Lidl and Direct Line Group show how brand investment lifts long-term sales

Examples from two brands showing how directing marketing investment towards brand building rather than activation built sales over the long-term.

The struggle to actually prove the long-term effects of brand investment on the business bottom line means terms like “brand equity” often sound like a fudge by marketers to explain the lack of a short-term sales boost.

But Nic Pietersma, Business Director for Advanced Analytics with independent marketing and media consultancy Ebiquity, says the fact it’s hard to measure the effect of investing in brands doesn’t mean the effect doesn’t exist.

At the Lessons from the WARC Rankings 2019 event (London, May 2019), he showed how retailer Lidl and insurance business Direct Line Group had both, in different ways, generated...

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