Our Perspective
What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.
The Real Risk
When markets tighten, the most fragile brands are usually the most famous. Visibility without conviction invites price haggling, longer cycles, and internal second-guessing. If “brand strength” is treated as attention, leaders drift into more campaigns, more channels, more messages—when what’s needed is fewer, harder choices. The commercial cost is real: scattered effort raises acquisition cost, distracts product roadmaps, and erodes pricing confidence.
The consequence outside your walls is sharper still. Buyers look for steadiness, not slogans. When they see shifting messages, sudden discounts, or inconsistent service, they infer strain. That reading quickly widens to partners and talent. Downturns don’t create these weaknesses; they expose them.
Brand As System
A more useful definition: brand is the organisation’s decision system for value, focus, and proof under pressure. It specifies who you must win, why you deserve the premium, and how you’ll demonstrate that claim in experience and evidence. Framed this way, brand becomes an operating lens that aligns choices across product, sales, service, and finance.
This is not theory. Kantar’s BrandZ analysis found that the ten most powerful global brands increased in value by 285.2% between 2006 and 2020, recovering faster than the Standard & Poor’s index (S&P) at 120%, indicating that brand strength accelerates rebound and compounds returns. In our experience with scale-ups and mid-market organisations, this advantage shows up as steadier margins and faster deal velocity when conditions turn.
Signals That Matter
In a downturn, buyers prioritise proof they can bank on. Three signal sets do the heavy lifting:
- Pricing stance: clear principles, visible guardrails, and disciplined exceptions.
- Evidence: specific outcomes, case narratives, and quantified improvements.
- Service standards: published commitments, measured performance, and transparent recovery when things go wrong.
Keep the line tight between promise and practice. Discretionary claims get ignored; verifiable signals travel.
Leadership Moves
To convert definition into advantage, focus leadership energy where it compounds:
- Decide your must-win segment and the problem you uniquely solve, and hold that choice for a defined period.
- Run a weekly cross-functional review to cut duplicate work, align messages, and fix gaps before customers feel them.
- Tie pricing discipline to value evidence—train teams to use proofs, not promotions, to win and retain accounts.
Set a single narrative spine in an internal memo, not a deck. Then enforce it in calendars and budgets.
What Endures
Down cycles are a brand’s truth test. Organisations that treat brand as a living decision system don’t just weather volatility; they convert it into relative advantage. Because when others chase attention, they project coherence. And when the cycle turns—as it always does—that coherence shows up as renewed demand, firmer pricing, and a recovery that arrives earlier and runs longer.
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