The CMO’s Guide to Data-Conscious Brand Strategy – Bringing the Data to Life
Matt Bowen • October 20, 2020
Our recent series of content, ‘The CMO’s Guide to Data-Conscious Brand Strategy’ has outlined Brandigo’s pioneering new approach to brand strategy development, where a potent mix of primary data and a creative vision combine for industry-leading results. Data-Conscious Brand Strategy elevates brands above the competition and inspires entire organizations. It cultivates equity—the kind investors, entrepreneurs, and the C-suite fawn over. The kind that leads to real revenue gains and lasting legacies.
Our last two articles focused on two elements of a data-conscious brand strategy that act as foundations, Brand Health Analysis
and Value Drivers. For this article, we are going to look at how the data we generate begins to come to life in a meaningful way. A way that inspires internal and external stakeholders alike.
First thing’s first though. If you need a quick reminder on the ins and outs of what Data-Conscious Brand Strategy actually means you can check out this blog here.
It’s Alive!
OK, now that you are all caught up let’s get into how we bring all this valuable data to life.
The first step is to take all the insights gleaned from the research in order to develop a brand platform that is fully supported by the data. This means taking the value driver category
that gives your brand the best opportunity to differentiate itself from your competition based on the needs of your market and your brand’s performance in said category.
You will be looking at the value drivers that sit in the ‘delighter’ or ‘critical driver’ categories for this, coupled with what you know your brand does better than the competition. And as we mentioned previously, this methodology can go deeper to help you identify the value drivers that resonate with different stakeholders, geographic regions, age groups, and so on. You are not relying on third-party data or analyst insights that are readily available to everyone, so this approach results in positioning strategies that are unique, authentic, and validated by data.
Step 2 is to distill this down into your Brand Essence. The essence of your brand, usually expressed in a two or three-word statement, is a guiding principle that is instantly recognizable by your stakeholders. It describes the number one emotional reason that your customers choose you and your products or services. And more importantly, remain loyal.
Make it Your Manifesto
Once you have your Brand Essence distilled, you now want to put together your brand’s manifesto, and just as the definition states, this will be your public declaration of your values and aims.
This manifesto is a new kind of mission statement – it’s a content vehicle for outreach, but it’s also valuable internally as a brand rallying cry.
Your brand manifesto can be used in various ways. It can be kept internal, or you can display it on your website. It can be used as a form of employee engagement. It can be created with a typography treatment and placed on your social media channels as an image. Or they can be given to communication partners as a roadmap for developing communication strategies. The bottom line is that it announces to the world what your brand is all about. The reason it exists and what it seeks to achieve. Make it emotional, make it something you and your stakeholders care about and are proud to stand behind.
Shaping Your Narrative
Finally, it’s time to create your own narrative and brand position.
Your brand narrative is a detailed description of who you are as an organization. It incorporates the new brand platform that is based on statistically robust data and truly differentiated from your competition. And it will also speak to the needs of your market. It will be evident across your website, your press releases, social media content, and much much more.
It has to be rooted in reality, otherwise, your stakeholders will see through it straight away. At the same time, it should be somewhat aspirational – giving your brand room to grow. But the beauty of a data-conscious brand strategy is you will have already identified your market’s value drivers and in which aspects your brand is the strongest, empirically so via your own primary data.
Keep it simple. Yes – your brand narrative will be a long-form description of your brand but long doesn’t mean complex. All the best stories are based on a simple premise. What is more, your customers and their perspective, their problems, and how you provide the solution, should be central to it. Make your customers the hero of your narrative and demonstrate how you helped them become so.
Hold Your Position
Finally, it’s time for you to create your brand position. The simple sentence that completely encapsulates why your customers should choose your brand.
Your brand position statement should include 3 key elements:
What your company does
Who you do it for
Why your company is different
Again, although our CMO’s Guide to Data-Conscious Brand Strategy will give you valuable insight as to what the methodology is and why you brand are losing out by not applying it to your brand, we are still only taking a quick peek behind the curtain.
For more expertise and opinion, you can continue to go through all our excellent content, follow our social media, or get in touch with us. We’d love to hear about your brand, your challenges, and how we can work together to apply a data-conscious brand strategy that will set your brand apart and drive growth.
Tesla's recent struggles show how controversies can damage a brand. CEO Elon Musk's recent controvercial decisions have alienated a significant portion of Tesla's eco-conscious customer base. The fallout has been severe: Stock Decline: Tesla's stock dropped 36% in Q1 2025, erasing $460B in market cap. Sales Impact: Vehicle deliveries fell 13% year-over-year in Q1 2025, with market share in Europe and Germany plummeting. Customer Trust: Favorability among Democrats dropped 23% from January to July 2024, while Tesla's brand consideration score halved since 2021. This highlights a key lesson: brands risk fallout when taking sides on divisive issues, and this is particularly true in politics. It highlights how important it for brands to remain focused on their core mission, establish authenticity, and earn trust from the market. You may be asking yourself, well hold on, how is this any different that what other brands like Ben and Jerry’s have done over the years. The key difference is that even though they may express views that some may find divisive, these views didn’t counter their core brand essence, in fact it enhanced it. Conflicts Hurting Brand Performance Brand Value Losses Tesla experienced a hit to its brand value following statements from its CEO that many perceived to be divisive or off-brand. Survey results showed that 45% of respondents viewed the impact as "negative," while 40% described it as "extremely negative" [2] . Customer Trust Breakdown Tesla's favorability ratings have sharply declined, particularly across political affiliations:
B2B marketing is a high-stakes game, data is everywhere—but insight is rare. One of the most powerful yet underutilized sources of marketing intelligence is a clear view of your brand’s health. Not vanity metrics, but a deep, diagnostic look at how your brand is perceived at every stage of the buyer’s journey. With perceived being the key word here. This kind of insight doesn’t come from your CRM or website analytics. It comes from targeted audience research that maps how each buyer persona perceives your brand at every key touchpoint in the funnel: awareness, familiarity, consideration, usage, and loyalty. When done right, it’s like getting an X-ray of your entire marketing engine—and your competitors’ too. Think how useful this is for a marketing and revenue team. Defining Brand Health: Perceptions Across the Funnel Brand health isn’t a single number. It’s the sum of how well your brand is performing in the minds of your target audiences—at every step of the funnel: Awareness – Do your ideal customers even know your brand exists? Familiarity – Can they describe what you do and how you’re different? Consideration – Would they include you in their shortlist when making a purchase decision? Usage – Are they choosing you and experiencing the value you promise? Loyalty – Do they stay, recommend, and grow with your brand? When you understand how each of your target personas perceives your brand at these stages, you can pinpoint the exact points where your marketing is working—or where it’s leaking leads and losing revenue. Why You Can’t Rely on Internal Data Alone Here’s the reality: most internal dashboards can only tell you what people do. But they can’t tell you what people think. And what they think determines whether or not they’ll engage with you in the first place. The only way to measure brand health accurately is through targeted audience research—surveys and qualitative insights gathered from your actual buying personas (or those of your competitors). This research reveals how each group perceives you at every stage of the funnel, uncovering blind spots and opportunities that performance data alone can’t provide. The Strategic Power of a Brand Health X-Ray When you can see brand health perceptions by funnel stage and by persona, you unlock powerful advantages for both marketing and revenue teams: Focused Strategy If awareness is high but familiarity is low, you know your messaging isn’t landing. If consideration is weak, you may need to clarify your value proposition or address trust barriers. This enables marketing to focus efforts where the funnel is breaking down—no guesswork. Smarter Budget Allocation Instead of spreading your budget evenly or betting on assumptions, brand health insights show you exactly where to invest to get the highest return. No more overspending at the top of the funnel when the real issue is mid-funnel conversion. Competitive Benchmarking When you include competitor data in your brand health assessment, you can see how buyers perceive your rivals at each stage of the funnel. Are they winning on awareness but losing on loyalty? Are you the most considered, but not the most chosen? This is the kind of clarity that drives smart positioning. The Business Case: Stats That Matter Companies that monitor brand health regularly are 60% more likely to exceed revenue goals. Consistent brand presentation can increase revenue by up to 20%. Brands with strong funnel-wide perception outperform competitors by up to 3X in customer retention and advocacy. To get started, B2B marketers should: Identify Key Personas – Who are your target buyers? Define them clearly. Map the Funnel Stages – Customize the funnel stages to match your sales cycle. Launch Targeted Research – Use surveys, interviews, or brand assessment tools to gather perception data. Analyze and Benchmark – Compare across personas and against competitors. Act on Insights – Use findings to adjust messaging, content, media spend, and sales enablement. Marketing teams are under more pressure than ever to prove impact. By measuring brand health through the lens of funnel-stage perceptions across key personas, you equip your team with the clarity to act with precision—and avoid wasting time and budget on the wrong problems. It’s not just about knowing how your brand is doing. It’s about knowing why—and what to do next. Want help setting up a brand health assessment for your organization? DM me and let's talk about how to build your own X-ray view of your brand and your competitors.