At the recent Future of Brands conference, a panel tackled one of the most persistent challenges in marketing: proving the commercial value of brand-building to the boardroom. Moderated by Rachel Forde, co-founder of TheZoo.London, the session brought featured Bhavesh Patel, Director of Media at Sky; Darren Thompson, Vice President of Sales, UK at Adlook: Gordana Buccisano, Global Brands Strategy Director at Reckitt; and Tom Mardon, Head of Media & Campaign Planning at Tesco.
The evolution of the brand and finance relationship
Tom Mardon, head of media and campaign planning at Tesco, opened the discussion by reflecting on how the grocer’s approach has transformed. He recalled a time, only a few years ago, when finance would routinely ask for budget cuts of 5% to 10%.
Today, Tesco has doubled its investment in advertising, a shift driven by a more collaborative relationship with the finance team. Mardon explained that the perceived wall between brand building and performance marketing is largely “industry vernacular,” noting that “everything does everything. It may do it to different degrees, but whether it’s a broadcast campaign on telly is going to have an impact on the brand, likewise, even a text-based paid search ad also has an impact on the brand”.
This sentiment was echoed by Gordana Buccisano, global brands strategy director at Reckitt, who emphasised that in the FMCG world, brands are viewed as a “long term investment”.
For a company managing heritage brands, the conversation with a CFO is about the “decision logic behind investment that we are putting behind our brands”.
Buccisano said that, especially in tough economic climates, a strong brand acts as a “risk mitigation tool,” explaining that “if you have a strong brand and you can show through your data how resilient our brands are to current times when people are trading down, the conversation changes. It becomes less about the cost, it’s about the risk mitigation”.
Driving loyalty and cross sell opportunities
From a media platform perspective, Bhavesh Patel, director of media at Sky, highlighted how brand strength directly influences customer retention and acquisition.
Patel said that a well-established brand makes customers “less price sensitive,” which is vital in competitive sectors like broadband and insurance. Beyond simple awareness, Sky uses brand health to drive its “biggest opportunity,” saying that “because we’ve got so many brands across our portfolio, it gives us the opportunity to cross-sell. They come into your brand because they love one product, you’ve the ability to cross-sell, up-sell into the others”.
However, the complexity of modern data can sometimes make these outcomes harder to track. Darren Thompson, vice president of sales UK at Adlook, pointed out that the industry has historically been “tied into legacy metrics, be it cost per click or viewability, but it doesn’t really tell the story of how the brand is making a real interaction with their consumer”.
Thompson suggested that the industry is moving towards “attention” as a key metric, using deep learning and AI to de-mystify the “programmatic sphere” and create a more efficient value stream for brands.
Finding a common language with the CFO
A recurring theme throughout the panel was the necessity of shared terminology between marketing and finance. Mardon shared a pragmatic tip, observing that while marketers talk about “ROI,” finance teams often refer to “SCR” (Sales to Cost Ratio).
By adopting the finance team’s preferred language, marketers can break down barriers. He described the process of ensuring it “wasn’t me, it was the team who actually do the work, it was the analysts chatting to similar analysts in our finance function. And when we have like-for-like role chatting to like-for-like role, that’s where we started to make headway”.
Buccisano agreed, stating that CFOs “love ideas, but they want decision logic. They don’t want storytelling”.
The transition from “storytelling” to “business logic” is crucial for securing budgets. When marketers can demonstrate that “the growth is cheaper if I continue investing in them versus light on and off,” the financial argument becomes much more compelling.
This consistency is what prevents brand investment from being viewed as a “side hustle” or a “cost item,” but rather “how do we consistently invest in our brands in a meaningful way”.
Measuring what matters
Measurement remains the “gold standard,” yet the panel acknowledged that no single metric provides the whole truth. Patel described Sky’s approach as a “combination of things like comprehension, purchase intent, demand,” but admitted that while econometrics remain vital, they are often a “rear-view mirror”.
He emphasised the need to build dashboards focused on “probability, predicting what actual term brand investment potentially looks like in the future”.
As the session concluded, the speakers offered advice for marketers to implement immediately. The consensus was clear: focus on “metrics that matter for the CFO that’s going to decrease the cost of acquisition costs,” stay consistent with brand propositions, and “simplify it”.
Mardon’s final takeaway was to “simplify it, start with what’s going to matter most, do start with the short term and then build from that” to create the platform for long-term growth.
