Why do brands fail not because of a lack of creativity, but because of a lack of strategy?

When Brands Do a Lot But Get Nowhere

In today's business environment, it's rare for a company to fall into a state of "doing nothing." Most brands are constantly active: running ads, producing content, changing concepts, following trends, and launching campaign after campaign. However, paradoxically, the more they do, the greater the feeling of stagnation.

According to recent McKinsey analyses, over 60% of marketing budgets don't generate long-term growth. The reason isn't poor creativity, but a lack of strategic alignment between activities. In other words, brands are doing a lot, but not doing the right things.

What does DO mean in the context of brand strategy?

In this article, the term DO is used to mean implementation action.

DO encompasses everything a business is doing on the surface of the market: marketing campaigns, social media content, advertising, PR, graphic design, videos, websites, events, and activations. This is the most visible part of marketing, and also the part that gives the feeling of "being active."

DO isn't wrong. The problem lies in the fact that when DO becomes the first reaction whenever a business encounters difficulties, strategy is relegated to a secondary role. In that case, the brand may operate very dynamically, but lacks long-term direction.

When DO precedes strategy, brands easily get lost.

In strategic thinking, DO is only the final layer of a decision-making system:

WHY – Why does the brand exist?

WHAT – What does the brand represent?

HOW – Approach and growth strategy?

DO – Specific implementation action?

Many brands skip the first three layers and jump straight to DO. The consequences are often not immediate, but will become apparent over time: constantly changing messaging, inconsistent imagery, internal teams not sharing a common understanding of the brand, and customers not knowing what to believe.

NielsenIQ notes that more than half of consumers lose trust when brands constantly change their messaging without a clear direction. This is a typical sign of a lack of strategy, not a lack of creativity.

Creativity isn't wrong, but creativity without a strategy is very costly.

Creativity is a powerful tool. It helps brands gain attention, be remembered, and even be loved in the short term. But without a foundational strategy, creativity easily becomes a series of disjointed bursts that don't accumulate value.

BCG points out that brands with clear and consistent strategies have significantly higher growth potential than those that focus only on short-term activities. This shows that strategy doesn't stifle creativity; on the contrary, it helps creativity be effective in the right place.

Back to Nature: When Strategy Returns to Its Essence

The Back to Nature philosophy in brand strategy isn't about emotion or trends. It's a very practical approach: returning to the essence of the brand, market logic, and core elements.

Instead of constantly asking “what more should we do?”, Back to Nature poses a more challenging but necessary question: “What is core, and what is unnecessarily complicating the brand?” When the strategy is clear enough, brands often do less, but more effectively. DO doesn’t disappear, it becomes selective.

A real-world example from the wellness industry:

A wellness brand in an urban area once offered over 20 different services and ran numerous campaigns with varying messages. Despite the intense activity, the brand failed to achieve sustainable growth.

After reviewing its strategy, the brand narrowed its target market, clearly defined the segments it could serve (SAM and SOM), and streamlined its service portfolio to core experiences. Within six months, revenue increased by over 30%, customer retention rates improved significantly, while marketing costs decreased considerably.

This change doesn't come from being more creative, but from having a clearer strategy.

Signs that a brand lacks strategy, not ideas

When a brand lacks strategy, the problem is rarely a lack of ideas. On the contrary, ideas are often abundant. The missing element is a sufficiently strong central axis around which all activities revolve. Without that axis, the brand easily falls into a state of noise but emptiness, dynamic but lacking accumulation.

The key question many teams fail to answer is: “After a year, what do we want customers to remember most about this brand?” Without a clear answer, adding more DO (Do-Do) only exacerbates the problem.

Strategy determines what DOs and what DOs not.

Strategy is not intended to replace action. Instead, it helps businesses decide:

which activities to do, which channels to prioritize, what to say and what to avoid, and where to accelerate and where to stop.

When the strategy is clear, DO becomes concise, focused, and capable of creating long-term impact.

Brands Fail Due to a Lack of Strategic Discipline

Brands rarely fail due to a lack of creativity. Most failures stem from a lack of strategic discipline: failing to maintain positioning long enough, failing to build sufficient trust, and failing to differentiate between creating buzz and creating value.

In a world where anyone can create content, competitive advantage lies not in talking more, but in saying the right thing, doing the right thing, and being consistent enough.

References:

McKinsey & Company – Marketing & Growth Insights (2024–2025)

BCG – Strategy Advantage & Brand Trust Reports (2024)

NielsenIQ – Brand Trust & Consumer Behavior (2024)

WARC – Brand Building vs Activation Studies

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