Brand Strategy
Brand positioning, architecture, equity measurement, and rebranding decisions.
12 articles
The 95-5 rule: a playbook for CMOs who want to win the brand-building argument
Most of your potential customers are not in the market today, and performance marketing cannot reach them. This playbook shows CMOs how to operationalise the 95-5 rule and make the financial case for brand investment that survives board scrutiny.
Sep 13, 2026Man City Women's rebrand: repositioning a sports brand without losing the fans who built it
Manchester City Women is rebranding not to fix a broken identity, but to build one that matches where the players and the sport are heading. The decisions its marketing team made offer a sharp lesson in how to move a brand forward without cutting the rope behind you.
Sep 4, 2026How Cadbury built mental availability through colour, not campaigns
Cadbury's decades-long defence of a single purple shade offers one of the clearest illustrations of how distinctive brand assets drive mental availability. The case reveals what systematic asset management actually looks like, and where the approach transfers to other categories.
Aug 25, 2026Balancing brand and performance budgets: the 60/40 rule explained
Most marketing budgets get pulled toward performance spend because the results are measurable and the feedback is fast. This article breaks down the 60/40 framework, what it actually means in practice, and when following it would be a mistake.
Aug 19, 2026Repositioning without losing your base: a CMO playbook
Repositioning a brand is one of the hardest moves a CMO can make: the market demands change, but your existing customers chose you for reasons you're about to revise. This playbook walks through how to shift brand meaning without alienating the people who built your revenue.
Jul 26, 2026Distinctive brand assets: a practical playbook for building mental availability
Most brands invest heavily in creative work that gets noticed once and forgotten fast. This playbook shows CMOs how to build and deploy distinctive assets that earn genuine memory structures in consumers' minds.
Jul 23, 2026The 95-5 rule: why most of your market isn't listening right now
Most buyers aren't in the market for your product today, and chasing them with performance advertising is expensive and largely futile. The 95-5 rule reframes brand building not as a soft expenditure but as the only rational strategy for long-term revenue growth.
Jul 16, 2026Brand architecture decisions that actually stick
Most brand architecture failures aren't strategic errors, they're execution failures that happen long before a product launches or an acquisition closes. Here's how CMOs can build frameworks that hold up under real organizational pressure.
Jul 9, 2026Brand architecture decisions that actually move revenue
Most brand architecture debates get stuck on aesthetics and internal politics, never reaching the questions that matter to the business. This article cuts to the commercial logic behind monolithic, endorsed, and house-of-brands models, and what CMOs need to evaluate before committing.
Jul 2, 2026Brand architecture decisions that actually move revenue
Most CMOs inherit a brand architecture that was designed for a different competitive era. Knowing when to consolidate, stretch, or separate your brand portfolio is one of the highest-leverage decisions in the CMO's toolkit.
Jun 25, 2026Brand equity in the age of fragmentation: why most CMOs are measuring the wrong thing
As media channels multiply and consumer attention atomizes, the traditional metrics CMOs use to track brand health are becoming dangerously misleading. Here's what the most sophisticated brand builders are doing differently, and why the gap between them and everyone else is widening fast.
Jun 16, 2026Brand strategy in the age of fragmentation: why your brand architecture may be your biggest liability
Most CMOs can articulate their brand values in a slide deck but struggle to maintain coherent brand experiences across 15 touchpoints simultaneously. The brands winning today aren't the ones with the best positioning statements, they're the ones with the clearest architectural decisions and the discipline to execute them.