When it comes to thinking about “brand”, it’s common to think of it as a singular identity. Even the Business Dictionary defines brand as “a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers”. In this frame of mind, it’s easy to view a brand like we might an individual; it has a combination of distinctive features that make it recognisable—a name, logo, products and attributes it’s associated with.
However, at Perceptive, we view “brand” as being more akin to a team. The best teams are groups of individuals who come together under a common goal; each individual plays a role that contributes to the team’s success.
The same goes for a brand.
A brand is more than a name, symbol, story or a company’s latest marketing campaign. Rather, it is comprised of multiple components—from your products and how you show up in the marketplace to the experiences you offer and staff who represent you. Much like a team, the better aligned all these components are, the better the brand will perform.
Focusing on one side of brand eventually leads to a plateau
We’re in the experience economy now. Businesses are thriving on offering consumers unique and memorable experiences, and as a result, some of the most successful businesses have built their brand on experience alone.
Think Uber. The ride-sharing service was all about the experience. True, it had a decent product—the app—behind it, but what set it apart was the ease and speed of its service. AKA, experience. Given the business consistently asks app-users to rate their drivers and requiring drivers in turn to maintain high ratings, it’s safe to say Uber was well aware of the power of experience and what it did for their brand.
However, Uber can also be seen as a cautionary tale. Until recently, the company struggled with profitability. For a decade they operated at a financial loss, only reporting their first net positive year in 2023. While heavy investment in expanding and diversifying its ride-sharing app is frequently billed as the prime reason behind this decade of loss, it could be argued that this rapid international expansion came about in response to Uber’s declining market penetration in the US and new, intense competition from other ride-sharing services entering the market.
“In the second quarter of 2017, only 13% of Uber’s new downloads came from the United States; three years ago, the U.S. represented 50% of app downloads,” writes Evie Liu for Barron’s.
In Uber’s tale, we see the danger in relying solely on experience to build a brand. While Uber had loyal investors to see them through years of loss, many businesses don’t have that kind of luxury.
It should be noted that Uber didn’t run a marketing campaign until 2016, citing a desire to “get better at telling it’s story”. In other words, it recognised the importance of going beyond experience and building all the other components of its brand with the work finally paying off years later.
More recently, a similar story has played out with ChatGPT, which has relied on product release after product release to fuel its brand growth—until recently.
“The confusing, overlapping upgrades that have seen a platform like ChatGPT launch fifteen, yes fifteen, named upgrades in less than three years of commercial operation. Catchy names like GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-4o mini and o4-mini beat the user into stupefied submission,” writes Mark Ritson for The Drum.
Meanwhile, numerous competitor LLMs have arisen, following much the same product release strategy, which has muddied the waters with users unable to distinguish one product from another or understanding what specialisations one platform might have over another.
According to the 2025: State of Consumer AI report, “91% of AI users reach for their favourite general AI tool for nearly every job. Consumers typically test their preferred general AI tool first—no matter the task—and only look for alternatives when it comes up short.”
“The big companies can no longer point to adoption curves to save them,” Ritson writes.
And we see this reflected in ChatGPT’s recent decision to start traditional TV brand ads in a bid to better distinguish itself from competitors, build its brand, and ultimately grow.
The power of a holistic brand view
Building a brand might sound simple in theory—and even in execution—but getting true alignment between all the components of your brand can be difficult. While a brand is in part what people think and feel, it is also every touchpoint and every experience consumers have with your business. From your website and social media through to booking systems, point of sale, online ordering, apps, product troubleshooting, store fronts, staff and more. In this sense, your brand is built from the inside out—your staff, systems and processes need to be in sync and delivering the same consistent experience and expression of your brand. If these areas aren’t aligned, you risk creating jarring touchpoints that affect experience and brand perceptions. For example, a sub-par troubleshooting or customer support experience can quickly turn a promoter of your brand into a detractor who actively tells others to avoid using your products and/or services.
For this reason, it’s crucial to have a holistic view of your brand rather than a narrow view that only assesses your brand according to one or two specific components, such as brand awareness, consideration or CEPs. Make no mistake, brand funnel metrics and CEPs are important to have, but so is a Voice of Customer programme with customer experience metrics and an employee engagement programme that measures employee experience.
At Perceptive, we see these components as all connected to brand; each element has huge potential and impact on how your brand is perceived and viewed in the market.
The core challenge then becomes: how do you get them all on the same page? And how do you combine them into a cohesive programme to inform your decision-making?
Step 1: Alignment
The first step to building your holistic brand view is getting alignment between your message to market, customer experience and employee experience. This stage is about breaking down silos and building a consistent message to use across different business areas, from marketing through to service, product, digital, and everything in between.
“The most successful brands are finding ways to unify different business areas under a clear and simple message,” says Jackson Humphries, Research Director at Perceptive. “Clear and simple means it’s easily understood by customers, which helps set expectations and satisfaction. From an employee point of view, clear and simple also minimises confusion or misinterpretation about how the brand wants them to represent it in the market.”
A good example of alignment in action is Red Bull. It’s mission statement “Give wings to people and ideas” is played out across its marketing, from the iconic tagline “Red Bull gives you wings”, to its product, events, sponsorships and experiences. Both the brand and the experiences it offers have become synonymous with high-performance fun, creativity, power, energy and adventure as the brand provides people with the energy to chase their goals, no matter how extreme.
Step: 2: Measure
Just as you aim to build a holistic brand view, the way you measure it needs to reflect this mentality and include the different aspects that feed into your brand. In addition to your traditional brand metrics, such as awareness, consideration and purchase/usage, this should include, at minimum, customer experience (CX) and ideally employee experience.
“At Perceptive, we try not to look at brand and CX as two different disciplines,” says Jackson. “To build a high performing brand, you have to have a view of all these things and how they interplay and drive your brand’s performance.”
Also consider your systems and processes and if they have any impact on employees or your customers. For example, wait times at a call centre. While this metric may appear to be a system or process related, it is also a brand performance metric if a long wait time runs counter to your brand promise (e.g., “prompt customer support”). By not upholding your brand promise, customer experience is impacted and your credibility undermined.
Step 3: Understand and action
Once you have your alignment and holistic measures in place, it’s time to build out the complete picture. Use the measures to understand how all the components of your brand are interplaying, and where the gaps and opportunities are to add value and grow better brand outcomes. From here it’s a case of prioritising and actioning. This may involve using additional intelligence—be it in-house, external or machine, or all three—to design out ways to capitalise on these opportunities.
Important note: this is an iterative process. You may not get it right the first time around or your brand may evolve over time. It’s likely you’ll cycle back to step one and two again at some point to re-align and re-measure.
Not all brands are built the same, but they can all benefit from holistic understanding
No one brand will have the same “team members” contributing to it. Like all teams, you’ll have your star players working alongside simple contributors, but by having the full picture of how they all work together you gain a better understanding of your brand, it’s strengths and weaknesses, and how to optimise and grow it for performance.
Want to know more about how intelligence can support your brand growth? Read our free Building Your Brand guide.
