Around the world, marketing teams are facing the same challenge: how to balance long-term brand building with short-term business results, and prove impact across both.
Across industry conferences, executive roundtables, and team strategy sessions, one theme keeps surfacing: brand and demand aren’t separate anymore — they’re partners. The most forward-thinking marketing teams aren’t choosing between the two. They’re building connected systems, strategies, and teams that make both stronger.
But navigating this shift isn’t simple. The rise of digital marketing has only made the challenge more complex. With more platforms, more metrics, more customer journeys, and more pressure to deliver results across increasingly fragmented touchpoints, it’s harder than ever to keep brand and demand efforts aligned, let alone optimized.
The following strategies are informed by real-world insights from global brands and senior leaders after attending the ANA’s recent event, “Integrating Brand and Demand for Maximum Impact” — like Marriott’s VP of Global Brand & Content Marketing, Fossil’s Head of Global Media Strategy, WARC’s Americas Editor, and monday.com’s Global Creative Director. If you’re rethinking ways to integrate brand and demand, here are seven strategies shared at this event you can apply on your own marketing teams.
1. Brand drives revenue (when you let it)
Did you know that only a small percentage of your potential customers are in-market at any given time? Everyone else is building mental availability and deciding which brands they’ll consider when the time comes to buy.
That’s why good marketing does two jobs: builds brand memory for the 95%, and drives action with the 5%.
Research from organizations like WARC shows that combining brand and performance can dramatically improve ROI, but over-indexing on performance alone can erode growth over time, which is what most of us tend to do when we’re looking for quick results.
But brand activity influences long-term business metrics like retention, and customer lifetime value, making it one of the most powerful (and often overlooked) drivers of sustained business growth.
Try this: Build campaigns for both short- and long-term impact. And don’t just measure conversions, track how brand activity fills your future pipeline.
2. Speak the language of the C-suite
To gain credibility (and brand budget), marketers need to communicate like business leaders. But more often than not, teams are still reporting in “marketing speak” while the C-suite is speaking a totally different language.
Marketers need to make the shift from reporting impressions, clicks, and engagement rates to reporting on revenue growth, profit margin, and customer acquisition cost.
This shift requires making finance your friend. Forward-thinking teams are building shared dashboards that link brand, performance, and CRM metrics that are visible across marketing, sales, and finance. Others are running bold q experiments where they shut off brand spend entirely to isolate its true impact.
This is how you unlock future investment from leadership.
3. Organize around outcomes, not job titles
Organizations are moving away from functional roles and organizing teams around shared goals. Like launching a product, growing a market, or driving retention.
These teams work in cross-functional “pods” that bring together brand, demand, analytics, creative, product, and even finance. Everyone works in sprints. Everyone owns the outcome. It’s agility at its finest.
This shift is not only changing how marketers work—it’s redefining what marketing roles look like. And if a pod isn’t performing? It gets reallocated. No legacy loyalty. Just growth.
Try this: Spin up a pod around one major initiative. Give the team a shared goal, clear visibility, and real-time feedback loops.
4. Build for consistency, but leave room for spontaneity
Modern campaign planning isn’t just about driving people through a funnel. It’s about finding the right rhythm, showing up consistently with your brand message while also staying nimble enough to respond when something timely or relevant pops up.
Strong brands have mastered this balancing act. They sustain storytelling with always-on performance and the occasional bold brand moment. They leave space to respond to what’s happening in the world—whether it’s a cultural moment, a trending topic, or something unexpected that gets people talking.
Try this: Audit your campaigns. Are you building both consistency and spontaneity? The best brands are doing both.
5. Build distinctive brand assets
The best brands don’t just chase new flashy campaigns, they focus on creative ideas that are rooted in who they are and what they stand for.
That’s why more marketing teams are looking inward. Instead of inventing something new, they’re finding distinctive, ownable moments inside the product or customer experience, and turning them into creative assets that show up everywhere.
Think of these elements as shortcuts to recognition: colors, characters, phrases, or patterns that help customers instantly connect the dots.
When done well, these brand cues don’t just look good, they do the hard work of building brand memorability.
Try this: Run a creative audit. Is your brand instantly recognizable across channels? What can you amplify to create a stronger brand recall?
6. Let brand and demand work together
Brand and demand aren’t competing priorities. In fact, they work best when they’re in sync. The most effective marketing teams aren’t passing work between the two functions. They’re working side-by-side with shared goals, shared plans, and shared dashboards.
This makes everything run smoother. Brand shows up in performance creative. Performance insights sharpen brand strategy. Everyone’s focused on the same outcome, and collaboration becomes second nature.
Try this: Bring brand and demand into the same planning cycle. Set goals together. Share dashboards. Review results as one team.
7. Centralize communication
Brand and demand teams can’t work together if they’re stuck in separate tools. Scattered updates, disconnected systems, and endless Slack threads make it easy for things to fall through the cracks.
More marketing teams are simplifying how they work by bringing everything into one shared space. This shift isn’t just about tidying up your tech stack. It’s about improving visibility, speeding up decisions, and helping teams actually work as one.
Platforms like monday.com make this easier by giving everyone a single place to track progress, manage approvals, and stay in sync from kickoff to launch.
Try this: Bring your campaign updates, requests, and feedback into one system. When everyone’s working in the same place, collaboration happens naturally—and brand and demand stay on the same page. Learn how our customer, Farfetch, consolidated all of their marketing planning — from brand through demand — in one place, saving thousands of hours and dollars a year as a result.
Final thought
Modern marketing isn’t about picking one lane. It’s about building systems where brand and demand support each other.
If you’re still trying to decide which one matters more, maybe it’s time to ask a better question: how can we make them work better—together?
One team. One plan. One goal. That’s where the momentum starts…and where the growth happens.
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