By Eimear Colleran

We marketers love to talk about brand. We wax lyrical about storytelling, connection, purpose – all the good stuff. But when it’s time to show the impact? That’s when the slide decks get vague and the conversation quietly shifts to Click-Through Rates (CTR) and last-click attribution.

We all agree that brand matters. It’s the part of the meeting where everyone nods like they’re hearing gospel. But the second someone asks, “How’s it doing?” – cue crickets. That’s followed by a frantic detour into clicks, conversions, and that one suspiciously optimistic ROAS slide from last month.

Brand gets the New Year’s resolution treatment – big plans, no progress, quietly abandoned by March.

But here’s the thing: brand isn’t fluffy.  

Just because someone buys you a drink doesn’t mean you’re building a relationship, and the same goes for clicks and brand.

If you can’t measure brand impact, that’s a data problem, not a brand problem

Marketers know brand works. It builds memory, drives preference, and quietly does all the heavy lifting while performance takes the credit. But because the return on investment isn’t instant, and the dashboards don’t light up like a Christmas tree, brand gets “parked,” “paused,” or politely shuffled into a deck called Let’s Circle Back_2026.pptx.

It’s the classic marketing double standard. If it can’t be tracked in a pixel, it gets sidelined. If it doesn’t spike ROAS in 48 hours, it’s labelled “fluff” and quietly cut from next quarter’s budget.

That’s not strategic. That’s lazy.  And honestly? It’s giving 2021.

What if your brand had a Fitbit?

We track everything these days, from steps, heart rate, sleep, calories… even how stressed we are about not sleeping enough. We’ve got tiny computers strapped to our wrists telling us to drink water and stand up. But ask a marketer how their brand is performing, and suddenly it’s vibes, last year’s tracking study, and a brand lift stat buried somewhere on slide 42 of the QBR.

Now, imagine your brand had a Fitbit. One that actually told you, in real time, what’s working, what’s flatlining, and what’s quietly bleeding budget behind the scenes. Not after the campaign’s over and your media agency’s on holiday, but while it’s live. Not just whatever Google wants you to believe, but an actual, independent view of what’s moving the needle.

Because brand measurement doesn’t have to be guesswork. It can be dynamic, always-on, and built to reflect how your business actually works.

Less noise. More signal. Less performance theatre. More strategy.  And no, you don’t have to have 16 tabs open to find it.

Right now, you’re letting Google and Meta mark their own homework

Google and Meta’s attribution data isn’t neutral; it’s optimised to make them look like MVPs. If you’re building your budget plans off what the ad platforms are reporting, you’re not measuring performance. You’re just letting the fox run the henhouse.

It’s like having your dad umpire your under-9s Auskick game, cute when you’re still picking grass and running the wrong way. But if you’ve made it to the regional footy league and Dad’s still blowing the whistle, it’s probably time to grow up and get a real umpire.

That’s why having your own model matters. One that’s independent, rigorous, and actually reflects what’s driving business outcomes, not just what’s driving CPMs.

Because without it, you’re not running marketing.  You’re running errands for the algorithm.

Fluff doesn’t get remembered. Brand does

Think about the last campaign you actually remember – the one people sent to their group chat, quoted at the pub, or parroted in the office for months. I guarantee it wasn’t an ad with a 6.2% CTR and a limited-time offer. It was something bigger.  Something emotional, something distinctive and that probably had a jingle that stuck in your head for three years.

Because brand creates memory. And memory is what gets you chosen, not just clicked.

If you want real growth, you can’t just optimise for conversion like you’re playing a slot machine at Crown with your media budget. You need to build for consideration. You need to create future demand, and that’s not chasing the same five people who abandoned their cart last Tuesday.

Brand isn’t hard to measure, we’ve just been measuring the wrong things

It’s not 2009. We no longer have to choose between beautiful, creative and business impact. You can quantify the effect of brand on pipeline, retention, pricing power, even margin.

But to do that, you need to move beyond vanity metrics and lagging indicators. You need a marketing measurement model that’s as smart as your finance team’s forecasts. One that lets you simulate scenarios before you blow the budget. One that helps you referee your own channels, not guess which one deserves the credit.

It’s time to stop apologising for brand

Brand isn’t soft. It’s powerful. But if you can’t prove it, it’ll keep getting cut first and funded last – like the office fruit bowl when the budget tightens.

So here’s the thing: if you wouldn’t trust your fitness to a hunch and a colour-coded notebook, why are you running your brand that way?

In a world where marketers are expected to justify every cent, the ones who can connect brand to business outcomes, with real data, not vibes and vintage tracking studies, are the ones who’ll win.

You can’t build brand equity on good intentions and pastel gradients. Your brand deserves better. It deserves something measurable, defendable, and built to last.

Eimear Colleran is head of Marketing at Prophet

Read more: What Byron Sharp taught me about the future of marketing