❤️ The 95% Problem & Emotional Branding
The uncomfortable 95% truth about consumer behaviour – why your ROAS has an emotional problem. Plus: Three questions to guide your next strategic marketing decisions.
Hi 👋 I’m Florian Schleicher. This is the FutureStrategies newsletter. Thank you so much for reading along 💚
For many years, I have been fascinated by one question:
How do people choose a brand without really knowing why?
Not out of habit. Not because of the price. Not because of the latest campaign.
But because something, at some point, created a connection.
Long before the moment of purchase arrived.
“Brand is an emotional association.”
Scott Galloway
That is the power of branding.
Like a sea of lights, a strong brand guides us through decision-making processes.
But this power is currently being systematically underestimated.
This is because many marketing strategies are based on the assumption that people take in information, process it and then make a decision. Rationally. Consciously. Logically.
Science tells a different story:
🧠 The brain doesn’t buy what you think
Gerald Zaltman, a marketing researcher at Harvard Business School has, after years of research, published a figure that captures this:
95% of all purchasing decisions are made subconsciously.
Not just sometimes. But systematically.
This means that if your brand relies solely on rational communication, you will reach at most 5% of the factors influencing your target audience’s decision-making. The remaining 95% are determined elsewhere, before your campaign is even seen.
Our brain has already made a decision before our conscious mind even begins to gather arguments.
What this means for your marketing is radical:
Every cent you invest in rational persuasion – that is, in features, comparisons and justifications – is fighting against a resistance that is biologically ingrained.
And there is a second 95% problem.
At any given point in time up to 95% of your potential buyers are simply not in your market. They aren’t buying because they don’t need anything right now, not because your campaign isn’t reaching them.
And you can’t force them into the market by persuasion.
Performance marketing is tasked with converting that 5% who are currently ready to buy. This is both sensible and necessary for every brand.
What determines which brand is chosen at the moment of purchase? Which brand pops into their mind first. Which brand has left an emotional connection long before the purchase decision became a reality.
You don’t build that with a performance budget.
❤️ Brand and Performance
Brand marketing has a reputation for being a bit of a soft touch: pretty pictures. Emotional stories. Hard to measure.
On the other hand, performance marketing is all about metrics, statistics, ROAS, CPL, attribution. Clear accountability.
A few weeks ago, I put this question to the test on LinkedIn and asked which of the two functions was “more important”: 48 marketing professionals voted and discussed the issue.
The results show that the marketing world is divided:
I am a brand marketing strategist. I believe in the power of brand storytelling.
And in long-term power, in trust that builds quietly until people choose you without knowing why. I believe in building, not renting. I believe in demand creation rather than just demand capture.
But I also understand the performance arguments:
Performance feels safe. You can show it to the CFO. The board is happy when they see your conversion rate constantly improving.
The problem: this certainty is structurally incomplete.
The two usually fight against each other. But they shouldn’t.
Brand marketing is the catalyst for performance. Not the opposite.
🪦 The Doom Loop Problem
69% of marketing budgets are currently spent on short-term performance-driven initiatives, compared with 60% just a year ago. Brand building accounts for a mere 31% of the total.
This is almost the opposite of what research recommends. After analysing 30 years of IPA data, Les Binet and Peter Field have a clear recommendation: 60% brand building, 40% performance.
And WARC explicitly warns against what happens when budgets are shifted too heavily towards performance:
“If budgets shift too strong into performance, it puts brands at risk of a ‘doom loop’, which occurs when slowing growth compels advertisers to optimise spending using potentially misleading attribution-based metrics, leading to long-term declines in growth and performance.”
This isn’t a theoretical problem. It’s a structural problem that’s hidden in the quarterly figures.
How did we end up here?
In times of economic pressure, brands and companies now want to see better figures.
However: Brands with high brand awareness achieve customer acquisition costs that are 30-50% lower than those of unknown competitors. And Nielsen shows that brands with high consumer awareness achieve a conversion rate 2.5 times higher than brands with low awareness, across all channels.
A poor ROAS is often not a targeting issue. It is an awareness issue.
Emotional branding isn’t the budget you spend because you can afford it. It’s the budget that makes your performance marketing more efficient.
So: We need both.
✌️ Discovery and Decision
Mark Ritson calls this approach to work with both disciplines “Bothism”:
Discovery is the work that takes place before someone is ready to buy. It builds emotional attachment, creates mental availability, and ensures that your brand is top of mind when the moment to buy arrives. This is brand-building. It is a slow process, difficult to measure, and absolutely crucial.
Decision is the moment when someone actually makes a purchase. This is where performance marketing comes into play: conversion optimisation, targeting and ROAS measurement.
The problem with many current marketing strategies:
They currently invest almost exclusively (because of budget constraints) in decision-making and completely neglect discovery. This works as long as there is sufficient demand. When demand wanes, the downward spiral begins.
If you leave out Brand, you’ll pay more for every click. Not today. Not tomorrow. But almost certainly in six months’ time, and definitely next year.
More for every conversion. More for every new customer acquisition.
And in doing so, they compete against brands that are already firmly established in people’s minds before the purchasing process even begins.
But how does this emotional connection to a brand actually develop?
🔥 The 3 Levels of Emotional Branding
Don Norman, Designer and Author of “Emotional Design”, describes three levels at which people interact with products and brands:
1️⃣ The visceral level
It operates in milliseconds. Completely unconsciously.
Good or bad? Attractive or repulsive? Safe or unsafe?
This assessment has been made long before a single word has been read. A package. A shop window. The first image on a website. Our brain has already made up its mind.
A study by nanoscientist Satyendra Singh shows that people make a subconscious decision about a product within 90 seconds. Between 62 and 90 per cent of this decision is based solely on colour.
Not on the contents. Not on the price. On the colour.
2️⃣ The behavioural level
It’s all about usability and the user experience.
Is it straightforward? Does it work as I expect it to? Is it enjoyable?
This is what determines whether a first purchase leads to repeat business. Whether a product is recommended. Whether a brand becomes part of everyday life.
3️⃣ The reflective level
It is the slowest and most deliberate.
What does it say about me that I’m buying this? Does it fit with my identity? This is where brands build cultural significance and justify premium prices.
The problem:
Most marketing budgets are focused on Level 3.
But most purchasing decisions are made at Level 1.
And that’s why I keep hearing things like this in workshops:
“We want to convey that our product is sustainable, high-quality and innovative.”
Three adjectives. All rational. All at level 3. No customer has ever bought a product simply because they read an adjective.
The problem isn’t the message. The problem is that briefings usually take a top-down approach:
Our brand or product has an advantage, so we explain it.
But emotions work differently. They don’t arise from explanations.
They arise from experiences, images, sound, associations and memories.
🍎 Apple doesn’t explain why the iPhone is good. Apple shows what it feels like to be someone who uses an iPhone.
👟 Nike doesn’t just sell shoes. Nike reflects the self-image you want to project. And tells you that you can do it easily. Just get started. Just do it.
Both operate at Level 1.
The big problem with brand marketing is that these emotions aren’t measurable.
This is why, particularly in tough times, budgets tend to be allocated to initiatives that deliver clearly measurable results tomorrow.
Brand marketing is irrational. It’s not measurable. And yet it’s the reason why people pay more, buy faster and switch brands less often.
The question isn’t whether you invest in brand or performance. The question is, at which level your brand is currently communicating.
95% of your future customers are choosing a brand today.
They just don’t know it yet.
No brand-building means no access to those 95%.
That’s why brand marketing is always an investment in the future.
💡 3 Questions for your Next Strategic Decision
If you’re currently planning a marketing project and want to incorporate these ideas into your brief, campaign or concept, here are three questions that make for a good first step in that direction:
1. What happens before your message gets across? The first impression of your brand isn’t formed during your campaign. It happens the moment someone sees your logo, opens your website or spots your product on a shelf. Have you systematically analysed what is being communicated in that first second?
2. At what level are you actually communicating? Look at your briefing: count the rational arguments. Then count the elements that have an impact on a visceral level. Which outweighs the other?
3. How strongly is your brand emotionally anchored? Not in the sense of ‘emotionally appealing advertising’. Rather: what do people feel when they think of your brand, before they formulate a single conscious thought?
Are you unsure whether your brand is operating at the right level?
I currently work with marketing teams from 11 countries to develop clear strategies for brands, campaigns and positioning that resonate emotionally and deliver measurable results.
Your next customer has already made up their mind about you.
The question is whether your brand has helped shape the emotions behind that decision.
Thanks for reading,