Most brands are investing in the wrong thing and they don’t even know it yet.
Not because they’re bad at marketing. Because the scoreboard they’re watching only shows tomorrow.
A lot of teams are pouring budget into paid campaigns, transactional content, constant product pushes… and it feels smart because the numbers move. Sales spike. The quarter looks good. Leadership gets comfortable.
But here’s what that scoreboard doesn’t show you. What happens when you stop spending.
New Balance figured this out the hard way. They shifted to roughly 70% brand, leaning into storytelling, collaborations, and culture, with only 30% going toward activation. And for about 18 months… It looked like an expensive mistake. The results weren’t showing up where people were looking for them.
Then 2021 happened: New Balance recorded the most profitable year in company history. Not a spike. A full reset of what the brand was worth. Sales have grown roughly 180% from 2020 to 2024.
That’s what brand building actually does. It doesn’t pop, it compounds. It moves your content from “buy this now” to “this is who we are.” And in a feed full of beige performance ads and AI-generated sameness, identity is the only thing people actually remember.
On social, that strategy looks different than what most brands are running. It’s deeper storytelling, athletes, culture, community… content that builds a world around the brand instead of just pushing the product.
That’s the shift. And honestly, if CEOs want real dollars and CMOs want growth that actually lasts, this is the uncomfortable answer.