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Written by: Andrew Smits
Everyone says they love their brand. The CEO name-drops it on earnings calls. The CMO can’t shut up about brand storytelling. Sales leans on it to justify premium pricing. HR weaponizes it to lure talent.
Until the market flinches. Then the brand gets ghosted and the axe begins to swing.
Not at the bloated middle management layer. Not the nine-person finance team optimizing vendor costs. Just brand. Just marketing. Just the team building relevance and trust.
Gone.
That’s not strategy. That’s panic disguised as pragmatism.
Call me a whiny creative type but here’s the uncomfortable truth: Brand isn’t a luxury line item. It’s your emotional equity.
It’s what people remember when your product looks like everybody else’s. It’s what they feel when they choose you over cheaper, faster, louder alternatives.
According to McKinsey, brands that maintain marketing during downturns recover 9x faster than those that go dark. Let that sink in.
9x.
While your competitors are whispering, the smart ones are turning up the volume.
Still think silence is smart strategy?
Let’s talk about your spreadsheets for a second.
Everyone loves to say: “Spreadsheets don’t lie.”
But they do.
They’re just another form of storytelling. Numbers with narratives. Data shaped by bias and assumption.
As Rory Sutherland put it:
“We are perennially overconfident in things that can be measured and wrongly dismissive of things that can’t.”
You can’t A/B test emotional resonance. You can’t spreadsheet your way to relevance.
Try finding a column for: “made me feel something”, “understood what I’m going through”, and “still showed up when others didn’t”.
You won’t.
And yet, those are the exact reasons people buy.
Here’s what the data won’t tell you:
- 95% of purchase decisions are subconscious (Harvard)
- Emotion outperforms logic in advertising by 2:1 (IPA DataBank)
- Consistent brand presentation increases revenue by up to 23% (Forbes)
But hey, let’s cut that and keep the trade show booth, right?
If your brand is doing its job, it’s not “fluff”, it’s infrastructure.
It’s the reason people come back. It’s what holds loyalty when price, features, and delivery speed all start to look the same. Cut that, and you're not just shrinking spend, you're slowly disconnecting from your audience.
So what do you want to be when the dust settles on all this current economic chaos?
A company that stayed quiet to protect a spreadsheet? Or a brand that kept showing up and built long-term trust?
Because those who keep showing up consistently… They’re the ones people remember. They’re the ones still standing when the storm blows over.
And if you really love your brand, maybe start acting like it.
So, if brand is the first to go… Was it ever really valued in the first place? Or was it just part of the performance?
Because here’s another uncomfortable thought I’ll leave you with:
Maybe a lot of what we call “branding” isn’t strategy. Maybe it’s just kayfabe—the corporate version of professional wrestling’s “staying in character.”
That’s where I’m heading next week after rebounding off the ropes with a brutal clothes line.
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