If there was one word that cut through The Drum’s B2B Worldfest debate on Brand vs Demand, it was “nonsense” – as Harry Davies, vice-president, marketing strategy, effectiveness and Investment at Sage said: “When we talk about brand and we talk about category entry points and talk about demand – it’s just nonsense words.”
His point? That the language of marketing too often alienates the people marketers most need to convince – sales leaders and the C-suite. The remark rippled through the panel, framing a session that questioned whether B2B has overcomplicated the brand/demand divide instead of uniting behind a shared growth agenda.
Moderator Tom Stein, chairman and chief brand officer at Stein opened by calling the split between brand and performance “an unnatural divide,” setting the tone for a conversation that refused to sit neatly on either side.
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“Sometimes the most powerful demand-oriented work can be brand building as well… I always talk about brand to demand in the sense of it’s one continuum,” said John Rudaizky, global brand and marketing leader at EY.
That continuum is both philosophical and structural, added Amie Stankiste, group CMO at London Stock Exchange Group: “Brand and demand are interdependent… I don’t think you can really have one without the other.”
She described how LSEG’s fully centralized marketing team keeps brand, business and field marketing aligned – ensuring “the brand promise and purpose is really thinking about how we align that through all of our activities.”
Referencing a Brand-to-Demand Maturity study conducted with the ANA, Stein cited findings showing that only 26% of marketers balance their brand and demand investment allocation – even though most believe that balance is the sweet spot.
Why the gap? For Davies, the answer lies in economics and empathy: “Salespeople are human beings… they rely on their sales commissions to pay their mortgages.” When marketers chase the perfect media split, they overlook that “a media plan isn’t going to jump up and say, I think you could probably spend 5% more on brand.”
Rudaizky argued the issue is also confidence: “We need more people confidence. It’s a small department who’s trying to persuade a big group of people on the value of brand – that takes courage.” He warned that equating brand building solely with advertising is another trap: in B2B, it can just as easily be an event or thought leadership.
Davies offered perhaps the most compelling evidence for long-term brand thinking. Drawing on Sage’s stop-start investment pattern, he revealed: “When we haven’t been investing in brand, the cost per opportunity or cost per sale has gone up – and we can put an actual pound or dollar figure against that cost.”
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That, he said, is the kind of argument that lands with finance teams. It reframes brand investment not as discretionary spend but as cost avoidance.
Davies’ “nonsense” provocation came with a solution: translation. “If you sit down with a sales leader and say, wouldn’t it be really nice if… when your account executives phoned people up those people knew who we were? They go, yeah, that would be amazing.” He’s since ditched brand jargon altogether: “We now talk about pipeline today and pipeline tomorrow.”
Stankiste echoed that pragmatism, explaining how LSEG’s flagship Insight Series began as a brand play but quickly “turned very naturally into demand… we’ve built the campaign in a way that has driven very significant ROI.”
Rudaizky’s showcase of EY’s Generations film underscored a unifying truth: that even in the most complex B2B contexts, emotion is what endures. “Emotion is a force multiplier, whether you’re in the demand phase or the brand phase,” he said. “More people in B2B need to understand the disproportionate impact emotion and creativity play across that spectrum. It’s not one or the other.”
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The real challenge isn’t choosing between brand and demand but collapsing the false dichotomy, replacing theory with translation and turning “nonsense” into shared language, confidence and evidence.
When B2B stops arguing semantics and starts speaking the language of growth, that’s when brand and demand don’t compete, they compound.
Watch the full session on demand on The Drum TV.
Stein
Stein helps build the world’s most demanded B2B brands by unifying brand and demand — strengthening each to the benefit of both. Through its Brand-to-Demand...