Sixty percent of long-term profit growth comes from brand building, not performance marketing. That’s the central finding of The Long and the Short of It, the landmark study by Les Binet and Peter Field for the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, based on analysis of nearly 1,000 effectiveness case studies across 700 brands and more than 30 years of data.
Most brands know they need to advertise. Far fewer think seriously about the difference between running ads and building a brand. That difference is what brand advertising is about.
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What Is Brand Advertising?
Brand advertising is the practice of creating paid communication designed to build awareness, recognition, trust, and preference for a brand over time, rather than driving an immediate purchase or specific action.
A brand advertisement could be a TV spot that tells an emotional story, a billboard that reinforces a visual identity, or a social campaign that builds community. What all brand ads share is the same goal: shape how people think and feel about the brand, not just what they do next.
It’s the opposite of performance advertising, which is optimized for a direct response: a click, a form fill, a sale. Brand advertising plays a longer game. It plants associations in people’s minds so that when they’re finally ready to buy, they already know who you are and how you feel.
Brand Advertising vs. Performance Advertising
The two approaches aren’t mutually exclusive, but they work differently:
| Brand Advertising | Performance Advertising | |
| Goal | Awareness, recognition, trust | Clicks, conversions, immediate sales |
| Timeframe | Long-term | Short-term |
| Audience | Broad, including future buyers | Narrow, intent-based |
| Messaging | Emotional, storytelling-led | Rational, offer-driven |
| Measurement | Brand lift, recall, sentiment | CPA, ROAS, conversion rate |
Brand advertising wins over time by making performance advertising more efficient. When people already know and trust a brand, the cost of converting them through paid channels drops significantly.
Common Brand Advertising Formats
Brand ads show up across almost every media channel:
- TV commercials and video: the broadest reach, best for emotional storytelling
- Display advertising: visual brand reinforcement across websites and apps
- Social media campaigns: community building and brand personality
- Audio and podcast ads: increasingly powerful for brand recall
- Out-of-home (OOH): billboards, transit ads, ambient placements that build mass awareness
- Connected TV: streaming environments that combine video storytelling with targeted reach
The format matters less than the creative idea and the consistency of execution behind it. Video, in particular, has become one of the most effective brand advertising channels as CTV and short-form grow, with this overview of emerging trends in video advertising breaking down the formats and approaches working best.
For brands looking to run brand awareness campaigns across these channels programmatically, ASTRAD’s brand awareness advertising solutions cover display, audio, video, CTV, and OOH in a single platform.
What Makes Brand Advertising Actually Work?
Before diving into the examples, it helps to know what the successful ones have in common. Brand advertising doesn’t work just because a budget is behind it. It works when a few specific conditions are in place.
A strong brand ad usually has most of these qualities:
- A distinctive and recognizable identity. Consistent visual cues, voice, and character that audiences can identify without reading the brand name.
- Emotional storytelling. People remember how an ad made them feel more readily than what it said.
- Relevance to the audience. The message connects to something the audience already cares about or aspires to.
- A clear brand association. The campaign reinforces a specific idea or feeling about the brand, repeatedly and consistently.
- Memorable creative. Something that stands out enough to be recalled later, when a purchase decision actually gets made.
These aren’t boxes to tick individually. The campaigns that work best manage to combine several of them into a single, coherent idea.
7 Brand Advertising Examples Worth Studying
These brand advertising examples aren’t just famous campaigns. Each one illustrates a specific principle that made it more effective than a generic ad with the same budget would have been. They also demonstrate how brands that consistently advertise brand values, rather than just products, tend to build more durable market positions.
1. Nike: "Just Do It"
When Nike launched “Just Do It” in 1988, the brand was competing in a crowded athletic footwear market. The message they chose didn’t promote shoe technology. It addressed the universal experience of pushing through resistance to do the difficult thing.
That shift broadened Nike’s appeal dramatically. “Just Do It” wasn’t speaking to elite athletes. It was speaking to anyone who had ever talked themselves out of a run, a workout, or a challenge. Within a decade, Nike’s market share had grown from 18% to 43%.
- Key takeaway: Build the brand message around a customer aspiration, not a product feature. Features change. Aspirations endure.
2. Dove: "Real Beauty"
In 2004, Dove launched a campaign that challenged the beauty industry’s standard advertising approach: featuring real women rather than models, and centering conversations about self-image and authentic beauty.
It was a risk. It was also a differentiation play. In a category where every competitor was showing idealized imagery, Dove took a completely different position. The campaign generated enormous earned media and deepened emotional connection with its audience well beyond what a conventional brand ad could achieve.
- Key takeaway: Distinctive positioning creates stronger emotional connections than following category norms. Find the position no one else has claimed.
3. Coca-Cola: "Share a Coke"
Coca-Cola replaced its iconic logo on bottles with popular names. A simple idea, but an effective one. People started actively seeking out bottles with their own name or the names of friends and family, buying them to give as gifts, and sharing photos of them on social media.
The campaign turned a passive product into an active, participatory experience. Coca-Cola’s Australian sales volume rose for the first time in a decade during the campaign.
- Key takeaway: Give consumers a reason to interact with and share the brand. Participation is more powerful than broadcast.
4. Google: "Year in Search"
Every December, Google releases a video using real search trends from the year to tell an emotional story about shared human experiences. Searches for “how to help,” “what is hope,” and “how to be strong” become the backbone of a narrative about resilience.
The creative insight is that Google’s own data reflects the real concerns and emotions of millions of people. Using that data for storytelling is not only authentic; it’s genuinely moving.
- Key takeaway: Audience insights can become the creative itself. Data doesn’t have to be cold.
5. Spotify: "Wrapped"
Every year, Spotify sends users a personalized breakdown of their listening habits, then makes it shareable. What started as a feature became one of the most effective brand advertising campaigns in digital media.
Wrapped succeeds because it makes users feel seen and celebrated. It’s genuinely useful content that people want to look at and share. And when millions of users share their Wrapped results, Spotify gets brand awareness it didn’t have to pay placement rates for. That same psychology – the feeling that you’re missing out if you don’t participate – is explored in depth in this guide to FOMO marketing and how brands use it to drive engagement.
- Key takeaway: Make customers active participants in the campaign, not just viewers of it.
6. Airbnb: "Belong Anywhere"
Airbnb’s brand platform didn’t sell accommodation. It sold the feeling of belonging somewhere, of experiencing a destination as a local rather than a tourist. The campaign featured real hosts and travelers telling genuine stories about connection.
That positioning put Airbnb in a fundamentally different category from hotels, even though both offer places to stay. Emotional brand advertising made the distinction where a feature comparison never could have.
- Key takeaway: Communicate the experience and emotional value behind the product, especially when the rational difference between competitors is small.
7. Old Spice: "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like"
Old Spice had an aging brand problem. The product was associated with older generations, and younger male consumers weren’t buying it. The 2010 campaign didn’t try to explain why Old Spice was better. It embraced absurdist humor, broke the fourth wall, and made the brand feel genuinely entertaining.
The campaign went viral before viral campaigns were the standard playbook. Sales doubled in a matter of months. The brand had repositioned itself without changing the product at all.
- Key takeaway: A distinctive creative idea can redefine how a brand is perceived, even in a crowded, undifferentiated category. Old Spice shows that how you choose to advertise brand personality can matter more than what the product actually does differently.
What Do These Brand Advertising Examples Have in Common?
These are all completely different brands in completely different categories with completely different executions. But there are clear threads running through all seven.
Each campaign was built around a clear message that reinforced a specific brand position. “Just Do It” reinforces athletic perseverance. “Real Beauty” reinforces authenticity. “Belong Anywhere” reinforces human connection. Every creative choice connects back to that position.
Each one also did something audiences don’t take for granted from advertising: they either entertained, moved, or surprised the people who saw them. Old Spice made people laugh. Google made people reflect. Dove made people feel something about themselves.
What the Best Brand Ads Actually Deliver
Look closely, and every one of these campaigns shares a handful of qualities:
- A single, clear message that reinforces what the brand stands for
- Creative people can recognize, remember, and in some cases share
- Emotional, entertaining, or participatory content that rewards attention
- Consistent brand cues that make the campaign attributable even without the logo
- A long-term focus on brand perception rather than just the next transaction
That’s not a formula. It’s a discipline. The brands that get brand advertising right apply that discipline consistently, not just when a campaign feels big enough to justify the effort.
For a look at how emotional connection shapes buying behavior more broadly, see how advertising affects consumer behavior and why emotional triggers matter.
Brand Advertising Builds What Performance Advertising Can't Buy
The strongest insight from all these examples is the simplest one. Brand advertising doesn’t work by telling people to buy something. It works by making people feel something about a brand long before they’re ready to buy, so that when the moment comes, the choice feels obvious.
Great brand advertising builds associations that outlast any individual campaign. “Just Do It” isn’t just an ad. It’s the filter through which people interpret everything Nike does. That’s what brand equity means, and it’s what the best brand advertisements create over time. It’s also why brands that consistently advertise brand values, rather than chasing short-term performance metrics, tend to hold stronger market positions across economic cycles.
The difference between a brand people choose and a product they settle for often comes down to a handful of well-executed brand campaigns sustained over years.
For a closer look at creative tactics that make brand messages stick, see how marketing hooks stop the scroll and start a lasting conversation with audiences.
Build Your Brand Advertising Strategy With ASTRAD
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FAQ
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field, based on nearly 1,000 IPA effectiveness case studies, suggests a 60/40 split as a starting point: 60% on brand-building and 40% on performance-driven activation. The right ratio depends on the brand's maturity, category, and business objectives, but most brands underinvest in brand advertising relative to the long-term returns it generates.
Yes, though the approach needs to match the budget. Small businesses can build strong brand advertising through consistent social media presence, a distinctive visual identity and tone of voice, and creative campaigns in local or niche channels. The principles that make big campaigns work, a clear message, emotional relevance, and memorability, apply regardless of budget size.
Brand awareness is the broadest measure: do people know the brand exists? Brand recall is more specific: can someone name the brand when thinking about a product category, without being prompted? Brand recognition is a third measure: can someone identify the brand when they see it? Effective brand advertising builds all three, but recall is particularly valuable because it influences which brands come to mind at the moment of purchase.
It can, especially when the brand is already well-known, and the campaign coincides with a product launch or seasonal peak. A well-timed brand advertisement can lift both short-term sales and long-term equity simultaneously, particularly when strong brand recognition is already in place. But optimizing brand advertising purely for immediate sales usually undermines its long-term effectiveness. Campaigns that chase short-term conversion metrics tend to become too rational and direct, losing the emotional qualities that make brand advertising work over time.
Common approaches include concept testing with target audiences to measure emotional response and recall, copy testing to compare different creative routes, and small-scale campaign tests to evaluate brand lift against a control group. Qualitative research, focus groups, and individual interviews can reveal how audiences interpret and feel about a concept in ways that surveys can't always capture.
