Measuring Brand Awareness

A digital presence used to be optional. Now it’s the first filter buyers, partners, and even AI systems use to decide whether you matter. Google is no longer the primary discovery layer. AI-powered search is. AI assistants summarize you based on the digital footprint you’ve already created. If your digital presence is weak, the algorithms assume you are irrelevant. This is a massive tension. And many founders and executives are still acting like it's 2017. The Invisible Executive (or Founder) is the leader who still believes reputation is earned solely in conference rooms, not digital rooms. They hide behind outdated profiles, default to corporate-speak content, and assume their resume speaks louder than their online presence. In a world that now forms first impressions through feeds, summaries, and AI-ranked profiles, the Invisible Executive is bleeding revenue in silence. On a connection call, a potential client wondered why their pipeline was drying up. The reason wasn't what they thought. They didn't need more (often cold) outreach. The true root cause? Digital invisibility, created by a belief that a strong digital presence wasn’t “real leadership.” A weak digital footprint isn’t just a branding issue. It's a revenue leak. Are you a founder, executive, or entrepreneur who wants to elevate your digital presence? My DM's are open.

fame doesn’t sell. followers don’t convert. visibility without relevance is just noise. we’ve all seen it—celebrities launch brands, the internet buzzes for a moment, and then… nothing. meanwhile, smaller creators with deep audience relationships are building brands that sell out, over and over again. the difference? relevance. the old playbook was simple: make a product. spend millions on marketing. hope people buy. that formula? it’s dead. today’s most successful brands do the opposite. they build an audience first, listen closely, and then create products people already want. this isn’t a hack. it’s not a shortcut. it’s the new foundation of brand building. when we worked with Chase Business, they could have focused on financial campaigns. instead, they leaned into what their audience actually needed—guidance on marketing, tech, and business growth. they didn’t push products. they built trust. same with rhode skin. hailey bieber didn’t just slap her name on a beauty brand—she built something her audience already wanted. $14 million in sales in six months. a 60,000-person waitlist before launch. not because of her fame. but because of her relevance. acquisition without relevance is wasted investment. visibility without connection is just noise. so before your next product launch, ask yourself: who exactly are we serving? what do they actually care about? how well do we truly understand them? because when you get this right, selling isn’t even selling. it’s just delivering what your audience has been waiting for. brands aren’t entitled to attention. they have to earn it. so, who are you really building for? because in this new world, that’s the only question that matters.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐫. 𝐓𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫. In a world saturated with generative AI, taste will matter. Great taste shows up in restraint as much as boldness. Leaders demonstrate discernment. They recognize quality, harmony, and originality in business ideas, language, and design. Competitive advantage will come from building systems rooted in taste that others cannot copy. 𝐈𝐭’𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞. 2025 brought growing consensus that this is a false choice. Expect that thinking to gain momentum in 2026. Revenue growth will remain the headline KPI, but the dominance of performance marketing as the default lever will fade. The evidence is mounting. A TikTok and Tracksuit study found that high-awareness brands were up to 2.8x more efficient at driving conversions. LinkedIn’s B2B Institute makes a similarly compelling case for the role of brand in improving “buyability” in complex B2B decisions. 𝐋𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭. As AI-generated content accelerates, brands will respond with more intentional in-person experiences. More invitations. More rooms where trust is built face-to-face. Leaders will increasingly recognize the compounding advantage of networks and compete to build them with care and purpose. 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠. Investment in tools and technology will continue, but the real advantage will come from teams that can adapt. Curious teams. Cross-disciplinary teams. Teams empowered to experiment. Expect renewed interest in Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety as leaders recognize that progress depends on creating the conditions for people to grow into new ways of working. 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬-𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐝𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞. The question is no longer “How do we measure brand?” It is becoming “How do we measure it all the time?” Real-time visibility into shifts in perception, awareness, and consideration among key audience segments, and the ability to connect those shifts back to business outcomes, are becoming the standard. Tools like Tracksuit are gaining traction because they make continuous brand measurement more accessible and actionable. 💬 What shift do you see most clearly taking shape for 2026? Drop in the comments. #Marketing #Leadership #Partnership #Predictions

We spend crores creating campaigns. But skip the one thing that actually makes them work! You plan a brilliant campaign. You create a stunning event. You pour time, creativity, and serious money into the ‘what’. But then — right when it’s time to tell the world — your budget runs out. Visibility. Dissemination. Audience access. This is where most brands falter. And ironically, this is also where the success of your campaign actually lives. I’ve seen this happen time and again: • A lab-grown diamond brand spent months perfecting its collection and launch experience. But when it came time to bring in a PR partner who could get actual buyers into the room — there were “no budgets left.” • A global sportswear brand had a massive announcement lined up. They invested in the staging, the aesthetics, the content — but when we talked about what was needed to take this story across the right media and influencer channels, the response was: “We don’t have a big budget as everything is already spent. Please give me a workable budget.” • Or the everyday example: running a beautiful social media page but putting zero media spend behind it. You post. You hope. You wait. But you haven’t told the algorithm — or your audience — that you exist. Here’s the truth: You don’t just need to create the moment. You need to move it. And for that, dissemination — whether it’s press, influencers, community, or media strategy — cannot be an afterthought. It’s not a “nice to have.” It’s the thing that ensures everything else was worth it. So if you’re planning a big campaign or event, here’s my advice: At the very first budget meeting, lock in a line item for audience and media amplification. Give it priority. Allocate enough. Bring in the right partners. Because the campaign that no one hears about is just an expensive secret. Let’s stop treating dissemination as optional. It’s essential.

The trust economy is replacing the attention economy.✅ Marketers have long treated data as their superpower- the more you collect, the sharper your targeting. But as privacy laws evolve, that mindset is hitting a wall. New regulations are redrawing the boundaries of what’s fair, ethical, and legal in data use. Hyper-personalisation still matters. It drives relevance, loyalty, and conversion. Yet creating these experiences while respecting privacy has become the new balancing act. The line between helpful and invasive is thinner than ever. The smartest brands are already adapting. They’re moving from surveillance to service - collecting less, but using it better. They’re making consent experiences simple, data use transparent, and value exchange visible. Instead of chasing clicks, they’re building credibility. Here’s what that looks like in practice: 👉🏻 Audit every data point you collect. If it doesn’t add clear value to the customer, drop it. 👉🏻 Be upfront about how and why you use data. Transparency builds confidence. 👉🏻 Trade access for value - early previews, useful insights, or improved recommendations. Privacy is no longer just about compliance. It’s the foundation of modern marketing trust. The brands that will thrive aren’t those who know the most about their customers but those whose customers choose to share more with them. #futureofmarketing

Marketing today doesn’t need more action. It needs more clarity. 👇👇👇 The entire marketing industry is doing more, posting more, reacting more… but thinking less about what it’s really doing for the brand or the business. That’s what prompted me to start this series - “Marketing Word of the Day.” Each word captures one common (and often comical) situation we see from the world of marketing. The idea isn’t to criticize, but to hold up a mirror to ourselves, laugh a bit, and then ask: "How can we do this better?" Because in marketing, there’s rarely a single right answer, but lately, there have been far too many wrong ones. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Now, back to today’s word: Trenduced. We’ve all been there. A new trend breaks out - a viral dance, a meme, a filter. And, suddenly the task list echoes with, “Should we do this too?” When you follow every trend, you stop creating your own brand moments. People might remember the trend, but they won’t remember your brand. Trends can give you visibility, but only your truth gives you longevity. We’ve reached a point where trend participation has replaced brand conviction. Instead of asking “Does this express who we are?”, marketers are asking “Will this get us views?” And in that shift, we’ve quietly traded brand-building for visibility metrics: likes, reach, engagement - all measurable, yet mostly meaningless when detached from purpose. The irony? Trends work best for the trend creators, not for the brands that imitate them. When you jump on every viral moment, your audience might see your post, but they won’t see you. They’ll remember the dance, the meme, the format, but not the feeling your brand is supposed to evoke. Because brand equity isn’t built through borrowed relevance - it’s built through consistent distinctiveness. TRENDS FADE. DISTINCTIVENESS COMPOUNDS. The brands that win are those that observe trends, absorb insights, and then reinterpret them through their own lens. Being relevant doesn’t mean being reactive. It means being anchored in who you are, and still finding ways to connect that truth to what’s current. So the next time a new trend explodes on your feed, pause for a second and ask: “Is this true to our brand, or are we just being Trenduced?” • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 💬 Let me know what you think 🔗 Share if helpful! 👉 Follow Anand Sankara Narayanan for brand stories & strategies • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Text will become the new battleground for brand trust. For decades, brands have invested heavily in the language of emotive visuals, from video and audio to influencers and fast-scroll storytelling. But in 2026, the real power shift will happen somewhere far less glamorous: in text. As more buying decisions are shaped directly inside large language model (LLM) systems, the written inputs that feed these models will determine which brands are surfaced, recommended and ultimately trusted. The buying journey is a complex trust loop, not a straight line. Buyers move fluidly between Google, LLMs like ChatGPT, review sites, peer communities and vendor websites. Distributed trust, not brand awareness, has become the real funnel. In this world, what a brand writes and what is written about it will matter as much, if not more, than how it looks or sounds. Peer influence already outweighs top-down brand control. For example, buyers trust peer recommendations far more than company-produced content. Third-party reviews, newsletters, chat threads, niche forums, blogs and community conversations now carry more weight than ‘official’ brand campaigns. This shift of influence to text-based networks will spark new roles inside organisations. Brand linguists, LLM editors and text reputation managers will ensure a company’s written footprint is clear, consistent, credible and machine interpretable. And as text-led communities become the new trust networks, brands will have to learn how to shape their narrative within the crowd rather than try to control it from above. In short: the next frontier of brand trust will be linguistic. ✍ Rachel Botsman, Author of Who Can You Trust? 📷 Getty Images 💡 This is one of a several ideas LinkedIn News is highlighting in our annual list of predictions. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/BI26UnitedKingdom Join the conversation in the comments or share your own prediction in a post or video with #BigIdeas2026.

Privacy is not a side quest in 2025. It is the game. And as marketers, we need to remember the final boss isn’t the regulator, the platform, or the tech. It’s the consumer. Consumers hold the ultimate power. They decide whether to trust you with their data, whether your brand feels relevant, and whether your experiences are worth opting into. In my latest blog, I explore how marketers can level up by: ✅ Moving from permission to purpose 🤝 Building an ethical data economy where trust is a KPI 🔗 Collaborating without centralizing or commingling data 🧠 Using PETs to connect intelligence, not identities 📈 Measuring relevance, trust, and long-term value, not just clicks The brands that win will be those that treat privacy not as a compliance box, but as the foundation of their strategy. Because in 2025, the only way to beat the game is to respect the player. Link in the comments. #Privacy #Marketing #DataEthics #AI #DataCollaboration #PETs #CMO #Trust #InfoSum

Marketing Week published data this week that every CMO should pin to their wall. Campaigns that drive significant increases in brand trust are 27 percentage points more effective at delivering business growth. One client saw a 1% improvement in trust score produce €98 million in incremental annual sales. The industry has had this data for years. And yet most marketing dashboards contain no trust metric at all. This is not a measurement philosophy problem. It is a planning cycle problem. Quarterly reviews demand quarterly numbers. Quarterly numbers reward activity. Activity produces visible metrics. Trust compounds invisibly, so it never gets the budget it deserves. The result: brands that are very busy, very present, and slowly losing their commercial edge. The question worth asking this week is simple. Look at your current measurement framework. Does it contain any metric that would take longer than twelve months to move? If not, you are measuring your team's output, not the asset you are building. Trust is not a soft metric. It is a revenue mechanism. The brands treating it as infrastructure are building something their competitors cannot easily match. The brands ignoring it are competing on execution. Execution can always be matched. Trust cannot be replicated overnight. My deep dive into this subject is in the comments.

There is a growing narrative that AI will diminish the role of brand. I believe the opposite is happening. In the AI era, brand may become one of the most valuable strategic assets an enterprise possesses. As buyers shift from searching to asking AI for recommendations, the battleground changes from impressions and clicks to trust, authority, discoverability, and recommendation probability. The question increasingly becomes: Will the AI mention or cite you at all? In this article, I explore why customer advocacy, analyst validation, operational credibility, narrative consistency, and proof ecosystems are becoming foundational to enterprise growth in the AI era. My thinking has been heavily influenced by conversations and insights from Tim Sanders, Godard Abel G2, Matt Marschinke, Tammy Tufty, David Lapp, Memsy Price, Seer Interactive, Romain de Saint Périer KKR, Felipe Thomaz, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and many fellow CMOs navigating this shift in real time. The future of the brand is not about shouting louder. It is about being trusted enough to become the answer.