life.

 

Measurement, therefore, needs to expand rather than be replaced. Short-term metrics remain important – they provide feedback on efficiency and execution. But they should be complemented by indicators of memorability. Unprompted recall is one of the most pragmatic proxies. It reflects whether a brand is present in memory without being cued. Over time, this becomes a leading indicator of whether brand activity is doing its job. But it also requires further, ongoing brand research – a deeper dive to make it more compelling to capture C-suite time, budget and so on.

 

 

Reframing risk

Making the case for brand investment in performance-driven environments often comes down to reframing risk. An over-reliance on performance marketing creates a dependency on existing demand and paid channels. It can drive short-term results, but it does little to build resilience. Without brand, businesses are forced to compete on price, availability or constant visibility. With brand, they create preference, reduce sensitivity to cost and increase the efficiency of their performance activity. The same spend works harder when it is attached to something people already recognise.

 

The most effective organisations allow brand and performance to strengthen each other. Brand activity builds the memory structures that make future conversion easier, while performance activity capitalises on those structures and continues to reinforce them. Insurance group Howden does an excellent job here – with super-consistent brand activity across all touchpoints, from owned channels to sponsorships, earned and paid media.

 

Ultimately, we need to rethink the goal. It’s not attention, or even immediate action; it’s memory. The brands that grow are the ones that are stored and recalled after being seen. In a market saturated with content, the scarce resource is not reach. It is what remains when the noise has passed. 

 

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Tom Foulkes is Managing Director at creative agency HB

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and naumoid