Stat of the Week. Cutting $1 of brand spending now costs $1.92 in future investment to win back the share it loses, up from $1.85 in 2022. Three out of four marketers say brand cuts do more damage than they did five years ago. (BCG, December 2025.)
The BCG stat above treats brand as capital—an asset that grows when supported and quickly loses value when neglected. EY’s global consumer index found that 88% of 20,235 people surveyed feel brand messaging doesn't reflect their needs and values, and over a third no longer consider brands when buying.
Both views are valid because 'brand' means two things. It is both what a company says about itself and what customers notice on their own. Customers are ignoring the first but still value the second, even though most brand budgets focus on the first. In a world where anyone can quickly create a polished message, the real value lies in what competitors cannot easily copy and what customers can verify themselves. Most companies have not clearly defined or assigned this difference to marketing.
The claim is what customers are rejecting
At first, EY’s numbers seem like a harsh judgment on branding. Two-thirds of people say private labels meet their needs as well as branded products, and 36% no longer consider brands at all. But the rest of the survey shows that 65% still value brands, 48% would go back to a premium brand for better quality or performance, and a third would pay more for improvements that boost product performance (EY, March 2025).
Taken together, these answers show that people want proof, not that they don’t care about brands. BCG’s research finds the same thing from another angle. Trust is the main reason 68% of consumers make a purchase, and companies that don't build trust have shareholder value 10 percentage points lower (BCG, December 2025). The brand itself still matters. What no longer works is just advertising it.
Almost nobody can say why a customer should choose them
Bain asked over 1,100 senior executives in 18 industries about this issue. Only 4% said their organization has a strong, clear value proposition. Nearly half said their biggest challenge is making their product or service stand out (Bain, March 2026). The survey also found that companies with a clear value proposition grew revenue by 19% in 2025, compared to 12% for those without one.
Separate these groups before looking for patterns. Bain’s respondents are business sellers, while EY’s are shoppers focused on consumer goods. They are on opposite sides of the buying process and answer different questions. In both cases, buyers look for a clear difference they can name, but sellers often make claims that sound like their competitors’. Nearly 40% of Bain’s top performers say brand perception is key to winning and keeping customers. Across all respondents, only 4% say everyone understands their organization's value proposition.
The difference usually sits outside the marketing plan
A mid-sized business software company spent almost a year trying to reposition itself, but nothing changed. They followed a careful process: customer research, a leadership workshop, and then a new positioning statement, sales materials, and website. Within a few months, every salesperson could repeat the new message, which the team saw as a success. However, win rates did not improve for the next three quarters.
Later, the company paid to interview prospects it had lost. These buyers described the company almost exactly as they described two competitors. Buyers mentioned one thing on their own, again and again: a support program the company had offered for years but never promoted as a selling point. Each customer got a dedicated engineer and a guaranteed response time, something competitors only gave to their biggest clients. The company treated this support program as an operational cost and never mentioned it in marketing because no one asked the marketing team what the company truly did better.
The company confused internal agreement with real market difference. This mistake is common because everything seems fine from the inside. The positioning was clear, and the team was on the same page, but a department that didn't see it as marketing treated the one feature that could have justified a higher price as just another cost. It took a quarter to rewrite the value proposition around the support model, and now sellers could claim any customer could confirm it by talking to another customer.
Cheap production raises the price of being ordinary
BCG says the problem is that generative AI has made it easy to create lots of brand content that all looks and sounds the same. When it costs almost nothing to make a claim, those claims lose their value. What still matters is what is hard to fake: a real feature, a proven record, or a promise that is kept even when it is difficult. BCG puts it this way: with AI making creativity available to everyone, brand distinctiveness is now the last real competitive advantage (BCG, December 2025). Simply put, when everyone can make the same content, the only way to stand out is to be truly different.
Now, a system stands between companies and customers at every stage, and it only accepts what it can verify. More businesses can now sell media, first impressions often happen through digital assistants, and even access to your own web pages is becoming something you have to negotiate. A claim a machine can't check is worth even less than it is to a person.
The main problem is timing, because brand evidence often comes in after the budget decision has already been made. BCG says that 70% of top marketers now use at least three different ways to measure results, combining traditional brand tracking with faster, predictive tools. One example is BCG’s First-Fast Response metric, which they say is 2.6 times more responsive and four times more predictive of future sales than unaided awareness, though this is their own measure (BCG, December 2025). The key point is that a quarterly brand metric can't compete with a performance metric that updates daily, no matter its value.
Five drivers, and where to start
Consider BCG’s five drivers of above-market brand returns as a checklist for diagnosing issues with your brand’s value proposition:
Influence: Find out where customers really make their decisions, not just where your sales funnel suggests.
Attention: Focus your efforts on the key moments that matter most, instead of spreading attention evenly. Half of consumers say capturing their attention is a top reason they make purchases.
Trust: Make only claims customers can verify for themselves, rather than asking them to take your word for it.
Rigor: Make sure brand evidence is available before customers make budget decisions. Use more than one measurement method, including at least one that gives quick results.
Channels: Focus on the few formats that really work, and use generative AI savings to invest more in them instead of just cutting costs. BCG finds that top marketers are 1.2 times more likely to reinvest these savings into marketing.
Begin with trust, and look beyond the marketing department. Ask ten customers who picked you and ten who didn’t what made you stand out, and record their answers exactly as they say them. If their words apply to any competitor, your positioning isn't the main issue. If someone mentions a real difference, find out which team owns it, because that is where next year’s brand investment should go. What would your best customers say you do better, and does anyone in marketing manage that?
Sources
BCG, “Building Lasting Brand Equity in the Age of AI,” December 12, 2025, by Peter Dewey, Leonardo Fascione, Romain Faracci, and Sarah Goldschmid.
EY, “EY Future Consumer Index: brands fall out of favor as pressure mounts to win back faltering customer loyalty,” March 2025 (global release; 15th edition of the Future Consumer Index, n=20,235 consumers across 26 countries, fielded January 24 to February 20, 2025).
Bain & Company, “More companies missing revenue targets amid AI and geopolitical volatility (2026 B2B Growth Agenda),” March 30, 2026 (n=more than 1,100 senior executives across 18 industries globally; business-to-business scope, stated in the body).