The Hidden Power of Brand Marketing

Why did Nike spend millions on a Super Bowl ad this year that featured champion women athletes but did not mention a single product? Why does McDonald’s continue to blanket television with ads when billions have tasted their burgers? Why does Coca-Cola spend $4 billion a year on advertising? These top global brands know the value of upper-funnel marketing—marketing designed not to generate short-term sales leads, but instead to give their entire brand a boost.

But often companies, including many in scientific marketing, neglect brand marketing in favor of lower-funnel marketing tactics that are designed to quickly generate clicks, leads or sales. They may be justifiably proud of their products and want to tout those products’ technical advantages.

But if by overemphasizing these sort of lower-funnel tactics, they may also be missing a huge business opportunity.

“We buy from companies we have a connection to,” says Alan Abery, head of marketing strategy for academic and government markets at Springer Nature. “You can’t just do bottom-up marketing. It’s almost like cold calling. People need to know more about the organization, more about what you care about. It’s the reason the business exists—the why you do what you do.”

What brands deliver

Brand storytelling accomplishes something that product marketing doesn’t. “A product solves a rational problem, [while] a brand solves an emotional problem,” writes Reid Holmes, an award-winning creative director for top American firms, including H&R Block, Burger King and the Mayo Clinic, in his recent book Appreciated Branding (2024).

The problem comes down to trust. “A brand at its most basic is a trust mark,” Holmes writes. “Like a known face, it’s a visual cue that disarms. Expectations are known. Behavior is predictable. Not so products from unknown entities.”

Stories are the key to great brand marketing, Holmes adds. Data points about a product are static. “Stories involve an emotional connection. Stories give information memorable context. . . . Stories hold interest.”

But does brand storytelling really pay off?

Return on investment
It can take a couple of years for top-of-funnel approaches like content marketing to generate an effective return on investment, so it’s not the best tactic for short-term sales. And while it’s not easy to measure the effectiveness of upper-funnel approaches—they’re harder to quantitate than clicks or leads or sales—marketing researchers have addressed that question and found some potent effects.

In Appreciated Branding, Holmes describes the results of the years-long Campaign for Real Beauty by Dove, the soap brand, and the Ogilvy ad agency. The campaign ran ads showcasing the beauty of ordinary women, and it generated results: the Nielson company examined two shorter campaigns that were part of the larger Real Beauty effort and found that the return on investment was $4.42 for every $1.00 spent.

Even greater returns are possible with content marketing, which has an average ROI of $7.65 per $1.00 spent, according to statistics assembled by SQ Magazine, a publication for tech professionals.

An Ideal Mix

Powerful returns are possible in part because familiarity with the brand yields higher click-through rates on ads, more organic searches for your brand and your products, and a shorter sales timeline: “As more people like and trust your brand, selling your products gets simpler,” Holmes writes.

In an in-depth study reported in their book, The Long and the Short of it, advertising experts Les Binet and Peter Field studied years of empirical data and found a mix that optimizes return on the marketing dollar: 60 percent of the budget should go to brand building and 40 percent to sales activation.

But many companies spend a lot of time and money chasing short-term results. “Brand neglect and short-term measurement are costing brands millions in uncaptured revenue,” Holmes writes.

True value

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty showcased another aspect of successful brand marketing: It offered real value to consumers by calling out the unrealistic beauty standards that, research showed, were undermining the self-esteem of women and girls. This resonated in the cultural zeitgeist and aligned with people’s values.

Delivering value is also what underlies the success of Nature Custom Media’s branded content, which lets research institutions position themselves as thought leaders and showcase their scientific prowess by contributing stories that inform and engage the research community.

Contributing to the community is also what Abery is after.

“It’s about being a thought leader and building longer relationships,” Abery says. “You’re not just taking from a community. You’re part of a community, you understand them, and you have value to add.”

 If you’re interested in learning more about storytelling with Nature Partnerships, reach out to our team today.