Why Brand Marketing is the Ultimate Investment for 2025?

Modern Advertising Is Built on a Flawed Understanding of How Advertising Works

In a world dominated by dashboards, AI prompts, and rapid-fire creative refreshes, something vital has been forgotten: how advertising actually works.

The modern advertising playbook promises speed, scale, and precision. It speaks the language of automation, personalization, data, and optimization. But beneath the surface of this efficiency lies a fundamental misreading of what makes ads effective in the first place.

Let’s unpack the core fallacies driving today’s ad strategies—and why they’re not just misguided, but dangerously short-sighted for long-term brand growth.

1. “Make Ads Cheaply with AI” — The Illusion of Efficiency

AI tools can churn out hundreds of ads in seconds. The logic seems sound: faster production means more testing, which should lead to better performance.

But here’s the issue: ads don’t just work because they exist. They work because they signal something.

In the minds of consumers, quality advertising reflects the quality of the brand. When ads are poorly crafted, overly templated, or visually cheap, they don’t feel premium—they feel disposable. And when your brand feels disposable, no amount of targeting will save you.

Ads are expensive not because they’re hard to make, but because craft builds trust.

Ironically, while media spends have soared, production budgets have been slashed. That’s like buying a Ferrari and filling it with bad fuel. You won’t get far.

2. “Build Brands Through Micro-Targeting” — A Dangerous Narrowing

Digital advertising made it possible to target with surgical precision. And we mistook this capability for a strategy.

But brands aren’t built in the shadows. They are built in culture. In mass media. In conversations and moments that everyone sees, shares, and remembers.

Micro-targeting focuses on converting individuals. But branding requires creating shared meaning. When you lose mass reach, you lose cultural impact. And you lose the network effect of being talked about in the same breath as the category you want to dominate.

Brands aren’t built through efficiency. They’re built through visibility and cultural scale.

3. “Constantly Refresh Creative” — The Death of Memory

In the race to “optimize”, we’ve begun treating creativity like a consumable. Ads are tossed out like expired milk after a few days of subpar metrics.

But here’s the truth: great ads grow over time.

Familiarity is the first step to trust. Trust is the bedrock of preference. And preference drives profit. If you keep changing the message, the look, or the tone, nothing sticks.

Consistency builds memory.
Memory builds trust.
Trust builds brands.

4. “Only Target Likely Buyers” — A Surefire Way to Limit Growth

It makes sense on paper: focus your spend on those most likely to convert.

But this mindset shrinks your market. It cuts off future demand. It forgets that today's unlikely buyer could be tomorrow’s loyalist.

Think of it this way—how many people need a Rolex today? Very few. But almost everyone knows what a Rolex means. That’s brand-building. It plants seeds long before the harvest.

Growth comes from mental availability, not just sales-readiness.

5. “Optimize for Click-Through Rate” — A Meaningless Metric for Brands

CTR is not a proxy for brand effectiveness. In fact, it’s barely a proxy for attention.

Unless you're running a direct-response campaign with the goal of immediate conversion, obsessing over clicks is like judging a movie by how many people watched the trailer, not how many remembered it a year later.

Brand advertising is about creating memory, not driving traffic.

Measuring clicks might make dashboards feel productive. But it distracts from the real game—building associations, recall, and emotional connection.

6. “Personalize Everything” — The Fragmentation of Meaning

Personalization sounds magical: a message just for you.

But here’s the problem. When everyone sees a different message, no one sees the same brand. There is no shared narrative. No cultural resonance. Just scattered impressions that never congeal into memory.

The best advertising is universal, not customized. It's what gives a brand voice. Presence. Confidence.

Brands win by being seen the same way by everyone.

7. “Copy the Winners” — The Sea of Sameness

Benchmarking is safe. But it’s also the reason most brands look exactly alike.

If everyone adopts the same design system, copies the same tone of voice, uses the same media formats and mimics the same case studies, no one wins. Because being forgettable is more dangerous than being disliked.

The brands that stand out are the ones that dare to zag when others zig. They’re distinctive. Visually, tonally, conceptually.

In an over-optimized world, distinctiveness is the ultimate hack.

8. “Data x Storytelling x Tech” — The Hollow Mantra

This phrase has been beaten into pitch decks, LinkedIn posts, and agency creds like it’s some secret formula. But let’s step back.

• Data? Most brands don’t need micro-granular insights. If 90% of your market could potentially buy your product, you don’t need to track them like a stalker.
• Storytelling? People don’t have time for stories in ads. They need a spark of recognition, a moment of intrigue, or a signal of trust.
• Technology? You don’t need to reinvent the internet. You just need your ad to appear in the right place, to the right people, and look damn good doing it.

Sometimes the most powerful marketing isn’t data-driven. It’s emotionally intelligent.

So, What Should Modern Advertising Actually Do?

• Craft ads like they’re worth watching. Make them beautiful. Make them memorable.
• Buy reach, not just efficiency. Be part of culture. Not just clicks.
• Stick to the message. Let it repeat. Let it settle.
• Target broadly, speak clearly. Don’t be scared of “wastage.” That’s where new growth lives.
• Be distinctive. If you blend in, you don’t exist.

In Closing: Small Budget? Niche Brand? Sure. But Know the Trade-Off

If you’re a startup, a niche brand, or working with limited budget—yes, many of these tactics make sense in context. You’re not trying to build Coca-Cola overnight.

But don’t mistake survival tactics for long-term strategy.

The modern ad playbook is not the future—it’s the fastest path to brand erosion.

Let’s remember what advertising was always meant to do:
Create meaning.
Spark desire.
And make people remember you.

Everything else is noise.

Understanding Brand Marketing: Why It’s About the Buyer’s Journey, Not Just Campaigns

Brand marketing is often misunderstood as a lengthy, slow-moving process tied to specific tactics or campaigns. The reality is far more nuanced. At its core, brand marketing is fundamentally about aligning your marketing strategy with how your target audience actually buys. It is not defined by individual campaigns or isolated marketing activities but by the entire journey your prospective customers take before making a purchase decision.

Many marketers, especially in the B2B space, recognize that brand and demand generation must work hand-in-hand. However, the misconception that certain tactics belong exclusively to either brand or demand is a limiting view. In truth, these disciplines overlap significantly because every interaction, whether designed to build awareness or drive immediate action, contributes to the broader buyer journey.

The essential challenge in brand marketing lies in understanding that marketers have no control over when, where, or how buyers first become aware of their company. This moment is shaped by the buyer’s own timeline and readiness. Therefore, all marketing activities effectively function as brand marketing, since they influence perceptions and awareness prior to any direct sales engagement.

A key reality is that even the most targeted brand campaigns aimed at your ideal customer profile (ICP) typically take at least six months to begin generating measurable pipeline impact. This timeline reflects the buyer’s natural decision-making process, not the speed or nature of the marketing tactic itself. Brand marketing addresses prospects who are not yet actively in-market but who must first recognize the problem your company solves as a priority worth investing in.

Before a buyer moves toward a purchase, they independently undergo several critical evaluations: they must decide the problem’s significance, assess their budget, determine authority to buy, confirm the need, and evaluate timing—often summarized as BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing). These factors underscore that the duration of brand marketing outcomes depends on the buyer’s internal process, not on the marketing intervention alone.

Relying solely on generalized academic studies, such as those by Binet and Field, to justify brand marketing’s value is insufficient when seeking executive buy-in. While these studies confirm marketing’s effectiveness overall, business leaders prioritize clear, measurable outcomes tied to company growth and risk mitigation. CEOs are not impatient or uninformed about marketing; they simply require a credible timeline for return on investment.

To secure support for brand marketing, marketers must articulate the buyer journey’s realities clearly and provide realistic expectations on when returns might materialize. Short-term demand capture is often favored because it aligns with measurable outcomes in the near term. However, this preference reflects measurement ease rather than strategic superiority.

Ultimately, CEOs seek to mitigate risk in their investments. If you can present a reasoned business case grounded in buyer behavior—explaining when and how brand marketing will impact pipeline—they will listen. If resistance remains despite transparent communication, it is the CEO’s prerogative to prioritize differently, not a failure of brand marketing itself.

In conclusion, brand marketing is not about waiting passively for results but about understanding and respecting the buyer’s journey timeline. Success lies in aligning marketing efforts with how customers move through awareness, consideration, and decision, backed by clear communication to leadership on expected outcomes and timelines.

Why Brand Marketing is the Ultimate Investment for 2025 – And Why You Need to Start Early

As we step into 2025, the divide between thriving B2B companies and those stuck in mediocrity is clearer than ever. The common thread among the winners? A deliberate and strategic investment in b2b brand marketing—made well before it became a necessity. Here's why brand marketing isn’t just an expense but the most crucial investment you can make for your business this year—and why delaying it is no longer an option.

1. Brand Enters the Room Before You Do

Your brand is more than a logo or a tagline; it’s the perception people have of your company long before they’ve had a conversation with your sales team. In today’s landscape, buyers research extensively before making decisions, often forming opinions about your brand from your online presence, content, and reputation.

Failing to invest in brand marketing means:

• Potential clients don’t know who you are.
• Your credibility is questioned before you can even pitch your offering.
• Your competitors—who have built strong brand visibility—become the natural choice.

Start early, and you position your brand as the name they already trust when they’re ready to buy.

2. A Solution to the ‘Who Are You?’ Problem

For many B2B companies, the biggest barrier isn’t product quality or pricing—it’s obscurity. If your potential buyers don’t know you, trust you, or remember you, your superior product doesn’t matter.

Investing in brand marketing solves this “who the heck are you” problem by:

• Building awareness through strategic campaigns.
• Creating a consistent and memorable identity that sticks in the minds of your audience.
• Differentiating you from competitors offering similar products or services.

3. Old Competitive Moats Are Dead—Brand Is the New Moat

Historically, companies leaned on moats like patented IP, product features, or distribution advantages to stay ahead. But in an era of rapid innovation and information parity, these moats are eroding faster than ever.

What can’t be commoditized?

• Your brand.
  A strong brand becomes your unfair advantage—one that:
• Commands higher prices due to perceived value.
• Drives customer loyalty and trust, regardless of market competition.
• Attracts the best talent, partners, and collaborators.

4. Brand Marketing is Revenue Marketing

Let’s be clear: brand marketing isn’t a "nice-to-have" or "arts and crafts" exercise. It’s revenue-driven. Companies that invested in brand initiatives over the last 12 months outperformed competitors by staying top-of-mind, driving inbound interest, and building market share.

Here’s why:

• Effective brand marketing creates demand: Instead of chasing leads, a recognizable brand makes potential buyers come to you.
• It reduces sales cycles: Buyers are more likely to engage with a company they already know and trust.
• It drives long-term growth: While performance marketing focuses on immediate gains, brand marketing ensures sustained relevance and customer loyalty.

5. It Takes Time—Start Now

Brand marketing isn’t a one-off tactic; it’s a long-term strategy that requires consistency. Waiting until you “need it” is waiting too long. In 2025, the companies dominating their industries will be those that invested in building their brand 12+ months ago.

Starting today allows you to:

• Establish credibility and visibility before competitors outpace you.
• Build a pipeline of awareness, trust, and loyalty that delivers compounding returns.
• Create a brand narrative that aligns with shifting buyer priorities in an increasingly competitive market.

The Top-Down Mandate for 2025: Brand is Not Optional

To stay relevant, effective, and competitive in 2025, B2B companies must recognize that brand marketing is revenue marketing. This shift starts with leadership—making brand a priority not just for the marketing team, but for the entire organization.

Postpone brand investment, and you risk staying small.
Prioritize brand investment, and you set the foundation for exponential growth.

Make 2025 the year your company stands out—not as “just another B2B vendor,” but as a recognizable, trusted, and indispensable brand. Start today, and watch what happens.

Bangalore’s position as a dynamic business and tech hub makes it the perfect city for finding a brand marketing agency that can help you build and grow your brand. From crafting a compelling brand identity to executing targeted digital campaigns, brand marketing agencies in Bangalore are well-equipped to drive your business forward.

Why Brand Development is the Growth Marketing Strategy for 2025

In a recent conversation with a group of CMOs, one sentiment resonated clearly: brand development is growth marketing. Yet, many CEOs, board members, and investors fail to grasp this reality, often underestimating or outright dismissing the impact of brand-building on revenue. This misunderstanding stems from how brand-building is perceived: intangible, immeasurable, and secondary to immediate pipeline goals.

But dismissing brand development is a mistake—a costly one. Let’s break down why brand marketing should take center stage in 2025, and why the time to start is now.

The Common Misconceptions Around Brand

For many decision-makers, the concept of "brand" is reduced to surface-level attributes—logos, colors, and names. The deeper, revenue-driving aspects of branding—customer sentiment, trust, and recognition—are overlooked because they are harder to measure.

When boards and investors ask, “How does brand contribute to our bottom line?”, marketing leaders often struggle to provide immediate, quantifiable answers. This lack of attribution makes brand-building feel like a “nice-to-have,” sidelining it in favor of short-term initiatives that promise immediate results.

The Problem with Sales Activation Alone

Sales activation—the hyper-focus on short-term tactics to drive immediate pipeline—has its place. But as studies by Binet and Field (Media in Focus, 2017) illustrate, its effects are fleeting. Once the campaign ends, the pipeline stagnates, and the familiar question resurfaces: “Why aren’t we selling more?”

The answer lies in what wasn’t done 12-18 months prior: building a brand that’s visible, trusted, and memorable.

The Cost of Neglecting Brand Development

When brand-building is dismissed in favor of short-term gains, companies face these challenges:

1. Customers Don’t Know You
   Without consistent brand presence, your target audience isn’t aware of who you are or why they should care.
2. Customers Don’t Get You
   A lack of clear messaging and positioning leads to confusion about your value.
3. Customers Don’t Trust You
   Trust takes time and consistency to build, both of which come from sustained brand efforts.
4. The Sales Cycle Becomes Longer
   When potential buyers have no familiarity with your brand, they require more time to research, evaluate, and decide.

Brand Building Is Revenue-Building

Contrary to popular belief, brand development isn’t separate from revenue—it drives it. Brands that consistently invest in long-term initiatives see higher customer retention, reduced price sensitivity, and greater overall loyalty. A strong brand does the heavy lifting before your sales team enters the conversation. It establishes credibility, trust, and awareness—all crucial factors that influence buying decisions.

Breaking the Cycle

To escape the short-termism trap, companies must balance brand-building (long-term) and sales activation (short-term). Here’s how to make it happen:

1. Make Brand Development a Top-Down Priority
   Leadership buy-in is critical. CEOs and boards must align with marketing leaders on the importance of brand investment.
2. Educate Stakeholders
   Equip decision-makers with data and insights that illustrate the financial impact of brand-building, such as its influence on customer acquisition costs, lifetime value, and pricing power.
3. Shift the Mindset from Cost to Investment
   Reframe brand development as a strategic investment that pays dividends over time, rather than a discretionary expense.
4. Set Balanced Metrics
   Measure the success of brand initiatives through both direct metrics (e.g., awareness studies) and their indirect influence on pipeline growth, conversion rates, and customer loyalty.

The Takeaway for 2025

Brand development is not an optional activity—it’s the last true competitive advantage. The companies that win this year will be the ones that embrace brand-building as a core part of their growth strategy. By starting now, you set the foundation for consistent pipeline growth, stronger customer relationships, and long-term revenue.

The question isn’t if you should invest in brand, but when. And the answer is simple: now.

Features, in today’s hyper-competitive and saturated markets, are increasingly easy to replicate. What once might have been a unique selling proposition can now be mimicked, claimed, or bettered by competitors within weeks or months. This erosion of product differentiation pushes companies to find other ways to stand out, and that's where brand becomes a vital weapon in the arsenal.

Why Brand Matters More Than Ever

1. Emotional Connection: Features might appeal to logic, but branding connects on an emotional level. It’s the story you tell, the values you represent, and the feeling you evoke in your customers. Emotionally aligned customers are loyal, not just because of what you offer but because of who you are.
2. Trust and Credibility: In an era where AI-generated content and claims abound, authenticity and consistency in branding create trust. People buy from brands they believe in, not just products they like.
3. Long-Term Differentiation: Technology can be copied, prices can be undercut, but a truly distinct brand is hard to imitate. A brand is a reflection of your culture, your philosophy, and your unique way of approaching the world—it’s your fingerprint in the market.
4. First Impression Matters: Customers are making decisions before they hit the spec sheet. Your brand—through its visual identity, tone, and unique POV—sets the stage. It positions you as the solution they’ve been looking for, even before they dive into comparisons.

How to Differentiate Through Brand

• Authenticity: People can see through shallow attempts at differentiation. Let your brand authentically reflect your values, culture, and the problem you’re passionate about solving.
• Consistency in Identity: From fonts and colors to tone and messaging, every touchpoint should feel cohesive. Strong brands like Apple, Patagonia, or Nike have mastered this. Their branding is instantly recognizable and synonymous with their values.
• Purpose-Driven Storytelling: What does your brand stand for? How does it impact the world beyond profit? Customers today, especially younger generations, gravitate toward brands that align with their worldview.
• Unique POV: Instead of simply positioning your product against competitors, articulate a clear perspective on why you do what you do. Your unique take on the market can set you apart as a thought leader.

The AI Angle: Why Brand Will Be the Last Frontier

As AI accelerates product development, content creation, and feature parity, the human aspect of branding will remain a key differentiator. While AI might mimic your features, it can’t replicate your brand’s soul, its quirks, or the way it makes people feel.

Brands that win will be those that:

• Embrace technology to enhance their customer experience without losing their human touch.
• Lean into creative, memorable branding that builds trust and loyalty over time.
• Build community and connection around shared values and experiences, creating a tribe that AI or competitors can’t disrupt.

The Truth About Marketing: Increasing Probabilities, Not Controlling Outcomes

Marketing has often been viewed as a way to directly control consumer behavior, to dictate decisions, and to “make” people choose a brand. But if we look deeper, the reality is far more nuanced and less about controlling outcomes. Rather than shaping decisions, marketing is more about increasing the probabilities that people will choose us when the time is right.

For years, marketing terms like "Demand Generation" and "Demand Creation" have framed the narrative that we, as marketers, have the power to control consumer decisions and outcomes. These phrases suggest that marketing is a force that actively drives demand, but in truth, they are misleading. They imply that we're creating new demand from scratch or that we are "stealing" business that would have otherwise gone to competitors.

Similarly, the term "Demand Capture" isn't much better. It conjures up an image of marketing as a vacuum cleaner, swooping in to scoop up available demand, as if there were a pool of potential buyers just waiting to be captured, unaware of their needs until we intervene. But in reality, much of what we do in lower-funnel marketing is not about capturing demand at all. It's more about triggering recall and nudging buyers with timely reminders. It's about keeping our brand top of mind when they are already inclined to make a purchase.

So, what exactly does marketing do if it’s not controlling decisions? It’s about increasing the probability that a potential customer will see us, remember us, consider us, and ultimately, choose us. Marketing isn't magic—it’s a numbers game. It’s about stacking the odds in our favor by ensuring that our brand stands out in the marketplace, is remembered when the time comes, and remains at the forefront of people’s minds.

In its simplest form, the key to successful marketing lies in two core elements: strategically great creative and maximum reach.

Creative That Sticks and Reach That Expands

The magic of marketing happens when creative is compelling and reach is as wide as possible. Great creative is what makes your brand memorable, while maximum reach ensures that as many people as possible encounter your message, as often as possible. This combination increases the likelihood that your brand will be seen and remembered by a broad audience, which in turn increases the chances of conversion when the time comes to make a decision.

This concept is not new. Experts have long advocated for the idea that growth comes from expanding reach and delivering memorable content. More eyeballs on your brand leads to more opportunities for recognition, and recognition often leads to purchase. It's a simple, proven strategy that is effective across industries.

However, marketers have often strayed from this simple but powerful truth. There’s a growing tendency to focus on precision, targeting, and timing—believing that perfect segmentation, nurturing, and qualification are the ultimate solutions. We’ve embraced the idea of creating elaborate "revenue factories" where every lead is tracked, scored, and nudged toward conversion through a series of highly refined digital touchpoints. While there’s value in personalization, this shift often comes at the expense of creativity and broader reach.

The Pitfalls of Precision and Overemphasis on Digital Media

While digital marketing platforms give us the ability to target audiences with incredible precision, we must also acknowledge the risks involved. The landscape is rife with fraud and bot traffic, which means that even the most advanced targeting efforts can be undermined by factors beyond our control. This overreliance on precision can lead to a false sense of security and dilute our focus on the most fundamental aspect of marketing: creative.

The performance marketing movement, with its laser focus on metrics and conversions, has contributed to this shift away from great creative. Marketers, in their pursuit of immediate results, have often neglected the long-term value of creating content that resonates, engages, and leaves a lasting impression. By prioritizing short-term optimization over long-term brand-building, we risk losing sight of what truly drives growth—memorable, impactful creative that connects with people on a deeper level.

The Core of Effective Marketing

At its core, marketing is about understanding real problems and delivering solutions that matter. It’s about making great products that solve these problems, and then making sure the world knows about them. It’s about understanding the needs of your customers deeply and creating creative that speaks to those needs in a way that stands out. And then, it’s about ensuring that as many people as possible see this creative, as often as possible.

While precision and targeting certainly have their place in the marketing mix, we must never lose sight of the bigger picture. Marketing should not be about controlling the buyer’s journey or dictating their decisions. Instead, it should focus on increasing the likelihood that when a buyer is ready, they will think of your brand. Ultimately, the decision to buy is theirs, as it should be.

So, let’s focus less on the myth of perfect control and more on the reality of marketing: increasing the probability that our brand is seen, remembered, considered, and, in the end, chosen. The rest is up to the buyers—and that’s as it should be.

The Marketing Lie: Brand Marketing Doesn’t Work Fast Enough—Here’s Why That’s Wrong

In the world of marketing, there’s a pervasive myth that brand marketing "takes a long time to work." If you’ve ever heard someone say that, you’ve probably been led down a confusing path about how marketing actually works. It’s time to debunk this myth and explore how brand marketing functions in a way that continues to build value far beyond its initial execution.

Brand Marketing Works Immediately, But Keeps Working Longer

While it’s true that performance marketing often shows results immediately, it’s not the whole picture. The reality is that brand marketing works from the get-go, but its true strength lies in its longevity. Unlike performance marketing, which targets a small segment of the audience actively in-market, brand marketing creates lasting associations that keep working over time.

The Problem With Performance Marketing

Let’s take a closer look at performance marketing for a moment. Performance marketing is great because it gives you instant results. It works on the ~5% of people who are actively looking for a product or service in the moment. But here’s the catch: this short-term, transactional approach is inherently limited.

Despite its effectiveness in getting immediate responses, performance marketing tends to underperform in creating long-term brand memories. Studies from neuroscience research show that focusing too much on direct calls-to-action isn’t enough to form the kind of durable brand recognition that lasts.

The result? While performance marketing is effective at driving immediate conversions, it fails to build the long-term relationships that can keep a brand top-of-mind when the customer is ready to buy. It’s just too transactional and narrowly focused on one point in time.

The Power of Brand Marketing

On the other hand, brand marketing goes beyond immediate conversions. It doesn’t just target those in the market right now; it’s also about planting seeds for future buyers. When done correctly, brand marketing creates memories that stick in people’s minds, even when they aren’t actively considering a purchase.

Studies show that good brand marketing works just as well at activating buyers who are already in-market. But its true power lies in its ability to create latent recall in future buyers—those who aren’t actively in-market yet but will be in the future. So, while performance marketing may target the small group of immediate buyers, brand marketing builds recognition and emotional connections that continue to influence buyers long after they’ve seen the ad.

Why Brand Marketing Is More Effective for Future Sales

This is where the magic happens. The memory associations created by brand marketing don’t fade away after a few weeks. In fact, they stay with people and become accessible through aided recall—a simple act of remembering the brand when they are finally in-market. This is why brand marketing boosts future performance marketing efforts, ensuring your brand remains top-of-mind.

In other words, when you invest in brand marketing, you’re creating an asset that works for you over months and even years. You’re building brand equity that can continue to pay off for your company long after you stop running the ad. So, it’s easier to trigger a latent memory and re-engage customers than to try and make someone act on a brand they’ve never heard of.

The Two Marketing Misconceptions

Marketers often fall prey to two common mistakes that distort their understanding of brand marketing’s effectiveness:

1. Achieving high brand awareness takes time, and reaching everyone in your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is a slow process. However, just because it takes time to reach a large audience doesn’t mean the people who are in-market right now aren’t responding. The ~5% in-market buyers are still reacting to your ad and engaging with your brand, even if the broader awareness effort is still growing.
2. The misconception that brand marketing doesn’t work in the short term stems from its delayed effects. Marketers often wrongly believe that if they don’t see immediate sales or conversions, the brand marketing campaign wasn’t effective. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact that brand marketing has lingering effects is precisely why it works so well in the long term.

Understanding The Real Impact

In the end, both brand and performance marketing are crucial—but they operate in different timelines and serve distinct purposes. Brand marketing starts to work immediately on the ~5% of buyers who are in-market, but its lasting effects will continue to pay off as future buyers become aware of your brand and are triggered by the memories they’ve created.

For performance marketing, the best results come when it’s combined with strong brand marketing—it enhances the efficacy of future performance efforts. It’s far easier to trigger a memory than to create a new buyer from scratch.

Key Takeaways

• Brand marketing works immediately by influencing the 5% who are currently in-market, and keeps working for months, even years, through memory recall.
• Performance marketing targets a small group actively looking for a product, but doesn’t build long-term brand recognition.
• The real power of brand marketing is in its ability to create lasting brand memories that influence future buying decisions.
• Brand marketing doesn’t take longer to work, but keeps working long after the initial campaign.

The next time you hear someone claim that brand marketing takes too long, you’ll know that the reality is much more powerful. It's not about how quickly it works—it's about how long it keeps working!

Marketing: Why Brand Comes First and Conversion is Not the Starting Point

There’s a pervasive idea in marketing that conversion efforts should come first, followed by brand-building activities. This approach suggests that you must prove your ability to capture demand before focusing on long-term brand development. You’ve likely heard it in one form or another:

"Capture available demand, and then move to generating new demand.""Prove you can drive pipeline before you earn the right to build brand.""Fill the pipeline, and then you can start building your brand."

This mindset has been widely accepted, but it fundamentally misunderstands how marketing truly works and does a disservice to the power of brand development. It also creates a false sense of progress, turning brand-building into a destination you only earn the right to pursue after meeting short-term demands. Let’s unpack why this thinking is flawed and how it misses the core of effective marketing.

The Myth of Capturing Demand

The idea that there is a pool of demand "just floating around" and ready to be captured is an oversimplification of how markets function. Demand doesn’t sit idly by waiting for your marketing to swoop in and claim it. This notion fails to account for the complexities of market dynamics, buyer psychology, and the critical role of brand in creating demand.

In reality, demand is not a static entity that can be easily gathered in one go. Demand generation is an ongoing process, influenced by a variety of factors including perception, visibility, and customer experience. Marketing doesn’t simply serve as a mechanism to "capture" demand – it’s a powerful tool to create and nurture demand over time.

The Illusion of Immediate ROI

A classic pitfall many marketers and agencies fall into is chasing immediate ROI, especially through performance marketing. The allure of quick returns is strong – performance campaigns often yield strong initial results, with impressive metrics like ROI and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).

But here’s the catch: these initial results often stem from prior brand efforts. Buyers don’t come from thin air; they are usually already familiar with your brand or have been nudged along by prior touchpoints. The success of these early-stage campaigns tends to overlook the fact that a long-standing relationship with your brand played a part in influencing these buyers.

Moreover, replicating this success beyond the early stages can be difficult and expensive. As you scale, you often find that performance marketing alone cannot sustain results at the same cost-effective level.

Brand is Not After Demand – It’s the Foundation

Brand does not come after demand. Instead, brand-building and performance marketing go hand-in-hand. They are two sides of the same coin, not a linear progression. The idea that you must prove you can drive conversions before working on brand is flawed. Performance marketing thrives when the audience already has some level of brand awareness and consideration.

The relationship between brand and performance marketing is symbiotic. Brand-building creates the awareness, trust, and emotional connection that makes performance marketing effective. Without a strong foundation of brand, activation efforts often struggle to hit their full potential. Brand doesn't need to follow demand generation; it is what makes demand generation possible.

Activation and Brand: A Balanced Approach

Brand and performance marketing may be dependent on one another, but they are not sequential. You don’t have to wait until you’ve filled your pipeline to start building brand awareness. In fact, brand-building is often a precursor to successful demand generation efforts. Activation efforts, such as performance marketing, are designed to make your brand visible, top-of-mind, and easy to buy from when the moment of decision arrives.

Activation doesn’t replace the need for brand; it strengthens it by ensuring that your brand is front and center when buyers are ready to make decisions.

Conclusion: Marketing is Not a Funnel

Marketing isn’t a linear, step-by-step process of moving from demand generation to brand building. Instead, it’s a dynamic, ongoing cycle where brand awareness and performance marketing coexist and continuously reinforce one another. Brand-building is not something you do "after" conversion efforts; it’s a fundamental part of every step of your marketing strategy.

The most successful marketing efforts are those that blend brand-building with activation efforts, ensuring that as soon as demand begins to surface, your brand is already in the minds of your audience. When you treat brand-building as an ongoing, integral part of your marketing efforts, not a reward for successful performance, you create a much more sustainable and impactful marketing strategy.

In short, brand and performance marketing are not sequential—they are collaborative forces that together drive meaningful results, both in the short and long term.

Final Thought

In the coming decade, as innovation accelerates and features converge, the brand will be the moat. It's where companies can truly be themselves—quirky, bold, aspirational, or provocative—and connect with customers in ways competitors simply can’t. It’s not just about being different for the sake of it; it’s about being unmistakable, irreplaceable, and, most importantly, human.

Brand Search is Becoming the Only High-Intent Signal That Matters

For mature brands in mature categories, the shift has already arrived.

Buyers aren’t Googling "project management software" anymore. Instead, they’re asking ChatGPT for recommendations, validating those suggestions in private Slack communities, and then searching for specific brands like "Asana" or "Monday" directly.

The Old vs. New Buyer Journey

• Old Journey: Problem awareness → Feature research → Vendor comparison → Brand selection
• New Journey: AI-assisted research → Network validation → Direct brand search → Selection

Large Language Models (LLMs) have turned the dark funnel even darker. Prospects are now building full vendor shortlists without ever visiting your website.

Search itself is becoming like LinkedIn or any other content platform: buyers consume insights in-platform without clicking through. Just as LinkedIn posts can drive pipeline without website traffic, AI-driven recommendations are reshaping demand gen entirely.

What This Means for Demand Generation

This shift fundamentally changes how marketing works:

1. Brand Awareness is Critical (Again)

If buyers are skipping generic searches and going straight to branded queries, your brand becomes the entry point. Strong brands don’t compete in the noise of “best X tools” lists—they’re already known when the search begins.

2. Communities are No Longer Optional

Slack groups, niche forums, LinkedIn DMs—these micro-communities are where your buyers validate decisions. Your presence here shifts from nice-to-have to non-negotiable.

3. Websites Serve Informed Visitors

In this world, your website isn’t where prospects discover you—it’s where they confirm what they’ve already heard. That changes how you structure messaging and content.

Organic is Winning—But Not SEO As You Know It

This isn’t about keyword stuffing or chasing “project management software” SERPs.

Instead, it’s about clarity.

• LLMs are pulling answers from your site.
• Buyers are validating through brand mentions.
• The SERP is evolving to show AI-fed answers, summaries, and direct brand results.

If you want to win, focus on clear, authoritative answers to the questions your buyers are asking—because that’s what both LLMs and humans rely on.

How to Play the New Game

Here’s how forward-thinking companies are adapting:

1. Build Brand Like It’s Your North Star.
   Brand familiarity drives direct search intent. If buyers know you, you win.
2. Be Present in Buyer Communities.
   Engage genuinely where buyers hang out. Add value without pitching.
3. Answer the Top 10 Buyer Questions on Your Site.
   Build content that AI can crawl and your audience can trust.
4. Rethink Your Website's Role.
   Stop treating it like a catch-all lead gen machine. Design it for visitors who already know who you are.

The Bottom Line

If your demand strategy still revolves around capturing unknown traffic through broad category keywords, you’re fighting yesterday’s war. Tomorrow’s buyers are researching invisibly, validating privately, and searching directly for brands they already trust.

Brand is the new battleground. Build it. Clarify it. Feed it with content so clear that even AI can’t ignore it.

Marketing has always been about gaming the system. The rules just changed. Are you playing the new game?

The Single Most Important Thing in Marketing Might Be… Detachment

And ironically, it’s also one of the hardest.

We are never our target customer.

I am not a machine engineer. I am not the owner of a modest grocery store. I am not a busy parent trying to juggle unreasonable work/life tradeoffs.

Yet, I’ve built campaigns, products, and strategies for all of them. And here’s the paradox: to serve them well, you have to stop thinking like yourself.

Detachment Is a Prerequisite for Empathy

This isn’t about apathy—it’s about clarity.

Think of how other professions work:

• A doctor treats patients far older, younger, healthier, or less disciplined than themselves. Their role is to help, not to judge.
• A lawyer may disagree with a client’s choices, but their job is to navigate the legal system for the best possible outcome.

Marketing is no different.

You are not the customer. You must understand them as they are, not as you wish them to be. True empathy requires detachment: the ability to step outside your own worldview and inhabit theirs, even if it’s foreign to you.

Where Marketers Go Wrong

Too many marketers miss this entirely.

Instead of detachment, they insert themselves. They:

• Over-index on representation, focusing on superficial identity markers rather than real value.
• Turn marketing into a platform for personal politics, using brands as megaphones for their own views.

And when controversy erupts—whether it’s Sydney Sweeney “racism” discourse or accusations of Jaguar’s “elitist wokeism”—marketers rush to weigh in from their gut. In doing so, they turn marketing into a noisy, reactionary arena and erode its credibility.

Marketing Needs a Reset Button

At its core, marketing is about value creation:

• What products we sell
• How we sell them
• Where and when we sell them
• At what prices, and to whom

Communication? It’s simply how we ensure people know what we do, remember us, and consider us when the time comes. Everything else is noise.

Professionalism Over Personalization

We need a return to what I call Marketing Professionalism.

This means:

• Detaching from our own biases, tastes, and opinions.
• Staying relentlessly curious about our markets.
• Acting as invisible architects—quietly aligning product, price, and positioning to deliver the most value possible.

Even if we wouldn’t buy it ourselves. Even if it doesn’t match our worldview. Because it’s not about us.

The Bottom Line

Marketing isn’t therapy. It isn’t activism. It isn’t a stage for our egos.

It’s a discipline. A practice. A profession rooted in one thing: understanding markets and serving them better than anyone else.

And to do that?
You must detach. Stay calm. Observe. Act on what matters to the customer.

Because only then does empathy become real—and only then does marketing do what it was always meant to do: create value.

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