Brand building - the answer to all your growth riddles. Or?

I started writing this post in January 2023, and it’s being published two years later. Why? It’s the only topic that is making me truly uncertain as a marketer. To this day, if someone asks me if the brand building will be the lord and savior of their business, my answer is: “I guess…maybe…no…yes…can be, but New customer acquisition 100% will be”.

I want to break this down, though. We often distinguish between brand marketing and performance marketing in acquisition as if they are two different things. I can agree that they require two different skill sets to create those creatives, but as a strategist, it all needs to fit together.

When I started writing this post in 2023, the topic was supposed to be about how Brand building is a distraction and just another way to add vanity metrics to your marketing presentations. I still believe that this is the case for many marketers, but unlike back then, I actually believe Brand building can make the difference between failure and success. But you need to know what outcome you want, and need to know what brand building actually is.

What brand building should not be in your growing company

Have you seen a “Brand awareness” campaign? Those campaigns that make no sense from a commercial perspective, like someone put together a lot of images and slapped a logo on top. Those campaigns that’s supposed to make you “feel” something. I still remember the Budweiser Australia ad with the dog waiting for its owner to return. The top-notch ad didn’t make me buy Budweiser, but it gave a more positive impression of their brand.

Big corporations find that a fantastic way to spend all the money they have available. For Anhauser-Busch marketers, it’s not about optimizing for sales; it’s about optimizing reach. When growth CPG marketers try to do the same, they’re on the wrong path.

We often look to large corporations for inspiration when building a brand, but we’re searching at the wrong end. When you’re building a brand as a growing company, your context differs from what Coca-Cola is. They say a brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, but you need to think differently when there are too few people who know about you to be talk-worthy. An emotional ad won’t help you, because you have no one to confirm your message.

I like that definition of brand, because it still tells you about what you want to accomplish. You must acknowledge that you are not yet talk-worthy simply because people usually talks about things that are already popular.

So how do we build a brand worthy of being talked about?

Certainly no brand awareness campaign with no particular meaning or message. First of all, you need to be super-consistent when it comes to your value throughout every touchpoint. If you do performance marketing, that does not mean that you have to follow specific square-like brand guidelines, but people should see your ads and see that you care about your values. Make sure at least that they have no meaning of seeing you do not care about these things. Never let brand building stop you from doing your best performance.

Fancy advertisements won’t make people talk about you. What will do so is big bets on cultural moments, world-class customer experiences & connecting your brand with people who share your brand’s values and have an influence over consumers. Whether that is your potential customer's small-town micro-influencer or Kim Kardashian's less famous sister, it is up to the brand to decide, but that is what you need.