Importance of Branding

Let's talk about it then: The rise of the Employee Ambassador. Most brands are *still* missing their biggest marketing opportunity - the people already sitting inside their business. For years, companies have invested millions into paid reach. But the most powerful form of reach is earned, and in 2025 it could (and should) come from your own employees. I call them Employee Ambassadors. Not to be confused with “people who post on Linkedin about work.” They’re the ones who bridge the brand’s purpose with their own credibility becoming megaphones for the shared mission. - They speak in human language, not corporate tone. - They share learnings, not press releases. - They build connections, not clients. And I'm speaking from first-hand experience. When I joined The Diary of a CEO, my job was to build the show’s audience. While our main brand accounts shared the episodes, I shared the lessons and learnings behind them to my own profiles. My content didn’t replace what we created on the brand channels, it amplified it. That combination built a powerful ecosystem, one that deepened trust, expanded reach, and reinforced credibility from every angle. And the impact went far beyond social media posts. Because of the visibility I built, I was invited onto podcasts, panels, and stages - all opportunities to tell our story to new audiences and add further authority to the brand. I wasn’t just leading the marketing team, I became part of the marketing mix. And as my personal reputation grew, so did the brand’s perceived expertise. When executed correctly, the mutual benefits for brand and employee are exponential. That’s the power of Employee Ambassadors: when you invest in your people’s visibility, you don’t lose control of your narrative - you multiply its impact. But like any marketing plan, it requires a brief, guidelines and strategy. So next week I’ll unpack what that needs to look like, so everyone can reap the rewards. Thoughts, opinions, hot takes, concerns? I wanna hear them in the comments below! I’ll shape future posts in this series around your reaction 👇🏼 — 👋 I’m Grace Andrews - brand & content educator, creator-entrepreneur and former Brand Director For Steven Bartlett & The Diary of a CEO. This is post 1/6 of my new series Inside Voices, exploring the rise of the Employee Ambassador and how they’re reshaping modern marketing. Follow along - I’ll be sharing a new post every Monday for the next 5 weeks unpacking how they’re changing the way brands grow, hire, and lead.

The financial case for brand strategy: Why CFOs should care. Branding isn’t just about looking good.* It drives real financial impact (* if done strategically) Yet, many companies still see it as a cost rather than an asset that increases enterprise value, reduces waste, and boosts profitability. Here’s what most businesses get wrong: - They see branding as expense, not an investment. - They focus on short-term lead generation over long-term equity. - They underestimate how much a strong brand lowers acquisition costs, improves pricing, reduces churn and attracts talent. Here’s how: 01 - Brand Strategy Increases Market Value: Brands are intangible, but they drive real financial value. Today, 80–85% of the S&P 500’s market value comes from intangibles like brand equity. Corporate reputation alone is worth $16 trillion globally. Companies with strong brands deliver 2× higher shareholder returns over 20 years than the MSCI World Index. Why? A strong brand builds trust, reduces risk, and increases pricing, partnerships, and M&A leverage. 02 - A Strong Brand Lowers Marketing Costs: Weak brands must pay to be noticed, they have to keep buying attention…spending millions on ads and lead gen. Strong brands generate attention. Tesla, for example, spends $0 on traditional ads, while competitors spend $495 per vehicle sold. Tesla’s brand, combined with a touch of Elon, drives WOM, earned media, and loyalty...saving hundreds of millions in marketing costs. (And yes, I know it works both ways, for better or worse) 03 - Branding Improves Profit Margins & Pricing Power: A strong brand lets you charge premium prices and avoid price wars. Apple sells iPhones at 40%+ gross margins, while competitors struggle, even with similar hardware. Why? Customers aren’t just buying a product, they’re buying into a brand. Data shows: - Consumers pay 11% more for trusted brands. - Brand-loyal customers pay 38% more, even price-sensitive ones pay 14% more. - Without strong branding, companies must compete on price alone. 04 - Strong Brands Retain Customers Longer: Retention is one of the biggest profitability drivers. It costs 5× more to acquire a new customer than to retain one. A 5% increase in retention boosts profits by 25–95%. Brand loyalty reduces churn, increases lifetime value, and creates repeat buyers without ads spend. 05 - Resilient Brands Outperform in Crises: In downturns, weak brands suffer revenue losses and resort to discounting. Strong brands hold their value & recover faster. During 2020, while most businesses struggled, the top 100 most valuable brands grew by +5.9%. A well-built brand acts as financial insulation, stabilising revenue. The Hard Truth: A strong brand isn’t a luxury, it’s a financial strategy. If your CFO still sees branding as a cost center, send them this. Sources: McKinsey, Interbrand, BrandZ, Bain & Company, Nielsen, Kantar, Invesp, Unilever, Tesla, industry reports on brand valuation, CAC, and shareholder returns.

Content/PR teams are scrambling to explain LLM marketing to the C-suite. Here's a playbook for communicating why it matters, and why content and PR are about to be the hottest teams in the marketing dept. 1) Why it matters. Search volume is moving towards LLM's. It might only make up 1% of searches today, but plenty of data and common sense shows that this number is only going to grow. The good news is, we're at the start of a gold rush. You are essentially in 1999 google, when incumbents were toppled, and fortunes and fame were made by who figured out SEO early. This might only make up a fraction of your business in Q3, but this is your chance to get a headstart on the pack and never look back. Help your c-suite see this. 2) The Basics: How LLMs work 101, and "Brand mentions are the new backlinks." There is one really important point that experts seem to have consensus around: having your brand mentioned in relevant text on third-party sites is hugely important to being referenced in LLM answers. If SEO fundamentals were about stuffing pages with keywords on your site, winning LLMs is all OFF PAGE. This is a fundamental shift that cannot be understated, as a core difference between a world where you are optimizing for you versus optimizing for ChatGPT. 3) What this means: Content and PR are the key. I've seen a dozen examples of where a strong brand mention on a third-party site makes the difference of who is referenced in a answer in ChatGPT. In some cases its the number of brand mentions, in others its literally rephrasing what the 3rd party site said. The best thing you can possibly do over the next six months is get other people talking about you. 4) How to win. Hire journalists, tell interesting stories, have others talk about them. The very best are doing this. If you are a careers/job marketplace, put out studies on what is going on in the job market. If you can get other websites to reference you for having great data and being an authority on what is happening in the market.... that is what LLMs are using to figure out who to source in answers. tell stories with data. These seem to be a cheat code, as chatGPT is looking at content with well structured/sourced data as especially authoritative. On one hand, it's incredibly basic PR strategy. On the other hand, it seems like content and PR professionals are having a hard time reframing why what they are doing is actually the most valuable possible thing the marketing function can do to win out in this new world of search. Follow people like Rand Fishkin, Ryan Law. Honestly, replicate the marketing strategy Ryan has drawn up. It's time to learn, but the good news is... For a lot of people, it's not an entirely new muscle to learn, it's just a new way of thinking about the value you are providing.

I've been reflecting on one major trend from last year that I feel will be hard to ignore in 2025: Gen Z’s relationship with brands and social media. This generation doesn’t just consume content, they drive it. And they do so with a level of authenticity and transparency that demands our attention. For Gen Z, brand loyalty isn’t built on flashy ads or influencer endorsements alone. It’s about values. It’s about knowing what the brand stands for and aligning with causes they care about: be it sustainability, inclusivity, or social justice. Here’s how I’ve been thinking about this shift as an entrepreneur: For Gen Z, being true to themselves is really important. They want brands that embrace uniqueness and support personal expression. To connect with them, we need to be authentic and offer products and messages that let them express who they really are. Social Media is the New Word of Mouth: If you’re not engaging in the conversations Gen Z is having on social media, you’re missing out. They trust their peers and online communities more than traditional advertising, and their feedback is immediate and powerful. Experience Over Projection: For this generation, it’s not just about seeing an ad but engaging with a brand in a meaningful way. Whether through personalized experiences, interactive campaigns, or exclusive content, creating a connection is more valuable than ever. Gen Z is not just shaping the future of business but is redefining what it means to build loyalty and trust. Is your brand ready for this shift?

Target didn’t just blink. They backpedaled. Hard. A company once hailed as a retail leader in DEI quietly pulled inclusive products, scaled back internal teams, and softened its stance when things got uncomfortable. And now? CEO Brian Cornell is meeting with Rev. Al Sharpton to work out how to patch things up. But let’s be honest - this isn’t leadership. It’s clean-up. Target’s brand was built on values. On standing up for people. On showing that inclusion wasn’t optional. That’s why it mattered to so many. So when they hit pause on that promise to avoid controversy, it didn’t just disappoint - it betrayed the trust of customers, employees, and entire communities who expected better. I’m not saying brands have to get everything right. But when you go quiet in moments that call for courage, you send a loud message: “Our values are negotiable.” Here’s the thing: DEI isn’t a trend. It’s not a campaign. It’s leadership. Full stop. And if you abandon it the moment things get tough, don’t be surprised when your people (and your reputation) start to walk away. To every CEO and CHRO watching this play out: this is your reminder. If you want to lead with integrity, your commitment to inclusion has to hold especially when the heat’s on. Because backpedaling might calm the noise. But it costs you something deeper: Credibility. https://lnkd.in/ggkAeei2

I’ve been in the insurance industry for two decades. Here’s the truth no one tells you: Insurance has a branding problem. And it’s costing trust. Most people think insurance is boring. Complicated. A last resort. But here’s what often gets missed:  It shows up when life falls apart. → Claims aren’t paperwork, they’re pain, fear, and urgency.  It protects dreams quietly, without recognition. → No headlines. Just peace of mind in the background.  It sees risks others overlook. → From income to illness to natural disasters. So where’s the disconnect? The industry talks in terms. People think in emotions. The message is technical. The impact is personal. If the narrative is going to shift It won’t be through more jargon. It’ll take stories. Empathy. Clarity. Not about selling fear. But showing what safety really looks like.

Hotel brands don't sell rooms, they sell loyalty cards and franchises. If you’ve watched hotel sponsorships lately you may have noticed: the name they are advertising aren’t the company or hotel brands. Instead of Marriott or Accor, it’s Bonvoy or All. These loyalty programs are becoming the central identity of the big hotel groups—and that’s by design. Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates: https://lnkd.in/eHfpRjnr Across the global hospitality landscape, we can observe two main types of offerings: loyalty (or reward) programs aimed at guests, and brands (or labels) aimed at investors. This dual model has shaped how the major hotel companies operate and grow. For the traveler, loyalty programs are the unifying product. They tie together a wide variety of brands under a single membership and consumer brand, and in doing so, they create consistency of recognition and rewards. As the products are much harder to keep consistent this is a good alternative. These programs are where hotel groups invest in marketing, technology, and partnerships (high profit sales of points to credit card companies) because they drive repeat business and data-rich relationships with guests. On the other hand, hotel brands—the individual names like Moxy, Pullman, or Crowne Plaza—play a different role. These are created and refined with investors in mind. Each brand represents a specific positioning or price point, offering developers and owners a playbook for what to build and how to operate. It’s an ecosystem built for scale. This isn’t to say that hospitality is no longer a focus. It’s just that in the largest hotel companies, the responsibility for guest experience increasingly sits with the individual properties and their operators—often management companies or franchisees. Meanwhile, the hotel brand owner focuses on system design, loyalty strategy, and brand architecture. It’s a model that has clear advantages. Guests get access to a global network of hotels and familiar standards. Owners benefit from the distribution and brand equity. And the hotel groups can grow efficiently through partnerships and franchise arrangements. Of course, this also means that the more personalized, handcrafted hospitality experiences are often found in smaller or independent properties—especially those at the high end. But the big brands still play a vital role in providing consistency and reach, especially for frequent travelers. So rather than asking whether hotel brands have lost their meaning (as I have done so many times before), perhaps the better question is how they’ve evolved. In today’s hospitality world, loyalty programs provide the connective tissue, and the brands provide the structure. Understanding that helps clarify not just how hotels operate—but also why they look the way they do (and the increasingly confusing lineup of “brands”). Thanks for reading, (see link in bio as they say).

Wynter is the only company I know doing this ⬇️ They have a page dedicated to information for AI agents / LLMs to scrape.   LLMs are quickly growing as a place people go to research software. If they misunderstand your product, skip over you, or describe you incorrectly, you lose trust and awareness. It makes complete sense, and yet I did a manual search of a few dozen top SaaS companies and none had a similar page linked from their navigation. If you want to build a page like this, many brands from Ahrefs to Sparktoro have written about being cited in LLMs. Here are some best practices… - Create a dedicated page like /ai-info or /for-ai-assistants that is publicly accessible and crawlable (no pop-ups, no blocked robots.txt). - Use simple structure: clear H1/H2 headings, short paragraphs (1–3 sentences), bullet lists over long text blocks. - Start the page with a sentence like: “This page provides verified information about [Brand], intended for AI assistants.” That framing helps both humans and machines understand the purpose. - Add a quick “How to reference us” section that literally tells AI how to explain your product in 2–3 sentences. 💡 ChatGPT tip: Make the page lightweight in design (minimal scripts, no animations, no visuals) so it loads fast and is easy for crawlers to read. In terms of the actual information, it seems best to just stick to facts… what your product does who it's for core features pricing model  customer proof etc.. Look at what Wynter includes as a good guide. Overall, I think this is a smart move and more brands should follow You’re helping define how LLMs talk about you. It obviously doesn’t guarantee citations but it seems to increase your odds of being described correctly, discovered more often, and recommended in AI-generated answers. If you are looking for data-driven insights on what is winning for the top B2B SaaS/fintech brands in the world, follow our newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gvwDsCwC

“B2B Marketing and the 95:5 Rule” - new cartoon and post: In 2021, Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute introduced the 95:5 Rule, a simple but powerful concept that challenged conventional thinking in B2B marketing. In his research, John showed that up to 95% of buyers are not in the market in any one time (and perhaps won’t be for months or years). As he put it: “This is a deceptively simple fact, but it has a profound implication for advertising. It means that advertising mostly hits people who aren’t going to buy anytime soon. And in turn, that tells us about how advertising works: it mainly works by building and refreshing memory links to the brand. These memory links activate when buyers do come into the market. So, if your advertising is better at building brand-relevant memories, your brand becomes more competitive.” This runs counter to the short-term pitch approach taken by so much of B2B advertising — trying to drive immediate marketing leads. Marketers can’t push out-of-market buyers to buy now, and only 5% of buyers are currently in market. As Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo wrote about Dawes’ work when they led the B2B Institute: “Effective marketing increases future sales in future buying situations. How? By increasing the probability that the brand comes to mind when the buyer goes in-market. Simply put, the brand that gets remembered is the brand that gets bought. You can’t push buyers down a funnel, but you can, to quote Professor Jenni Romaniuk, ‘catch buyers as they fall’.” This framework also expands the remit on B2B marketing to be a heckuva lot more exciting than it is often perceived. It’s not just about features and benefits and driving qualified marketing leads. It’s about long-term brand building. I often think about a quote Eric Ryan shared when we worked together at Method: “There are no low-interest categories — only low-interest brands.” >>> Sign up for my weekly marketoon email newsletter (link in bio). #marketing #cartoon #marketoon Marketoonist

For a long time, scale in FMCG meant one thing: be everywhere, say everything, appeal to everyone. Bigger budgets. Broader messaging. More SKUs. Louder launches. That logic is breaking in 2026. What’s actually growing right now is precision. NielsenIQ data shows that brands with clearly defined target occasions and functional benefits are outperforming broader portfolios on velocity and repeat purchase. In the US, many of the fastest-growing food and beverage brands are winning not because they shout louder, but because they answer a very specific consumer job better than anyone else. McKinsey & Company’s consumer research backs this up. They’ve found that consumers are increasingly loyal to brands that simplify decisions and fit seamlessly into routines, especially in an environment where price pressure and choice overload are real. In other words, relevance beats reach. From my seat in executive search, this shift shows up very clearly in leadership conversations. The strongest CMOs, CCOs and GMs I speak with are no longer obsessed with “owning the category.” They’re obsessed with owning moments. They understand which SKUs earn the right to exist, which ones need to be killed, and where focus actually drives growth. This is where many legacy FMCG companies struggle. Their structures, incentives and leadership profiles were built for scale, not specificity. When everything is a priority, nothing truly is. Meanwhile, challenger brands and even private-label teams are building tighter portfolios, faster feedback loops, and sharper commercial instincts. Specificity is about clarity. Clarity of consumer, clarity of function, clarity of why you deserve shelf space and repeat purchase. The brands growing fastest right now aren’t trying to be loved by everyone. They’re trying to be essential to someone. Curious how others are seeing this play out. Are you narrowing focus in your portfolios and teams, or still trying to win through breadth? #FMCG #CPG #ConsumerTrends #BrandStrategy