How to build brand equity when everyone else is buying likes.
In a boardroom somewhere, 18 months into a new strategy, the graph looked like a dead heartbeat. Flatline.
No one was panicking, yet. But you can bet the room was tense.
Then, in month nineteen, it happened.
The line on the chart snapped upward like a pulled bowstring. Revenue surged harder than it ever had in the brand’s history. New Balance, a company once filed under “dad shoes” and retro runners, had just experienced its biggest brand boom ever.
Why?
Brand marketing.
Not just any brand marketing, but the kind with a long fuse and a deep conviction. Their new CMO had flipped the typical marketing mix on its head:
– from 70% performance and 30% brand
– to 70% brand and 30% conversion.
For 18 long months, they saw nothing. No sugar-high spikes, no neat attribution charts, no reassuring ROAS dashboards. Just the slow, invisible work of making people care.
Then came month nineteen.
It’s a moment that feels rare in modern marketing. Not because the strategy is rare, but because the patience is.
Personally, we think it’s genius, and exactly the kind of discipline most founders and marketers are lacking today.
The Valley Before the Peak
The real story here isn’t just about the bowstring snap. It’s about the quiet discipline that preceded it.
Continue reading on our Substack, Public Opinion.
