Strong brands create emotional connections between a business and its customers, and this can generate substantial value – the top 100 brand assets in Australia, for example, were worth $143 billion in 2017. And businesses that have strong brands are also significantly more profitable.

Yet despite its importance, and clear value to a business, a fresh survey commissioned for this report finds that only 17% of Australian marketers see brand as their most important objective.

With consumers not where they used to be, a constant fight for attention, and difficulties with measurement, over one-quarter of marketers think that their brand has stagnated or declined in the last 12 months.

Key report findings include highlights from a survey of over 300 senior marketers:

• Four in five marketing professionals believe new technologies will drive change in their marketing strategy in the next five years
• Two in three marketing managers believe that digital and social media are the best channels for building a brand
• Digital marketing and social media marketing are the only two mediums that marketers expect to spend a higher proportion of their budget on over the next two years
• Almost two in five marketing managers think that social media is the most effective medium for building customer engagement.

Published: July 2018