Heritage For The Future

When I was younger, like every new generation, I felt that the world was moving forward so rapidly that looking back was pointless. Yet with age and accumulated experience, phrases like 'history moves in spirals' and 'the forms change, but the essence remains' take on much deeper meaning

Eras and scenery change, but fundamental principles and human nature stay the same

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Events always have underlying causes and unfold within a specific context that is critical for understanding. To take a painful example: our perception of the war with russia differs from that of foreigners not only because we are Ukrainians living through this tragedy firsthand, but because we (unfortunately, not all of us, and not always thoroughly enough) know our history. We understand the cause-and-effect relationships and the fact that they have always wanted, want, and will want to destroy us. Meanwhile, foreigners often struggle to grasp this because they view the situation through a different lens — the 'here and now'. This is why Ukrainians have a profoundly different strategic horizon. And this principle applies everywhere: when historical context is lost, fatal, even if not immediately obvious, mistakes begin

Now, about marketing

I was fortunate enough to have mentors who were not just observers, but the actual architects of global Brands with a capital B. Of course, not everyone was like that, but I am genuinely grateful to have gained this invaluable experience

• We were taught to respect brand heritage: to study, nurture, and safeguard both its internal core and external identity. This was not seen as a waste of time or budget, but as an asset that builds a cumulative effect, enabling the business to defend premium pricing and generate sustainable profit. This isn’t about 'preserving' brands in the past, but about a conscious choice to follow a brand’s own evolutionary path of development

• We were taught to respect the audience: treating consumers as if we were selling to our own mother or brother, rather than seeing them as a 'primitive mass market' or lazy brief stereotypes that have nothing to do with real people outside our professional bubble

• We were taught not to stoop to cheap manipulation of human vulnerabilities, but to create real additional rational and emotional value for people - developing them, helping them, and making their lives a little better. We understood that holding massive marketing budgets and public communication channels meant actively shaping culture and the mentality of the people around us

• We were taught that the Brand is the star, not you. The marketing team and external partners existed to serve its sustainable growth. We passed it carefully from generation to generation, terrified of doing harm, letting real business results speak for themselves rather than turning campaigns into vehicles for self-promotion on someone else's dime

At some point, the relentless chase for immediate ROI at the expense of future value degraded marketing from a disciplined, rigorous, and ethical craft into an endless stream of intrusive and manipulative sales calls. The accumulated equity of strong legacy brands played a cruel trick: it forgave reckless behaviour for years, creating the illusion that short-term spikes were the sole achievement of new teams rather than the capital built decades before them. Gradually, the focus shifted from building commercial assets to superficial flash and personal branding

Today, everyone is paying the price: professionals watching the devaluation of strategic depth; consumers constantly finding new ways to shield themselves from ad clutter; and the brands themselves, whose margin of strength is running out, while rebuilding their capital is becoming harder, slower, and more expensive

The global professional community has been trying to steady this ship for some time now, which restores my faith in our profession. But it is no easy feat

Most of your target audience simply doesn't need your product right now. In B2B, this is known as the 95/5 rule, but the dynamic holds true in FMCG as well. If I bought sour cream for my borscht on Saturday, I don't need any more for the rest of the week. If you chase me every single day with 'buy today at a discount' or 'look how amazing our sour cream is', you achieve only one thing: fatigue, irritation, and a reluctance to choose your brand next time

Considering that store shelves are packed with alternatives that consumers (hard as it is for businesses to hear) perceive as nearly identical, the real challenge is nudging them to pick yours when the need arises

Modern marketing science tells us: be everywhere I might need you (physical availability), come to mind at the buying moment (mental availability), and be instantly recognizable on the shelf (distinctive brand assets / DBA)

Practice proves that all of this is absolutely true. But (with all due respect to the 'Dark Lord of Penetration') next, when I notice you and recognize you among others that are no less noticeable and available, a network of associations must flash in my mind that is firmly anchored to you and triggers an impulse: I want it! 

This is positive semantic and emotional resonance = customer-based brand equity that turns dry 'mental availability', even when tied to a specific occasion, into the desire to choose you and pay full, or even higher price. And this is not about 'lovemarks' far from real business value, into which the concepts of 'brand image' and 'image advertising' have been turned. This is about a real foundation, without which, at a certain stage, a brand simply crumbles. This layer is the hardest to build; it requires tremendous effort and stamina from the entire team, and that is why it sags in most modern companies

As Les Binet, Peter Field, and the research from System1 consistently show, long-term brand building (crafting relevant image and strong emotional resonance) operates on fundamentally different laws than sales activation. This isn't an 'either/or' dilemma, nor does it dismiss tactical promotions. It is a two-speed strategy where brand building and sales activation work in synergy, compounding each other's effects

What I value most here is that brand communication must build authentic positive emotion. When driving sales here and now, a brand can occasionally (!) afford to play on anxiety, to shock, or to throw someone off balance. But long-term equity, as System1 proves, grows strictly on positive feeling. If daily marketing only breeds annoyance and ad fatigue, you are not building a brand - you are burning through its future strength

Building a brand that resonates with people over decades comes down to two things:

1. A deep sensitivity to context: understanding the actual history between the brand and its audience, and the tangible value it has delivered over years

2. Continuous alignment with the market: constantly testing whether new initiatives organically evolve this heritage or alienate the audience by feeling artificial

Brand building is forming, brick by brick, a strong emotional bond with the audience

The paradox of our time is that theory has never been more accessible, yet strong brands are becoming rarer. Because such a bond is not born from retelling other people's frameworks - it is impossible without regular (!) contact between the marketing team and the real life of the consumer

An emotional bond with people cannot be built exclusively on formulas, algorithms, dry figures of financial reports, and quantitative data (although they are, undoubtedly, the base). The most effective tool for this remains classic qualitative research in the format of a long-term partnership with full immersion into the context of the market and business. It is in the process of such cooperation that we sense living, real people and their worldview deeper and deeper, and step by step fine-tune the marketing mix so that every element resonates with the market and preserves the heritage that ensures the company’s profitability

This is what I learned from incredible mentors, now in their seventies — hats off to them. Lessons sidelined for years in the rush for hype and quick wins, but now, on a new turn of the spiral, reclaiming their true worth