Key branding insights from the WEF, Davos 2025

Making the case for brand investment

"How can we make the case for greater investment in building our brand?” The question has become increasingly complex as the marketing landscape evolves.

While iconic campaigns like the Guinness Surfer advert once epitomised brand building, today’s strategies are more intricate, requiring a nuanced understanding of both long-term and short-term marketing goals.

Historically, building a brand often meant investing in high-impact communications and advertisements.

Today, however, the tools and strategies available have multiplied exponentially.

Marketing technology now enables detailed measurement and automation, offering businesses an appealing ability to track outcomes like leads and sales.

These ‘performance marketing’ tactics provide immediate, quantifiable results, making them highly attractive to business leaders.

In contrast, brand building requires a long-term approach, often without immediate or direct measurability.

It focuses on shaping perceptions, creating emotional connections, and fostering loyalty - elements that cannot be easily tracked through dashboards.

Data consistently supports the argument that strong brands outperform their peers.

Research from the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) highlights that the most effective marketing strategies allocate 60% of resources to brand marketing and 40% to performance marketing, in consumer industries, and 45% / 55% respectively in business-to-business.

Some organisations have already recognised the need to rebalance their marketing efforts, demonstrating the long-term benefits of prioritising brand equity over short-term performance metrics.

To secure buy-in for brand investment, companies must craft a compelling, evidence-based business case.

Read the full report here.

Purpose-driven leadership

Brand Finance’s 2025 Brand Guardianship Index shows that the top drivers of CEO reputation in 2025 reflect a clear and significant shift toward purpose-driven leadership.

The highest attributes in the research reflect increasing expectations placed on CEOs to meet the needs of all stakeholders—including customers, employees, society, and the planet—while also delivering value to shareholders.

This holistic approach underscores the need for leaders to balance financial performance with ethical decision-making, inclusivity, and a commitment to addressing global challenges.

Human-centred leadership

In 2025, the top driver of CEO reputation is “Genuinely cares about employees,” replacing last year’s top driver of “Champions Sustainability,” the latter of which is now the fifth most important driver.

This increased importance placed on empathy in leaders is likely a response to economic volatility, mental health challenges, and technological advancements that can rapidly change the expectations and experience of employees.

The second-strongest driver, “Inspiring positive change,” is also aligned with human-centred leadership.

Rounding out the top five drivers of CEO reputation are “Inspires positive change,” “Trustworthy,” and “Understands customer needs”.

The demand for CEOs to inspire positive change surged up the ranks from last year, when it was the sixth most important, indicating a growing expectation that CEOs act as catalysts for innovation, societal progress, and organisational transformation.

In 2024, while having a strong strategy and vision were critical, now the focus has shifted to leadership that can execute meaningful change that resonates with all stakeholders.

The implication for CEOs is that to protect and improve their reputations, they must actively champion progress, navigate uncertainty, and align their leadership with broader societal and organisational goals.

Trustworthiness is timeless, in terms of a quality that people want their leaders to embody.

A top driverof both years, it is likely that in 2025, trust means CEOs who consistently act with integrity, transparency, and reliability during economic and geopolitical volatility.

This expectation is not limited to within the walls of an organisation - CEOs must uphold ethical standards and foster trust, not only within their organisations but also across external stakeholder groups.

This means CMOs need to ensure their CEO is market-oriented and that they are plugged into customer insights.

Nation Branding

Every country has a brand, whether intentionally shaped or not, and managing a nation's brand is no longer optional in today's interconnected world. It is a strategic asset that can shape a country's future and is key to reimaging growth.

Hosted by Konrad Jagodzinski, place branding director, Brand Finance, three nation brand leaders discussed nation brands.

The participants includes South Africa’s Thebe Ikalafeng, chairman of Brand Africa, Mirjam Loertscher, economic, trade and innovation advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Estonia and Alexandre Edelmann, head of presence Switzerland.

Nation branding refers to strategically managing these perceptions to position a country favourably on the world stage.

They said that nation branding is not just about tourism campaigns or logos, it encompasses a wide array of initiatives, including, building a global narrative that reflects a country's strengths and aspirations, attracting foreign investment, fostering trade, supporting cultural diplomacy and boosting soft power as well as encouraging innovation and entrepreneurship.

The panel emphasised that nation branding is not a one-time campaign but a continuous process of refinement and adaptation.

Countries that actively manage their brands are better equipped to attract global talent, enhance their geopolitical influence and build resilience in times of crisis.