Paid media only builds 28% of your brand equity
We’ve long believed that distinctiveness is the difference between a great brand and an iconic one. Distinct, recognisable brands establish themselves through consistency and recognisability that builds over time. We know that repetition matters, whether that’s Heinz’s bright, ketchup-coloured north star or Jack Daniel’s black-and-white calling card that consistently cuts through the noise.
But how your distinctiveness comes to life for your customer is changing.
Our research found that just 28% of brand equity comes from paid touchpoints.Those meticulously crafted campaigns, that influencer who took months to pin down, the OOH copy it took so long to perfect — all of it adds up to just over a quarter of your brand equity.
CMOs and brand leaders need to look beyond campaign planning, and start understanding the customer’s entire experience cycle.
Experience shapes (almost) everything
If 28% of brand equity is built through paid channels, the other 71% comes through your own experience — and what you see and hear from others. (And 1% comes from “other” according to our research, because that’s the law of surveys.)
So what is brand experience? Simple: Any way someone interacts with your brand.
All brands have experiences, whether they’re curated or not.
A review on Trustpilot. A recommendation from a friend. The tone of your customer service rep. Even the smell of the handwash in the bathrooms of your restaurant.
Those moments all add up, everywhere your customer interacts with you.
And in today’s world, "everywhere" has taken on a new meaning. Before, humans crafted all of those moments — increasingly, they don’t.
We don’t only absorb brands through advertising, or even through traditional touchpoints. As AI becomes a go-to for customer research, experience is becoming more visible than ever. A summary of your brand experience — or AI’s version of your brand experience — is available in a tap. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Increasingly, there’s nowhere to hide.
What does that mean for brands? As a brand leader you need to ensure that every AI-enabled experience still feels unmistakably you, resonating with consumers at every touchpoint. That means being true to what makes your brand distinctive.
Brands with distinctive, meaningful experiences win
Our research showed that brands that improve their customer experience were 2.5X more likely to increase their market share. Over and over again, the world’s most valuable brands show us that distinctive, meaningful brands are the ones with growth and staying power.
All brands have experiences, but a distinctive brand experience is about something more. As ever, true brand equity comes down to a core belief — and bringing a brand’s belief to life in a way that resonates with consumers. Distinctive experiences are meaningful experiences.
But even for some of the most singular, recognisable brands, repeating and scaling that experience can be tricky.That’s why we’ve developed a Distinctive Experience Cycle, a three-part framework designed to help brands deliver growth across the entire brand experience.
"Knowing which touchpoints drive equity is only half the equation,” Lee Rolston, Global Chief Growth Officer at JKR explains. “The other half is building the creative and strategic infrastructure to act on it consistently. With JKR's Distinctive Experience Cycle, we give brands the system to coordinate every expression and experience around a single belief and be distinctive everywhere."
Distinctiveness has never been a single campaign. It's about orchestration. Because the world's strongest brands don't simply create memorable assets: They coordinate thousands of experiences that reinforce the same belief.
As AI makes experiences more visible than ever, that consistency becomes all the more crucial.
The principles behind distinctive brands haven’t changed. The world’s most valuable brands are still built on meaningful moments and core beliefs. Today’s challenge is scale and orchestration. By focusing on being distinctive everywhere and thinking beyond media spend, meaningful customer experiences can drive growth where you never thought to look for it.
To learn more about how to get experience right and see the distinctive experience cycle in action, check out Be Distinctive Everywhere. The Experience Edition.
