What happens when clients stop investing in their brand
Times are tough. Clients are looking for ways to cut costs. In this climate, pricing is one of the hardest conversations designers have with clients.
When times get tough, brand investment is often one of the first things questioned. The client’s assumption is simple: if we stop spending on branding, marketing or communications for a while, nothing much will change.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Researchers at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science at Adelaide University tracked 41 brands that stopped investing in brand advertising for a year or more. The results were sobering.
Sales declined by an average of 16% in the first year.
By the second year, the decline had reached 25%.
By the third year, sales were down 36%.
For designers, this creates an important opportunity to shift the conversation. Instead of discussing the cost of a brand project, discuss the cost of doing nothing.
Questions to ask your client
Ask clients:
“If you stopped investing in your brand for 18 months, what would happen to your ability to attract new customers?”
“What would happen to your ability to justify our pricing?”
“What would happen to awareness, trust and preference in the market?”
“If we apply the the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute findings where would your sales be in year one, two and three.”
These are business questions, not design questions. They take a data driven approach.
As Kathryn McArthur, Consumer & Shopper Insights Manager at Colgate-Palmolive, observed:
Having data-driven marketing principles is like turning on a light in a darkened room. A lot of the furniture isn’t where you imagined it, but now the arrangement makes considerably more sense.
Design is not a discretionary spend
The reality is, strong brands help organisations maintain visibility, build memory structures, create trust and support pricing power. When investment stops, those advantages gradually erode. Competitors continue to invest, customers forget, and acquisition becomes harder and more expensive.
This is why design should not be positioned as a discretionary expense. It is an investment in future demand.
The next time a client focuses on the cost of design, help them consider the alternative.
The real question is not: “Can we afford to invest in our brand?”
It is: “What will it cost us if we don’t?”
As always, happy to discuss further, just email Greg
Greg Branson
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About Greg
Greg’s passion is the research and development of methods that improve design management and the role of design in business.
Greg has developed a series of processes and tools to help designers manage their business better along with a series of workshops that show designers how to use these tools.
Always happy to chat, I can be contacted here.
