Summary

The myth is that brand equity is a soft halo. In practice, it fails when leaders track noise, not compounding signals. What endures is a stage-fit scorecard across macro, micro and market metrics. That discipline turns recall and preference into price strength and predictable growth.

→ Watch more videos in this playlist on YouTube

Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The Strategic Gap

Most leadership teams say they want brand equity, yet treat it as a vague halo rather than a measured asset. The result is predictable: rising costs to acquire attention, inconsistent conversion through the pipeline, and a heavier reliance on discounting to get deals done. When equity is misread, organisations optimise for the wrong signals — chasing short-term volume and mistaking noise for traction.

This is a measurement issue, not a belief system. If equity defines the permission you hold with buyers, then your metrics must tell you how that permission behaves under pressure, across segments, and through time — not just in last quarter’s reports.

Metrics That Matter

A practical equity scorecard links brand to commercial resilience:

• Macro: Price strength, share of demand, and revenue predictability by region and cycle. Retail Dive, reporting on UserTesting, notes most consumers say they’d keep buying favourite brands even with price increases, and they’d pay roughly 25% more — a live signal of price resilience.
• Micro: Conversion from first visit to signed contract, cycle length by segment, and discount depth to close. Trace the moments where deals accelerate or stall because clarity is missing at handover.
• Market: Unprompted recall, first-choice preference, recommendation rate, plus share of search. Track the quality of inbound — is it from target buyers with defined needs, or from general interest?

Compounding Advantage

Equity works like compound interest: small, consistent gains in recall, preference, and price acceptance multiply across quarters. Measurement should therefore surface where compounding is happening, and where it’s leaking. Nielsen reports that in emerging media, brand recall accounts for around 38.7% of brand lift, edging baseline awareness — which suggests recall is a lead indicator of future efficiency.

Treat these signals as operating metrics, not marketing vanity. When recall and preference rise in the right segments, you should see steadier demand, more accurate forecasting, and stronger return on investment (ROI) through uncertainty.

Leadership Implications

Most organisations we work with unlock traction when they treat equity metrics as shared guardrails for product, sales, and marketing, not as a report to read at month-end.

• Decide stage-fit metrics: Early-stage? Prioritise recall and consideration. Scaling? Emphasise price strength, cycle length, and mix.
• Tie metrics to choices: Use market signals to shape roadmap bets, content sequencing, and partner focus — not just media spend.
• Reward compounding: Incentivise teams on fewer discounts, clean handovers, and repeatable proposals, not just raw volume.

Viewed this way, equity metrics stop being soft numbers and start operating as a system of proof — a quiet, compounding engine that turns clarity into resilience and turns resilience into growth that lasts.

Sources:

• More than two‑thirds of consumers willing to pay extra for favorite brands even as prices rise — Retail Dive (reporting on UserTesting)
• In emerging media, brand recall is the biggest driver of lift — Nielsen

Further Resources

1. How CEOs Align Brand and Strategy for Success
2. When to Hire a Fractional Chief Brand Officer
3. Understanding Brand: The Foundation for Organisational Decisions

Every organisation hits brand questions it can’t solve alone — if you’d like an outside perspective, we’re here. Let’s talk.

Back to top