New research shows brand preference has a 90% correlation with sales. Learn how integrating brand marketing, demand generation, and performance ads drives growth and revenue.
Brand Preference: The 90% Sales Correlation
Brand preference is more than a feel-good metric. According to the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, brand preference explains nearly 90% of the variation in brands’ market share. In short: when people like your brand more, they buy more from you.
Strong brands command higher prices, inspire loyalty, and earn trust. For example, Apple users pay top dollar and stick with the brand. And emotional connection pays off: customers who feel emotionally connected have 3x higher lifetime value and are more likely to refer others.
Trust matters. A 2025 study found that 87% of consumers are willing to pay more for brands they trust.
Why Brand Marketing Matters
Performance ads are great for short-term gains, but long-term growth comes from brand marketing. Les Binet and Peter Field found the most effective strategies balance long-term brand building and short-term sales (often around 60/40).
Take Adidas. For a while, it spent 77% of its budget on digital performance ads. Sales looked good – until they didn’t. Once Adidas used econometric modeling, they found that 65% of their sales were driven by brand activity. That insight led them to rebalance their budget toward brand campaigns.
Neglecting brand-building results in diminishing returns. Gap Inc., Tripadvisor, and others admitted they needed to invest in brand again to sustain sales.
A 1-point gain in awareness or consideration can mean a 1% lift in sales, according to Nielsen. And stronger brand metrics also improve your performance ad efficiency.
What Are Brand, Demand, and Performance?
Brand Marketing: Builds awareness and emotional connection. It’s your story and values, told consistently across channels. Think brand videos, slogans, storytelling campaigns.
Demand Generation: Captures interest and educates your audience. It sits in the middle of the funnel: webinars, helpful guides, and content offers.
Performance Marketing: Focuses on conversions now. Think paid search, social ads, email marketing. Measurable, trackable, and highly optimized.
These three strategies map to the funnel: brand builds awareness, demand nurtures interest, and performance converts leads into customers.
Why You Need All Three: Brand, Demand, Performance
Most brands over-invest in performance because it feels measurable. But without brand marketing, your funnel dries up. And without demand generation, performance ads lack context.
Retail: Adidas Relearns the Value of Brand
We’ve mentioned Adidas before, but it’s worth revisiting as a lesson in misalignment. Adidas discovered that 65% of its sales were driven by brand marketing—broad campaigns, visibility, and creative storytelling. However, they were spending the majority of their budget on highly targeted digital ads. This led to a misattribution issue: performance ads looked effective on dashboards, but they were riding on the brand equity built by earlier campaigns. Once Adidas rebalanced their media mix—investing more in brand-building alongside performance—they saw better overall efficiency.
Gap Inc. had a similar realization, shifting back to brand after seeing diminishing returns from short-term tactics. For retail, familiarity creates a halo effect—your stores and ads perform better when your brand is already top-of-mind. Retail giants like Nike continue to run emotional brand campaigns not for vanity, but because they make every product drop and retail channel more effective.
E-Commerce: DTC Brands Find Balance
Take Bombas, the sock company known from Shark Tank. They scaled quickly using performance marketing and a purpose-driven model (“buy one, give one”). But they didn’t stop there. Bombas expanded into multichannel marketing, adding TV and outdoor to their mix. That broader reach helped them keep growing, ultimately generating over $1.4 billion in retail sales. On the other hand, many DTC brands that relied only on social ads hit a growth ceiling.
Warby Parker avoided this trap by adding physical stores and investing in PR and partnerships to reach new audiences. They understood that performance marketing alone won’t keep the funnel full forever. Brand marketing brings in new demand, and then performance tactics convert it. As experts have noted, customer retention matters—but constant acquisition is essential. An integrated approach ensures you’re both creating interest and capturing demand.
Recruiting & Higher Education: Brand Reputation Attracts People
Brand building isn’t just for products—it matters in recruiting and education too. Employer branding is now central to talent acquisition. A Universum study found that companies with strong brand reputations have up to 28% lower turnover. Job seekers are more likely to respond to recruiters if they trust and recognize the brand.
In higher ed, schools are realizing that a compelling brand story improves enrollment, reputation, and fundraising. Branding creates the emotional appeal that gets students to choose one school over another. Think of how “Harvard” or “Stanford” carry weight—their brand equity does much of the marketing for them. Most schools won’t reach that level, but by clarifying their positioning and emotional differentiators, they can rise above the noise. The same goes for companies hiring in competitive markets—brand reputation improves the performance of your recruiting ads and helps attract better-fit candidates.
Arizona State University is a strong example. Rather than marketing every program under a single name, ASU established clearly branded sub-schools—like the W. P. Carey School of Business, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, and Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. This structure gives each area its own identity, prestige, and positioning—while still benefiting from the strength of the ASU brand. It allows prospective students to connect with a specific discipline while still trusting the parent university’s reputation.
The Brand + Demand + Performance Framework
Imagine a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles:
Brand (awareness and trust)
Demand (education and nurturing)
Performance (conversion and ROI)
At the center is sustainable growth. When these three work together, you’re filling your funnel, nurturing leads, and converting customers consistently.
Why Brand, Demand, Performance Integration Wins
Research shows that multiple touchpoints and balanced strategies drive better results. Yet 70% of companies experience friction between brand and demand teams. Half of marketers want to integrate these strategies but don’t know where to start.
The best-performing companies don’t pick one. They invest in all three.
What This Means for Your Marketing Team
Here’s the reality: most internal teams are stretched thin. You might have a great creative lead but no one focused on demand gen, or a PPC pro without a brand strategist.
That’s where a full-service marketing agency can help. Agencies with brand, demand, and performance capabilities can:
Create a unified strategy
Align messaging across the funnel
Execute faster with expert teams
Hiring an agency gives your team more firepower without adding headcount.
Final Brand, Demand, Performance Takeaways
Brand preference is tied to revenue.
Performance ads alone can’t sustain growth.
An integrated marketing strategy outperforms siloed tactics.
Agencies can help you align brand, demand, and performance.
If your marketing results have stalled, or if you’re looking to grow market share, it may be time to bring in a partner to build the full funnel strategy you need.
Need help aligning your brand, demand, and performance strategy?
- “Brand preference has a 90% correlation with sales performance.”
- Source: Rupert Price, “Brand preference is the secret weapon for growth,” The Australian, March 23, 2025.
- “Adidas found that the majority of its sales (65%) came from brand marketing efforts.”
- Source: Charlotte Rogers, “Adidas: We over-invested in digital advertising,” Marketing Week, April 11, 2019. Marketing Week+1coperon.com+1
- “Companies with a well-regarded employer brand experience up to 28% lower employee turnover.”
- Source: Universum, “Employer Branding Now,” 2016.
- “Bombas has generated over $1.4 billion in retail sales.”
- Source: Nigel Hollis, “How Brand Building and Performance Marketing Can Work Together,” Ask Nigel Hollis, May 2023. Harvard Business Review
- “Improving customer experience and retention is good, but acquisition is critical.”
- Source: Ken Favaro, “How Brand Building and Performance Marketing Can Work Together,” Harvard Business Review, May 2023. Harvard Business Review
- “Companies that focus on growing brand preference outperform those that pursue too many variables at once.”
- Source: Rupert Price, “Brand preference is the secret weapon for growth,” The Australian, March 23, 2025.
- “Adidas operates over 2,800 retail outlets across key markets.”
- Source: “Adidas Marketing Mix 2025: A Case Study,” Latterly.org, January 2025. Latterly
- “Adidas’ marketing and point-of-sale expenses were €657 million in Q1 2024.”
- Source: “Adidas brand momentum drives better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2024,” Adidas Group, May 2024. Adidas Group+1Adidas Group+1
- “Nike’s annual revenue reached $51.2 billion in 2023.”
- Source: “Nike vs Adidas: Business Model, Branding and Marketing,” Growth Navigate, November 2023. Growth Navigate
- “Adidas produced 340 million pairs of shoes in 2021.”
- Source: “20 Mind-Blowing Adidas Facts You Should Know in 2024,” FashionDiscounts.uk, February 2022.
- “Adidas holds 4,476 patents worldwide.”
- Source: “Adidas Statistics By Revenue, Sales and Facts [2025],” Coolest Gadgets, January 2025.
- “Adidas’ brand activity drove 65% of sales across wholesale, retail, and e-commerce.”
- Source: “Learning the right lessons from Adidas,” ET BrandEquity, November 2019.
- “Adidas’ marketing and point-of-sale expenses decreased 8% to €2,528 million in 2023.”
- Source: “Adidas performs better than expected in transition year 2023,” Adidas Group, March 2024.
- “Over-investing in performance advertising can reduce ROI by 20-50%, while a balanced mix can lift ROI by 25-100%, with an average increase of 90%.”
- Source: “Brand and performance ads create multiplier effect for business growth,” The Australian, February 2025.
- “Adidas is targeting continued sales growth and market-share gains this year.”
- Source: “Adidas Aims to Increase Sales, Win Market Share Amid Nike’s Struggles,” The Wall Street Journal, March 2025.
- “Nike’s current challenges present Adidas with an opportunity to capture more market share.”
- Source: “As Nike struggles, Adidas must surf Samba wave with caution,” Reuters, October 2024.
- “Avavav’s Spring/Summer 2025 show featured a collaboration with Adidas.”
- Source: “Behind the scenes: Avavav’s track race runway, featuring Adidas,” Vogue Business, September 2024.
- “Brand marketing outperforms performance marketing 80% of the time in terms of sales and ROI.”
- Source: “Brand Marketing Drives Sales, ROI and Even Performance Campaigns,” Analytic Partners, 2025.
- “Adidas’ brand activity driving 65% of sales across wholesale, retail, and e-commerce.”
- Source: “Adidas: We over-invested in digital advertising,” Coperon, April 2019.
- “Companies with strong brand reputations have up to 28% lower turnover.”
- Source: “Factors Effecting Consumer Brand Preferences in Automobile Industry,” Singaporean Journal of Business Economics, and Management Studies, 2016.
- “Brand preference has a compelling relationship to sales outcomes, both in terms of market share and sustaining price premiums.”
- Source: “Sponsorship