Brand matters more than ever in the age of AI. People say that brand is no longer needed. They are wrong.
Brand creates a set of associations and emotional relationship with a company or product. This leads people to prefer it over competitors, drives their choice and purchase decision, and generates an additional flow of sales and profits. Brand generates a price or volume premium, and sometimes both. A strong brand drives higher prices and greater share, stimulates more purchases from existing customers, attracts new customers, and creates passionate advocates. Brand is a major component of shareholder value, contributing about a third of the total.
Many people think brands don’t matter anymore. Digital has been undermining the role of brand for a long time. It’s all about performance marketing—you can measure results immediately in bits and clicks. AI is said to be finishing brands off. Everyone can do anything. There’s a multiplication of brands. Anyone can create a product. Everyone can find out what makes the best product or experience, so everything looks alike. It doesn’t matter which you buy. Differentiation disappears.
In a world of identical choices, people rely on brands more than ever. The competitive advantage of standing out is multiplied many times. You can use AI, but to improve your brand differentiation. AI can make your customer research better, get closer to understanding the real needs, pain points and aspirations of customers, shape your offering and messaging, personalizing them to the individual customer level.
Presciant is here to help you rethink brand building and reinvent marketing for the age of AI.
Latest News & Commentary
Selected Publications
Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies
Collaborated with author, Jim Stengel supporting him in providing the unprecedented empirical research for his seminal book on brand purpose
Unleashing the Innovators: How Mature Companies Find New Life with Startups
Supported authors Jim Stengel & Tom Post in conducting a first-of- its-kind research to provide a rigorous underpinning to the book and give added power to its conclusions.
Brand Value Management: How to Create and Manage Valuable Brands
By our Brazilian partner, Eduardo Tomiya, a guide to brand valuation and performance metrics (soon to be translated from Portuguese)
The Brand in the Boardroom: How Ogilvy & Mather reinvented The Marketing Principles of Brand Valuation
Journal of Advertising Research
Linking brand to business financials: How brand valuation has helped DuPont unlock the value of its portfolio
Journal of Brand Strategy
Firms that build brand value will be recession survivors
Admap
How to measure design’s contribution to business growth
WARC
Going upstream to capture big groups’ full value
The Financial Times
Building Brands through IMC
Integrated Brand Marketing and Measuring Returns. Kitchen, Philip ed.
Returns on brand investments: maximizing financial returns from brand strategy
Handbook on Brand and Experience Management. Schmitt, Bernd H., and David L. Rogers
How Strong Global Brands Create Lasting Value
The Global Brand. Hollis, Nigel, 2010 Contributed the chapter on brand valuation and linking the brand to financials for this book.
Brands as Drivers of Intangible Value
The Brand Bubble.
Gerzema, John and Ed Lebar
Contributed the financial input to the book based on the Brand Asset Valuator.
Super Bowl, Super Score: How advertising in the big game pays off for brands
Adweek
Events & webinars
Marketing Hall of Fame
The Marketing Hall of Fame is the only award which recognizes brilliance in innovation across the marketing profession as a whole. 7 years ago, it was radically revitalized and reinvented by some of the partners at Presciant. The process and event were streamlined and contemporized along principles of inclusivity, transparency, democracy and accountability.
Marketing Hall of Fame: Bringing the Future Forward
Facing the future with brilliant marketing is more important now than ever—and more challenging. A live global discussion on the future of marketing with past Marketing Hall of Fame inductees, featuring some of the legends of marketing including Adobe EVP / CMO Ann Lewnes, Ogilvy Chairman Emeritus Shelly Lazarus, Author Seth Godin, and former P&G CMO Jim Stengel.
Brand in the Boardroom
How to turn brand valuation on its head to generate greater business value. ANA Financial Brand Management Conference, ANA Brand Masters, and 4As Platinum Forum.
BrandZ Top 100
Keynote Speaker at multiple WPP BrandZ Launch Conferences for the BrandZ Top 100 Ranking of the World’s Most Valuable Brands, launched in partnership with Financial Times, and coming out every year since 2006.
Marketing Impact: How to Drive Fame & Fortune
Panel at IPA’s EFF Week. Provocative thoughts from Peter Field, Rory Sutherland, Joanna Seddon and others on the perils of short-termism, tech stack and attribution model, behavioral science, and demonstrating marketing’s impact in the boardroom. London
Does the CMO Have a Future?
The marketing department is in a state of upheaval, yet brand & marketing have never been more important. So what is going on? An urgent need to redefine marketing as the growth engine of businesses. The Executive Forum
Creativity – What is it good for?
Eileen Campbell & Joanna Seddon dared to stand up on the main stage at Cannes, and present the case for measuring creativity. Full Session, The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
Future of Marketing Roundtable
Moderated and subject matter expertise provided by Nik Gharekhan. Hosted by OnConference
Building Brand Equity: New Rules and Challenges in a Global Marketplace
Presentation by Nik Gharekhan at Corporate Image & Branding Conference, Conference Board
Getting a Return on Your Brand Investments
Presentation by Nik Gharekhan at Corporate Image & Branding Workshops, Conference Board
Nurturing Brand to Deliver ROI and Create Value
Presentation by Nik Gharekhan at DMDays Conference
From Selling to Serving: A Dialogue on Marketing Today
Live webinar with Joanna Seddon, Hap Klopp, ex-CEO of North Face, and John Grant, writer and green marketing expert. Hosted by Mandalah, on purpose-driven growth in the time of Covid-19.
Level Up with Winnie Sun: Level Up Your Branding
Appearance on Winnie Sun’s TV show for the Nasdaq channel, which takes a fresh look at the cultural and social impacts of one of the most feared topics today…money..
Who do they think they are? Designing the business around customers
Economist Conference, London
How Top Brands Build Shareholder Value
ANA Financial Management Conference
Best Brand Builders
B50 Brand Leaders Forum, New York
Building the Case for Olympic Sponsorship: An Innovative Approach to ROI
The ARF Conference
The Marketing Director and the Board: Proving how marketing creates shareholder value
The Economist Annual Marketing Directors Summit