Value Creation: Brand and Marketing Focus
Brand and marketing activities are critical to a successful growth path and creating sales opportunities, whether in a B2B, B2B2C or B2C environment.
Drawing on the work of Kate Parker, Kristin Carlos, and Kerrie Anne Turner from Current Future, this article explores key actions and insights that have driven impact across our clients. We hope this article sparks a thought process and helps to create ideas for improvement and challenge in your own businesses.
Kate Parker, Kristin Carlos, and Kerrie Anne Turner
✅ 1. Building Strong Brand Foundations
A recurring theme in our work is the importance of brand clarity - defining purpose, positioning, and personality before scaling marketing activity.
📌 Critical elements:
Brand Pillars: What the brand stands for and what it should be famous for.
Emotional Benefit: Moving beyond functional messaging to create emotional resonance.
Cultural Impact: Positioning the brand as a thought leader, thinking through the particular ‘trust’ levels inherent with customers in the relevant category (e.g. health care being a high trust environment).
💡 Actionable Insight:
Creating a Brand-on-a-Page framework – vision, role, product truth, emotional benefit, and personality – can create the anchor for all marketing decisions.
👥 2. Customer Personas and Segmentation
Effective marketing starts with knowing your audience deeply. The Current Future approach prioritises psychographics over demographics, focusing on values, attitudes, and behaviours.
📌 Critical elements:
Segments based on emotional states and expectations (e.g. Healthcare - “my life has been interrupted” or Waste Management - “I just want it out of the way”).
Personas aligned to service differentiation and mapped customer journeys to pinpoint “Moments That Matter” which will allow customers to progress through their journey and decision making.
💡 Actionable Insight:
Build data-driven personas combining qualitative insights with behavioural analytics. Use these to tailor messaging, prioritise channels and build meaningful ‘calls to action’.
📣 3. Marketing Channels and Content Strategy
Relevant channels and content will vary by sector and need to be understood as part of the development of personas. Working with our clients, channels and content bring together a balanced mix of paid, owned, and earned channels, with strong focus on brand-in-action activities:
Paid Media: Google Ads and social campaigns for awareness.
Owned Channels: Website optimisation and lead nurture programs utilising CRM.
Earned Media: PR and thought leadership to build credibility.
💡 Actionable Insight:
Adopt a phased approach—start with SEO and content optimisation, layer in paid campaigns, and amplify with community or ‘tribal’ engagement. GEO is also important to understand in the context of each segment and how customers us AI models to learn about how their needs can be responded to.
🔍 4. Behavioural Drivers and Tribes
Another way of thinking of marketing segments and audiences is to think of them as tribes—groups united by shared values and identity.
📌 Critical elements:
Build community-driven marketing to foster advocacy.
Use brand storytelling to create belonging and emotional connection.
💡 Actionable Insight:
Create platforms for participation—social groups, events, and user-generated content that turn customers into brand advocates. This can be guided by leading the tribe and understanding the role of a brand in that tribe. The marketing element is about activating that tribe in the way they want to be activated.
🔗 5. Value Chain and Customer Journey
Mapping the end-to-end value chain identifies friction points and aligns marketing with sales and operations.
💡 Actionable Insight:
Map the customer journey to identify “Moments That Matter” and align marketing actions to these touchpoints. Build out the sales function to capture a single pathway for customers through the typical cycles of Awareness, Consideration and Purchase.
Clearly delineate where Marketing Qualified Leads are handed to the Sales team, before moving to Key Account Management and Customer Success. Brand and Marketing have an important role to play at these later stages as well.
❤️ 6. Core Values: The Heart of Brand
A strong brand is more than a logo or tagline—it’s a reflection of the organisation’s core values. These values shape every interaction, ensuring consistency and authenticity.
In our experience, a business with a strong brand in the public, has clearly defined values; it lives and breathes them.
These values underpin brand strategy, guiding tone of voice, visual identity, and customer engagement. When customers experience these values in action, they form deeper emotional connections—turning transactions into long-term loyalty.
🔑 Closing Thought
Value creation in brand and marketing is not about doing more—it’s about doing what matters most. By anchoring brand strategy in purpose, living core values, understanding customer tribes, and aligning channels to behaviours, businesses can create sustainable growth and meaningful connections.