Brand or demand?

Brand building and demand generation are more closely interlinked than most realise.

Read on to learn why:

① The two superpowers of marketing are: brand and alignment to Sales.

② You should spend 50% of your marketing budget on brand building.

③ The UK’s capital markets problem is prompting some innovative thinking.

④ Innovation is key to Europe’s future competitiveness.

⑤ Effective online advertising requires brands and publishers to work together.

⑥ The City’s greatest strength has always been reinvention.

⑦ Abuse and misogyny online continue to hamper our brightest talent.

📸 But first, flashback to International Women's Day when I told you we need to take meaningful action. This week, the depressing news is that the number of women in top positions on FTSE 250 boards has fallen.

What's new

I attended a panel discussion this week organised by finance and technology communications agency Cognito about branding in financial services and tech.

Source: Andrew Carrier, 28 November 2024

In short:

“The Growing Importance of Brand in Financial Services and Technology and What it Means Today and Tomorrow session was tackled by panellists Harry Sheward, Jo Fearne, and Cory Ferreira.”
The conversation highlighted that:
- 80% of your share price is based on cash flows that are projected 10 years from now. In other words, financial markets do value brand.
- Brand needs to be rooted to your culture and values. People are the most important. You need to get them catalysed around your brand, living it.
- Trust and loyalty are built on authenticity and consistency. That takes time.
- Brand has to come from the top. It’s a deliberate strategy that requires investment.
- Inauthenticity is the biggest danger. Don’t emulate others badly.
- The reputation of a brand can be the difference between short-term success and long term impact.
The panel concluded that branding is really all about storytelling.

Why it matters

I’ve long preached the need for sales and marketing to work hand in glove because ultimately all marketing should drive growth. Indeed, I was reminded of this a couple of weeks ago listening to Marg Jobling on the Financial Marketing Insights podcast:

“If you’re not commercial, if you’re not a business leader, you’re not credible as a marketer.”

- Marg Jobling, Group CMO at NatWest

① To me though, the key takeaway from the discussion at Cognito’s event was how interlinked and co-dependent branding and lead generation are. These two streams of marketing really do bolster each other. Some food for thought from the panelists:

B2B marketers only spend 8% of their budgets on brand awareness.
But when it comes to brand vs promotion, you should probably spend more like 50% than 8% on brand vs promotion.
95% of your buyers are not in-market right now - so focus on increasing the chances of your brand being remembered when the time comes.
At asset management brands, there is a 70% correlation between actual fund flows and strength of brand, according to Anouschka Elliott at Goldman Sachs.
The two superpowers of marketing are: brand and alignment to Sales.
You have to show return but don’t get too good at it - otherwise the CFO won’t sign off on more nebulous, brand building activities.
Brandformance - an awful term - describes what you should aim for: blending brand and performance.

What to do about it

Take action

② My advice this week is short and simple: ask your head of marketing how much they’re spending on brand-building vs demand generation. If it’s less than 50%, reconsider.

Get help

IMTW is brought to you by InMarketing, a strategic advisory service for senior leadership teams in B2B finance and technology. It can help you with:

🔎 Audit 🧭 Strategy 🖋️ Messaging ✅ Planning 🤷🏻 Problem-solving ☎️ Counsel

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

City grandees look to Asia in bid to solve IPO drought

③ The UK’s capital markets problem is prompting some innovative thinking.

“City grandees are looking to capitalise on European political volatility and tempt a wave of international and Asian companies onto the London Stock Exchange next year. London’s public markets have ‘tailwinds’ behind them and the capital could benefit from being the ‘adult in the corner of the room’ amid political turmoil in the US and Europe, a note shared among members of the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, the group of senior City figures led by London Stock Exchange chief, Julia Hoggett, suggests.”
“CMIT has banged the drum for public markets reform in the capital over the past two years. The group has lobbied the government to ease pension rules and encourage more domestic capital into the market, as well as pushing for a more slimmed down rulebook for companies listed on the London Stock Exchange.”
“In July, the Financial Conduct Authority overhauled its listing regulation in what the watchdog called the biggest shake-up in three decades. […] The note marks a rallying cry for the health of the Square Mile after an IPO drought over the past two years. The London Stock Exchange looks on course to register its lowest levels of floats on record this year, with just 14 debuts across its two markets.”

TECHNOLOGY

Scaling startups top priority, as EU reboots its top team

④ Innovation as key to Europe’s future competitiveness.

Ursula von der Leyen. Source: TechCrunch, 27 November 2024

“Europe must get much better at scaling startups. That’s the prognosis of the European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s on the cusp of taking up her second five-year term steering the bloc of some 449 million people — with a December 1 start date now locked in.”
“Von der Leyen said the EU’s competitiveness will depend on closing what she dubbed an ‘innovation gap’ — by unlocking more support for startups to scale and reducing red tape that may be holding businesses back from making the most of access to the EU single market’s 27 member states."
“Support for innovators is a key plank of von der Leyen’s second term — hence the decision to create, for the first time, a commissioner (Ekaterina Zaharieva) with a portfolio focused on startups. […] When it comes to reforming conditions for scaling startups, she boiled her strategy down to ‘invest more and focus better’.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Advertising is fundamentally broken. What now?

⑤ Effective online advertising requires brands and publishers to work together.

Source: Martech Series, 28 November 2024

“Much of adtech relies on third-party signals. However, as more consumers choose alternative browsers or block cookies, advertisers are forced to bid on an ever smaller group of users, pushing up CPMs and further reducing the perceived efficiency of open web buying. […] The next evolution of advertising helps advertisers leverage publishers’ first-party signals, which are both scalable, long-term, and deliver results.”
“The technology now exists to take publisher audiences and first-party signals and make them available to the entire advertising ecosystem. As a result, both can collaborate, irrespective of the buying journey, while maintaining privacy standards. […] By working directly with publishers, advertisers benefit from harnessing their data and addressing the 70% of audiences they can’t currently reach — a win-win for advertisers and publishers. Publisher signals deliver two to three times the reach, with increased sales and lower CPAs.”
“Advertisers that want to build brand equity, grow market share, protect share of wallet, and drive performance in programmatic need a mechanism that enables them to talk to more than 30% of the open web. The only way to do this is by marrying first-party data between data owners—brands and media owners.”

WILDCARD

Smithfield meat market to close after 900 years

⑥ The City’s greatest strength has always been reinvention.

“The fate of City institution Smithfield market was decided yesterday, with the City of London Corporation announcing the last chops will be sold after 2028.”
“A plan to relocate the 900-year-old meat market and Canary Wharf’s Billingsgate fish market to a new £800m site in Dagenham was scrapped after costs spiralled. The iconic Smithfield site will be transformed into a ‘mixed use cultural development’, while Billingsgate is expected to make way for new homes.”
“Talks will now begin over a financial support package for the traders, which is expected to be significant. A statement from the City of London Corporation said: ‘The decision reflects a careful balance between respecting the history of Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets and managing resources for this project responsibly’.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Margrethe Vestager on the online abuse she and other women face:

Margrethe Vestager. Source: The New York Times, 26 November 2024

“There’s one purpose for this: ‘You, woman, shut up. Go home. Keep quiet. We don’t want to know of you.’ I’ve heard so many young, talented, passionate, ambitious women say, ‘I don’t want that to be part of my life’.”

Don’t settle for marketing.

Strive for InMarketing.

Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. Step away from your desk and get outside whenever you can. It changes everything.