How do you measure brand?
Evaluating the Success of a Brand Project: A Deep Dive into Lasting Impact
The success of a brand project goes far beyond immediate metrics like clicks, shares, or conversions. While these are essential indicators, they only scratch the surface of what makes a brand project truly impactful. Success, as envisioned by leading agencies like Dixon Baxi, is about creating intelligent, adaptable brand systems that resonate on a global scale while maintaining local relevance. It’s about building a brand that not only connects with people today but evolves and thrives for years to come.
At its core, success in branding lies in answering a simple yet profound question: How well does the brand build a relevant, purpose-led, and connected experience? The most successful brands are those that stand for something larger than themselves, aligning with shared values that resonate deeply with their audience.
Products are not enough, you need a brand
The Key to Long-Term Brand Success: Building Relationships, Not Just Transactions
Brands are no longer just products or services—they’re experiences that people engage with emotionally. Evaluating the success of a brand project requires looking at how well it fosters lasting relationships, empowers teams, and streamlines processes. These elements come together to create a seamless, friction-free experience that not only drives sales but builds loyalty.
Brand success is about moving beyond transactional interactions to create emotional connections that endure. Iconic brands like Apple, Nike, and Coca-Cola have mastered the art of simplifying their approach, shedding excess and aligning their actions with core values that ensure long-term impact. It’s not enough for a brand to be recognized; it must be loved.
Metrics That Matter: Beyond the Numbers
While traditional success metrics—engagement, conversions, shares—are important, they aren’t the whole picture. A brand’s true success lies in its ability to cut through the noise consistently and build momentum over time. The real challenge isn’t just creating a spike in engagement; it’s sustaining that growth. Brands that focus on creating meaningful, authentic connections and align marketing, product, and strategy into a cohesive journey are the ones that last.
The strongest brands are adaptive, future-ready, and built for sustainable growth. They don’t merely react to trends—they lead them. These brands build lasting recognition and fan loyalty by tapping into shared values and creating experiences people believe in, desire, and, most importantly, want to share. Brand systems must be flexible, able to evolve as markets change while maintaining a strong core identity.
The Pranav Piyush Perspective: How Do You Measure Brand?
A recent LinkedIn discussion by Pranav Piyush highlighted the challenge of measuring brand success. Piyush argues that the question of "how to measure brand" is often misunderstood. Brand, branding, and brand marketing are frequently conflated, making it difficult to define what’s being measured. He explains that brand is the perception of a product or business, branding is the process of shaping that perception, and brand marketing is the effort to improve that perception.
Piyush emphasizes that brand marketing’s success should be tied to tangible financial metrics like sales, revenue, or retention. However, it’s not enough to focus solely on awareness or other abstract metrics. Piyush suggests running experiments at a geo-level to correlate brand marketing efforts with sales growth, debunking the idea that brand impact is immeasurable.
This perspective aligns with Dixon Baxi’s approach—creating adaptive, flexible brand systems that are not just built for today, but for tomorrow.
The comments under Pranav Piyush's LinkedIn post provide valuable insights into measuring brand marketing:
- Kaushik Bose emphasizes that brand metrics are complex, affected by seasonality and external factors, and shouldn't be treated like direct performance metrics.
- Saurabh Parmar highlights the difficulty of correlating brand efforts with tangible business results due to numerous variables.
- Charlie de Thibault argues that brand investments improve inbound traffic, conversions, and retention, all measurable against business metrics.
- Patrick Stal stresses the need for intelligent, data-driven brand marketers who link brand marketing to long-term business outcomes.
These discussions underline the challenges and potential strategies for measuring brand marketing's effectiveness.
Here are additional notable insights from the comments under Pranav Piyush's LinkedIn post:
- Ari Yablok stresses that brand marketing's impact is often long-term and may not immediately affect short-term metrics like clicks or conversions. Awareness-building today could convert into sales later.
- Joshua Ingram discusses key metrics for measuring brand impact, including Lifetime Value (LTV), price sensitivity, and brand equity, but highlights the challenges in calculating these accurately.
- Ayse Guvencer explains that enterprise software’s long buying cycles make immediate brand marketing results unrealistic, advocating for long-term strategies and hypotheses for impact measurement.
- Patrick Stal calls for data-savvy brand marketers who connect brand marketing to critical business outcomes like customer acquisition cost (CAC), sales cycles, and employee retention.
These comments emphasize the complexity of measuring brand marketing, the importance of long-term thinking, and the need for intelligent data integration.
Breaking the "Sea of Sameness"
A key takeaway from both Dixon Baxi and Piyush’s insights is the importance of standing out in a crowded marketplace. Brands that break free from the "sea of sameness" are the ones that create lasting connections. It takes confidence and creativity to break away from conventional branding strategies and forge a unique identity that resonates deeply with people.
The strongest brands are those that dare to be different. They simplify their message, focus on shared values, and build meaningful relationships that transcend the product itself. Brands that focus on building fans—not just customers—are the ones that thrive in the long term.
The Dixon Baxi Approach: Building for Growth That Lasts
Dixon Baxi’s philosophy on branding revolves around building systems that are adaptable and future-ready. A brand should never be static—it must evolve and grow as its audience and market change. Successful brands, according to Dixon Baxi, are those that continually innovate, adapt, and challenge the status quo. Without innovation, a brand risks becoming stagnant and losing relevance.
This approach highlights the importance of aligning marketing, product development, and strategy into a cohesive brand journey. The danger of siloed thinking is real—brands that operate in silos miss the opportunity to create a seamless experience for their audience. The key is to build a brand system that empowers teams, streamlines processes, and fosters a friction-free, connected experience.
Growth as the Ultimate Measure of Success
In the end, the ultimate measure of a brand’s success is growth. This means growing audiences, deepening connections, and driving meaningful engagement. A brand that can evolve, adapt, and build momentum over time is one that will last.
But growth isn’t just about expanding customer numbers or increasing sales. It’s about creating an intelligent identity that is built for tomorrow. Brands that foster love, create fans, and build lasting recognition are the ones that will thrive in a rapidly changing world.
The article from MarTech explores strategies to measure the impact of brand marketing, such as media mix models (MMM), brand lift studies, and emerging metrics like share of search. It emphasizes combining traditional performance metrics with advanced methods, including geo-matched markets and audience holdouts, to assess the effectiveness of brand campaigns. Brand lift studies are essential for understanding shifts in awareness, perception, and purchase intent. The article also highlights early indicators like share of search and site traffic as predictive of long-term success.
Why Marketing and Sales Teams Should Invest in Unmeasurable Efforts
Marketing and sales teams often find themselves stuck in the endless loop of tracking, measuring, and proving ROI. Every dollar spent must be accounted for, and every campaign has to have a clear, measurable outcome. However, the pursuit of perfect attribution may be holding teams back from some of the most impactful—and memorable—marketing initiatives.
The truth is, not everything in marketing can be tracked or measured. And that’s okay.
At INBOUND this week, someone approached me and asked about last year’s purple hoodies: “Were they worth it?” And more importantly, “How did you measure their success?”
I smiled and told them that they had just given me all the proof I needed.
This person recognized Mac Reddin and Commsor 🦕 because of their purple hoodies and went to start a conversation about them. That’s the validation you need. The impact wasn’t in a number on a spreadsheet—it was in the personal connection sparked by something as simple as a hoodie.
Sometimes, you just know something is working. You can feel it in the way people engage with you, talk about your brand, or remember you from a previous event. These are the moments that matter, the ones that can’t always be measured but can have a lasting impact on your brand.
The ROI of the Unexpected
Take a moment to think about the ROI of Ben running around Boston in a dinosaur suit. How do you calculate the value of that?
Or what about the impact of creating incredible swag like the purple hoodies?
What’s the return on having fun as a team and making a memorable impression on your audience?
Yes, we could have tracked some aspects of our hoodie campaign—how many impressions our team’s posts about them got, how many mentions they received online, and so on. But that’s just a small piece of the puzzle.
The real, long-term value of initiatives like this is intangible. You can’t fully measure the ripple effects that a well-executed, fun campaign will have on your brand’s awareness and reputation. And that’s kind of the point.
The Trap of “Checkbox Marketing”
Far too many go-to-market (GTM) strategies never see the light of day because teams can’t figure out how they’re going to measure success. Without a clear ROI, they struggle to get budget or approval for bold, creative campaigns.
This relentless pursuit of perfect attribution kills countless innovative ideas before they even get off the ground.
It pushes marketing teams into what Brendan Hufford calls "Checkbox Marketing"—doing the same predictable, measurable things that every other team is doing just to check off boxes.
But is that really what great marketing is about? Is it just about following the same steps as everyone else, hoping for incremental results?
Bring Creativity and Fun Back to Your GTM
Marketing should be about more than just numbers—it should be about human connection, creativity, and building relationships with your audience in ways that aren’t always easy to quantify.
Think about the last time you saw a marketing campaign that really resonated with you. Was it because of the numbers behind it, or was it because it made you laugh, think, or feel something?
As marketers and sales teams, we need to bring some of that creativity and fun back into our GTM strategies. Not every idea will have a measurable ROI, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable.
So, what’s the takeaway here?
Spend 20% of your time and budget on activities that you know will have an impact, even if you can’t fully track or measure them. Trust that sometimes, the most important results are the ones you can’t quantify.
The ROI of Ben running around Boston in a dino suit? It’s priceless.
And it’s worth every penny.
Conclusion: Building Intelligent, Adaptive Brands for Tomorrow
To truly evaluate the success of a brand project, it’s essential to look beyond short-term metrics and focus on long-term impact. Successful brands are those that build meaningful relationships, stand out in a crowded market, and create systems that are adaptable and future-ready. They don’t just react to trends—they lead them. Brands that focus on empowering teams, streamlining processes, and aligning strategy with purpose are the ones that build loyalty, drive growth, and stand the test of time.
As both Dixon Baxi and Pranav Piyush emphasize, the challenge isn’t just building a brand—it’s creating one that lasts. The strongest brands don’t just create fans; they build lasting, emotional connections that transcend transactions and drive long-term success. In the end, growth—real, sustainable growth—is the truest measure of a brand’s success.
