Increasingly, the pressure is on brand marketeers and the businesses they serve to do more to drive growth with ever tightening budgets. When brands are being challenged from many different quarters, be it own label challengers or agile, ‘edgy’ brands, the endless temptations of “new is better, old is dead”, and lubricated by a soup of increasingly capricious consumers, you can understand why. ‘Spare’ investment to test and learn, with the acceptance that elements could likely fail, feels like a luxury from a bygone era.

This can lead to the poorly informed seeking ‘new news’ and worshipping at the alters of false marketing Gods. Tempted by the lurid snake oil charms of the next best thing, much activity intended to build brands and enhance company value, often has the opposite effect. In the rush to do more, with less, it’s wise to pause and consider if there are more effective alternatives for growth. Here are a few growth alternatives to counter ‘the usual suspects’:

Issue 1: ‘salami slicing’ your brand’s product quality.
At a time when the cost of goods and taxes have risen so sharply and beyond any sensible forecast, it’s only natural that attention turns to how these costs can be reduced. But when it comes to changes in product quality, a snip here and there, perhaps imperceptible in the short term, or invisible inside the business, will be noticed by those outside, if not immediately, then soon. Remember that consumers migrating away from your brand is likely to be imperceptible in the short term, but very noticeable not long after – and difficult to stop by that point.

Growth Alternative…
Understand what your product truth is and relentlessly protect and amplify it. Great brands are built from undeniable, defensible and owned product truths, often a key foundation of what makes your brand distinctive. Once you know this, you can look for cost savings that support your brand, e.g. cheaper, more sustainable packaging or actually you may find you can add cost because the value exchange reinforces the very thing that consumers buy your brand for.

Issue 2: Fight on more fronts. Win more victories.
It’s easy to slip into a ‘more is more’ attitude without realising it, or believing that in today’s tech-enabled world (a) we can manage this and (b) we can manage this effectively. And initially it can feel energising…. new frontiers for brand growth? Whoopee!  Wrong. Not only will you drive yourself burn out, it’s unlikely, unless you really do have considerable, sustained, investment, that all this new stuff will even be noticed. Media fragmentation doesn’t mean personalisation. It means more opportunities to be missed. New messaging on the brand doesn’t mean ‘new news’ and excitement, it means dissonance for your consumer versus what they love you for. Tech doesn’t drive enablement and efficiently. It drives endless filler that fills up the working day with low value-add.

Growth Alternatives…
(i) Decide what not to do.
Virtually everyone, and certainly most organisations collectively, have eyes bigger than their stomachs.  Stop prioritising from a long list; instead sacrifice to get a short list. If you’re building a brand, repeatable, scalable consistency is a win-win, so it pays to remember the power of refreshed repetition.

(ii) Don’t get bored with your positioning.
As humans we only have so much mental processing capacity and brain space to consider things. If you’re of the opinion that someone will consider your brand more important, or for longer, than their family, friends, job, or dog, then bon chance and viel glück. Find out what people love about you and then reinforce and leverage the hell out of it. Resist endlessly extending the agenda.

 

Issue 3: Following in the competitor furrow rather than ploughing it yourself.
When the competitor grass looks greener it can be oh-so tempting to try to mimic your way to success. But who wants more of the same when they’re already happy with what they’ve got? In truth if you closely align to your competition, you are more likely to fall into their shadow even more.

Growth Alternative…
Remember the Magnet and the Mirror.
Step back and confront some hard realities. Knowing what elements of your category you may need to ‘mirror’ for reassurance, and what elements of your brand are your leadership ‘Magnets’ will prevent you from being pulled in different directions.

Rigourous diagnosis, born from well-specified consumer research. Simplicity of focus when developing activity. Fighting on just a few fronts that matter to consumer and brand, sacrificing the others. Scaling with as much effort as you can muster, year in year out. That’s the alternative growth prognosis we recommend this year.

Gael Laurie is Brand Building Director of The Crow Flies, a research, strategy and innovation company that helps brands find a direct route to long lasting success.  gael@thecrowflies.co.uk; +44 (0) 1889 725670 or +44 (0) 7885 408367; www.thecrowflies.co.uk; @crowflieshigh. © The Crow Flies, 2025