In todayâs dynamic marketplace, we know that brand growth and sustainability are more important than ever. Brand Momentum is a revolutionary measure of brand health rooted in the principles of physics that is first introduced in the book by Tony Lewis, CEO at Vision One. Much like momentum in the physical world, Brand Momentum is about how much âmassâ is in motionâhow much force or energy a brand has behind it.
In todayâs dynamic marketplace, we know that brand growth and sustainability are more important than ever. Brand Momentum is a revolutionary measure of brand health rooted in the principles of physics that is first introduced in the book by Tony Lewis, CEO at Vision One. Much like momentum in the physical world, Brand Momentum is about how much âmassâ is in motionâhow much force or energy a brand has behind it.
What is Brand Momentum?
While a good leader sustains momentum, a great leader increases it. John C. Maxwell
Brand momentum is the publicâs perception of a brandâs performance and success. It measures the energy and influence of a brand on the customer and on its market.
Momentum combines two of the most powerful factors shaping brand perceptions: a brandâs size and its velocity. Brand velocity is buyersâ and usersâ perceptions of whether a brand is growing or not. Sustained brand momentum and sufficient velocity create a positive brand image, develop loyalty, and add value to a brand. They offer a glimpse into the future for many brands, and this predictive quality is unique to brand momentum theory.
Momentum is critical for growing and declining brands, both large and small, and is a must-have metric for all marketers and brand owners to use to measure success. It offers a simple-to-apply strategy and the secret to exponential brand growth.
So, to understand momentum, you need to track two things: how big your ship is (brand mass) and whether people think itâs gaining speed or slowing down (brand velocity). Remember, bigger ships naturally lose a bit of speed the bigger they get. So, donât panic if your velocity drops slightly as your brand gains loyal customers. Focus on that overall momentum score!
Brand momentum is the hidden energy stored within your brand, the fuel that keeps it growing and thriving. To measure it, keep things simple. Track how many people use your brand and ask the most important question of all: âDo you think this brand is growing, declining, or staying the same?â This taps into the amazing intuition of the crowd, revealing how people perceive your brandâs journey.
Mastering momentum and your velocity are the secrets to building a brand that lasts. Think less about being the biggest and more about being unstoppable!
One of the hardest challenges for Marketing Directors is striking the right balance between short-term gains and planning for long-term, sustained success. Achieving one-year or even quarterly sales targets is more often rewarded with bonuses than is 10-year-sustained brand momentum â that is just a harsh fact of boardroom survival. So, developing brand momentum is a far longer game but this book sets out to demonstrate that placing trust in long-term rewards is something all boardrooms should embrace.
So, this book is not about creating short-term wins. What word do you usually associate with âmomentumâ? For me itâs the word âbuildingâ â building momentum. So, this book sets out a systematic approach to building long-term growth and health through a steady and cumulative process, preparing your brand and business for the battles ahead.
Brand Momentum and the Laws of Physics
This book is a compilation of discoveries and insights I have accumulated over time, drawing inspiration from what at first sight might seem an unlikely source â the realm of physics and the ground- breaking work of Sir Isaac Newton. Newton presented his three laws of motion in the Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis in 1686.
The intriguing parallels and analogies between brands and the laws of motion offer a unique perspective to explain consumer behaviour and how to achieve brand momentum.
In the realm of branding, the concept of momentum mirrors the fundamental principles of physics, offering a unique perspective on the behaviour and growth of brands. Just as objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force, brands that cultivate momentum are more likely to sustain their forward trajectory in the marketplace.
1. Consider Newtonâs first law of motion: an object will not alter its motion unless acted upon by a force. Similarly, brands that have built momentum through strategic positioning, effective marketing and strong consumer engagement are less susceptible to external disruptions and will keep going for longer.
2. Newtonâs second law, which states that the force on an object equals its mass multiplied by its acceleration, can be applied to brands as well. Brands with a higher mass or velocity will exert more influence or force on consumers and the market. This force will create greater attraction â helping brands grow and outpace the competition.
3. Newtonâs third law, often summarised as âfor every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,â underscores the interconnectedness of brands within the market ecosystem. Brands that exert a strong influence on consumers evoke reactions from competitors and stakeholders, shaping the competitive landscape and influencing market dynamics.
By understanding and leveraging the principles of momentum, brands can navigate the complexities of the modern marketplace with greater clarity and confidence. Like skilled physicists manipulating the forces of nature, marketers can harness the power of momentum to propel their brands toward success, shaping their trajectory and influencing their long-term growth and viability.
This book delves into how businesses create energy and momentum through their actions, especially in marketing and advertising. These activities are vital for boosting growth and building brand momentum.
However, they face challenges from various sources, such as competition, societal trends, economic factors and political pressures. Understanding and overcoming these challenges is crucial. In the face of all the confusion from these opposing forces, it is critical to be able to measure your brandâs performance and trajectory. To do so, we have created a useful and accurate measurement tool, the Brand Velocity Score (BVS). Unlike other metrics, the BVS has genuine predictive power. Itâs essential for marketers aiming for ongoing growth and longevity.
Core Beliefs Surrounding Brand Momentum
Brand Momentum introduces a new theory and approach to brand building, born out of evidence-based research, with predictive powers to signpost the future. It aims to give marketers a new way of thinking about brands that will help create new strategies to achieve longer-lasting success.
The ideas in this book are based on my first-hand experience working with brands, and brand tracking studies. However, it also borrows ideas from academia, other evidence-based research studies, and inspirations from hundreds of authors and researchers. Itâs also built on countless sleepless nights and twice as many cafĂ© lattes to compensate!
This book is about the art and science of creating brand velocity and momentum. As you will see, itâs a straightforward philosophy that is easy to apply and is measured by asking just one question to generate your Brand Velocity Score.
Using these metrics will enable you to see how the public perceives your brand, and give you a truer measurement beyond raw sales numbers as to whether it is growing or declining. It will quantify this with a straightforward, understandable score. This score reflects your brandâs standing in consumersâ minds. Tracking this regularly (e.g., annually, quarterly or more often) should run in parallel with the routine monitoring of your financial performance and other business indicators.
This single metric will not only help the direction of brands to be predicted, but it will also assist brands in reaching their maximum potential, growing faster, and, more importantly, lasting longer.
You may be familiar with an alternative brand image scoring method, the Net Promoter Score, as put forward by Fred Reichheld. His book The Ultimate Question, provides a measurement system and a blueprint for growth by focusing on loyalty and the degree to which customers recommend a brand.
This book sets out an alternative brand image measurement system, to focus brand and marketing efforts by measuring brand momentum and building a strategy around that.
Brand momentum is based on three core ideas and beliefs:
1. Brand momentum and the Brand Velocity Score (BVS) are the most important metrics for marketers. And when fully understood, most other consumer brand metrics will pale into insignificance.
2. Brands are in the mind. They are mental constructs, and the best way to create strong brands starts by understanding the customer.
3. Brands only succeed if built for the long term. While short-term gains are significant, they are often tactical and should not be mistaken for long-term success. True, sustainable success is only
reached by achieving lasting brand momentum.
Everybody is welcome to freely adopt brand momentum and the processes outlined in this book. Itâs important to emphasise that this is just the beginning of my journey. While I have learned much about momentum in recent years,
I acknowledge there is still a lot more to discover and questions still to answer. With many exciting projects in the pipeline, weâre dedicated to the quest to uncover more about brand momentum, and how brand owners can use it to their advantage.
The Search for Momentum
Marketing and business leaders intuitively understand the universal appeal of momentum. Despite this strong interest, very few know how to measure it, and even fewer possess the knowledge to act on it.
Before writing this book, I had assumed that the momentum metric was well known and understood, but probably not by the majority. How wrong I was! While I have been unable to find any books about measuring or using momentum, I needed to find out whether it was currently being applied in the boardroom. So, we surveyed over 400 marketing leaders and CEOs to determine their awareness and usage of the metric.
Beyond establishing the critical importance of growth, our research explored whether CEOs and CMOs were aware of and interested in the momentum metric. If so, was it used to evaluate their brand marketing activities? Another area of interest was to see if momentum, or a similar metric, was being used by businesses to inform their strategies.
The findings clearly showed that only a tiny proportion used or prioritised momentum as a KPI. However, it was encouraging to see that the research discovered that nine out of ten business and marketing leaders were very interested in the concept; it also confirmed that leaders were in search of momentum. Clearly, there was a gap in the market for this book and that there was a need for the momentum story to be told.
The survey results and other conversations with business leaders revealed another startling fact: there was no consensus on which KPI was the most important. There were no clear standout metrics with broad appeal or widespread usage, and the most common metrics were related to customer satisfaction and brand awareness. However, a small group of CMOs, less than one in ten, prioritised a momentum-related metric as their main KPI â suggesting that a few are utilising this metric. Nonetheless, this also implies that this book faces a significant challenge, if my hopes of helping businesses discover and adopt momentum in every boardroom are to be realised.
To be honest, these results deflated me. I couldnât understand why so few companies used momentum or other growth metrics. Perhaps it was because those in the know were keeping it a secret? But this didnât make much sense. So, I was left with the notion that neither academia, marketing, nor business experts were aware of it, which would certainly explain why no one had written about it.
Given that virtually all businesses are focused on growth, donât you think the most natural question in the world could be to ask how consumers feel the brand is doing and whether they think it is growing or not?
Surely, if a brand does its job, people will perceive it as evolving with a sense of direction, and purpose. Good examples are Virgin, Microsoft and Apple where they not only adapt but create new opportunities without compromising their core values or credibility.
We will revisit momentum and other metrics in more detail in Chapter IV, Measuring Brand Health. In the next chapter, we shall look at some of the ideas around how brands evolve throughout brand life stages, the importance of being first, brand mortality, and brand energy.
Marketers appear obsessed with brand reputation and image, and to such an extent, this focus is possibly to the detriment of brand growth. This focus on brand image could ultimately lead to a stagnant brand or even a tarnished marketing career if the brand doesnât perform. CMOs certainly have the tools to create growth, so if they are not going to lead the charge on growth â who is? The chances are it will fall to someone else â either the CEO or the Chief Strategy Officer (CSO).
The piece of the jigsaw that I believe many marketers are missing is the fact that increasing brand size and consumer perceptions of growth are the best way to improve brand reputation in the long term. One of the easiest ways to improve the brand image is simply to create brand velocity, and marketing has this at its fingertips.
Key Insight
The momentum paradox, in place today in so many companies, is that every business wants momentum, but very few seem to know how to measure or harness it. Understanding this metric is the key to unlocking sustainable growth.
As a small business owner, I understand how important it is to grow and sustain my brand. If you do not know how to develop and maintain your brand in this climate, you are in for very hot water. I wanted to read this book because of where I want to take my brand, so any resource that I believe can help, I naturally gravitate towards them. In Brand Momentum - The #1 Growth Metric for Every Boardroom, Tony Lewis presents a compelling exploration of how businesses can succeed in the long run when strategically focusing on brand momentum.
The book's essence is that brand momentum should never be solely about short-term sales spikes. The author believes (and rightly so) that brand momentum should also involve consumer engagement, adaptability, and continuous relevance. Tony Lewis supports his argument with a mix of data-driven analysis, industry insights, and case studies. The author has challenged conventional growth strategies by strongly suggesting that board members and executives prioritize brand momentum as their KPI (Key performance indicator). Lewis encourages business leaders to focus more on long-term brand equity.
Compared to similar books, Brand MomentumâThe #1 Growth Metric for Every Boardroom distinguishes itself by its singular focus on momentum as the primary growth metric. The author focuses on a mindset shift in the boardroom, where momentum becomes a central strategic priority rather than an afterthought. By switching gears, Tony Lewis might upset a few people who used to do things traditionally, but this needs to be said based on where the world is going.
Brand MomentumâThe #1 Growth Metric for Every Boardroom is well organized into digestible sections so that you can understand the topic's significance regardless of your level of marketing expertise. Tony Lewis balances accessibility and information with his clear and engaging writing style. The author's ability to break down complex branding principles and marketing into sections that the average person can digest is commendable.
I recommend Brand MomentumâThe #1 Growth Metric for Every Boardroom to marketers, boardroom executives, decision-makers, and business leaders who want to challenge the status quo. Brand momentum should be at the heart of every business strategist seeking a fresh perspective on sustaining brand success.