Summary

When a quarter softens or growth accelerates, the reflex is to chase revenue and cut price. The deeper problem is treating brand as reporting, not direction. Turn brand into a decision system—one that sets focus and shows proof. That’s how margin, velocity, and resilience return.

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Our Perspective

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

The Misplaced Proxy

When revenue becomes the sole score, leaders optimise the scoreboard, not the engine. It’s understandable under pressure, but it blinds you to the mechanisms that actually create durable value: pricing power, decision speed, and customer stickiness. Treating brand as a monthly outcome reduces it to reporting, not direction. The hidden cost is cumulative.

From our experience this normally shows up as:

• Discounts becoming the easiest lever, so buyers learn to wait.
• Functions acting independently to hit short-term targets, breaking continuity for customers.
• Internally, winning the deal overshadowing delivering the difference.

Margin As Signal

The cleanest proof that brand creates value is margin. When customers understand and prefer what you stand for, they argue less on price and more on fit. That’s headroom you can reinvest, or simply protect when markets tighten. McKinsey notes that a 1% increase in price can expand operating profit by about 8%, a far bigger effect than shaving costs or chasing volume.

Elasticity is not just economics; it’s a brand outcome. If your promise is credible, your price becomes part of how customers assess reliability, not a hurdle they try to negotiate away.

Velocity Through Coherence

Brand, used well, is a decision system: a shared lens that speeds choices, narrows options, and reduces rework. Fewer loops, cleaner handovers, faster proposals. That is sales velocity in practice. Instead of more campaigns, you get fewer, better moves that line up across product, sales, and service.

Make it operational through:

• Focused audiences: be explicit about who you will win and who you won’t.
• Codified principles: embed them into roadmaps, playbooks, and briefs so teams act consistently.
• Proof over promise: show outcomes, service levels, and delivery standards that you track openly.

Designing Resilience

Resilience is the compound effect of margin you can hold and demand you don’t have to buy. It shows up when budgets tighten: customers stay, renew, and refer because the value is clear. Think with Google reports that organisations strengthening brand can lower price sensitivity by up to 20% and sustain prices as much as twice those of weaker competitors.

For leadership, three sharp implications:

• Treat margin, win rate, and churn as brand metrics, not just finance metrics.
• Tie pricing, product choices, and sales enablement to agreed brand principles.
• Publish a small set of delivery standards and keep them visible to customers and teams.

Look ahead: organisations that treat brand as an operating system will keep margin, move faster, and absorb shocks—compounding advantage across cycles rather than spiking in good quarters.

Sources:

• The power of pricing — McKinsey
• Brand equity & pricing power: Marketing's impact on profitability — Think with Google (Google/Kantar)

Further Resources

1. Navigating Price Competition by Proving Brand Value
2. Refreshing Brand Equity Without Losing Strategic Value
3. Brand Strategy: Beyond Logos and Design Assets

No two brand journeys are the same — connect with us if you’d like to test where your next step might lead. Let’s talk.

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