Why clever businesses are investing in brand again

At a time when marketing has never been easier to produce (or cheaper to churn out) it’s also never been easier to be ignored. AI can generate campaigns in seconds. Content can be published in minutes. Online stores can be built in a weekend. The tools are powerful, accessible and, frankly, tempting. But when everyone has access to the same tools, sameness creeps in.

In a world of rapid production and relentless noise, the real opportunity isn’t to make more. It’s to mean more. And that starts with brand.

Temptation vs opportunity 

Recently, I attended an event – the second in the ‘Norfolk High Streets Matter’ series, where local councils mingled with local business from some of Norfolk’s market towns, and the tension between the internet shopping habits vs venturing out in real life was discussed. Keep reading, this isn’t a review of the event.

It got me thinking about the growing importance for brand and identity (and experience). In a time where everything is ultra-accessible and anything can be made cheaply and rapidly, by anyone. When everyone is creating stuff using AI, and everyone is offering online shopping. The opportunity for unique, considered, unexpected, human experiences become valuable again. When everyone zigs. Zag.  

The world of marketing and promoting your business is more cluttered, noisier than ever. Tools have become available that make it super easy to churn out communications, promotions and content at the typing of a prompt and a click of the button. It’s too tempting to not. But where many are producing the fine, but totally forgettable, there emerges the opportunity to be different. To deliberately go against the grain and produce what others are not. And, in my opinion, at the heart of where to start with this, is brand and identity. Your brand is your competitive advantage

The stuff that really moves us. Wins hearts and minds. Stops the scroll. Makes us smile. Provokes us. Builds affection. And so on. Is the stuff that works on emotion and feeling. It catches our attention, it makes us feel something even for a moment. At which point, it becomes memorable. Even better it becomes shareable. 

Brands exist in emotion, we attach feelings to brands, feelings that are shaped by our experiences. How they look, how they speak, what they stand for, how they answer the phone if we call them, the materials they use for in-store fit out or for print. Everything says something. Yes, logos and colours, but that’s just a small percentage of the bigger brand picture. Whether a B2B service business or a consumer retail business, any instances where people come into contact with your business (Marketingy people call them touchpoints) are either confirming our thoughts and feelings about a brand, or changing them for better or for worse. 

And the absolute worst case scenario where a brand is concerned? To be absolutely forgettable. Which is what I fear many will slip into if they ignore the potential of brand building and just hammer out the easy to make, samey, bland stuff. ‘Slop’ or ‘Digital landfill’ I’ve heard it described as. 

This isn’t just me, a passionate believer in the importance of brand, ranting on (ok, maybe a little bit.). Far cleverer folk in the world of business and marketing are talking about it too. McKinsey’s report The Modern Rethinking of Marketing’s Core showed that in 2026 marketers’ top priority for spend was brand building – in B2B and B2C. Big-dog Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Warden of leading digital marketing tool SEMRush recently described how AI-returned results (GEO – you can read about that here) were favouring ‘powerful brands with strong stories to tell’, like Patagonia for instance, where everything is aligned with a powerful vision. (If you’re interested, you can listen to the podcast)