Five ways to grow a ‘Whole Brand’ in an era of failure

David Gutting

Examines findings from Barkley’s 2022 edition of its Whole Brand Project, and how brands can find methods for growth similar to those of ‘Whole Brands’.

For three years now, my colleagues and I at Barkley have conducted national research, called The Whole Brand Project, studying why certain brands dominate their categories. The best performing brands are what we call ‘Whole Brands’ and one thing they have in common is that they all manage failure well.

Nike, Coke, and Netflix all qualify as Whole Brands, but each of them loses more often than they win. In Barkley’s latest Whole Brands research covering 126 brands, those three are most preferred in their categories by 48%, 38%, and 39% of respondents, respectively. As good as they...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands