Strengthen your brand digitally with five crucial insights

Many digital companies make a crucial mistake: they no longer understand the basic principles of brand building. While research by WUA with 15,000 respondents clearly shows that brand perception is the most important driver in the decision-making process, we increasingly see a 'sea of sameness' emerging. From 175 mattress providers all trying the same thing, to digital players massively copying Apple's design language.

The tunnel vision on short term

The problem lies in the digital obsession with directly measurable results. Companies stop campaigns after an average of 60 days, while the real brand effect only becomes visible after 180 days. This tunnel vision arises from the promises of Google and Meta: everything is measurable, everything can be expressed in KPIs, everything can be directly influenced.

Two fundamentally different worlds

Two separate mechanisms exist that you should never combine. Behavioral triggers work on the rational brain with stimuli like scarcity and price advantages. Brand building works on emotion and gut feeling. An individual campaign must choose: either behavioral trigger or brand building. Combinations don't work.

The magical 60-40 balance

Successful brands invest 60% of their budget in brand building and 40% in sales activation. For B2B this is more 50-50. But many digital companies use a 20-80 distribution, which creates a race to the bottom. The ironic thing is that strong brands perform much better with sales activation - an Apple offer works better than a Lenovo offer.

Invest in your future sales

Only 5% of your target audience is buying now. The other 95% will buy soon. Sales activation targets that 5%, brand building targets the 95%. By focusing only on the short term, you miss the biggest opportunities for growth.