Marketers Lack Understanding of Brand Value: ANA Study

The majority of senior marketers lack an understanding of brand value, caused in part by following an archaic marketing model, a new survey has found.

The survey by the Association of National Advertisers and Interbrand polled 118 chief marketing officers and senior marketing executives at ANA member companies.

The results indicate that because brand value is not fully comprehended, an awareness of the impact of building strong brands may not be factoring into company decision-making, the survey found.

Some 64% of the executives surveyed said that brands do not influence decisions made at their organizations suggesting that companies are missing major opportunities to fully realize the economic potential of brand strength.

“Top-performing companies make absolutely certain that brand is a central organizing principle, but, for many in the marketing industry, creating and managing brand value still follows an archaic model—it is limited strictly to the marketing department,” said Jez Frampton, global CEO of Interbrand, one of the world’s largest branding consultancies, in a release. “We know from compiling our annual Best Global Brands portfolio that companies with a well-managed brand achieve the best financial results.”

For those who responded that their brands did not influence organizational decisions, a range of causes were identified, including:

Incentives do not support importance of brand (51%)
Inability to prove brand’s financial benefit (49%)
Current branding expertise is not widely accepted (40%)
Metrics do not support the importance of brand (39%)
Budgets are focuses on communications activities (32%)
Brand is not included in the “sphere of influence” (28%)
Lack of CEO endorsement (25%)
Branding expertise does not yet exist (15%)

According to the survey results, senior marketing executives still struggle to win support from company leaders and board members.

“Building a strong brand must be a leading driver of business growth,” said Bob Liodice, president and CEO of ANA, in a release. “It is critical for marketers to fully appreciate the value of the brand to have a voice with the C-suite to accomplish overall business growth objectives.”

Of those polled, 80 percent felt that demands from the C-suite and boardroom were steadily increasing when it came to demonstrating the ability of branding initiatives to make a company more profitable.

Marketers acknowledged that understanding the ways their brands create value would focus investment in marketing (93%) and provide the opportunity to cut out underperforming initiatives (82%).

Other potential benefits include:

Greater influence across the organization for overall alignment and change (79%)
More leverage for marketers hoping to secure additional investments from the board (69%)
Active data that can then be used to fine-tune messaging (60%)

“Now, more than ever, brands must be examined and evaluated just as closely as any other corporate asset,” Frampton said. “It’s no coincidence that strong brands, like Apple or Google, often have a strong stock price. Companies need to fully understand what drives demand on a second-by-second basis. The financial implications of doing so speak volumes.”