IN SIGNO VERITAS #04
CMOs want to put brand first, but they’re losing the power to do it
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In Signo Veritas #04
The subject
McKinsey asked 500 European CMOs what matters most to them in 2026, and brand came out on top. That sounds like good news. But over the same period, marketers have been losing their say in a lot of the decisions that shape how people see a brand.
The signal
Brand is climbing the priority list while marketing’s influence is shrinking.
- Branding ranked first of 20 priorities among 500 European marketing leaders. Generative AI came 17th (McKinsey, State of Marketing Europe 2026)
- Only a quarter of marketers now have a say on pricing, down from 34% a year earlier. Involvement in product decisions fell from nearly half to just over a third (Marketing Week Career & Salary Survey, 2026)
- Fewer than half of CMOs say marketing operates with a high degree of autonomy (Bloomberg Media and Lippincott, CMO Outlook 2026)
The truth
People judge a brand by what a company does, but marketing mostly only gets to decide what it says.
Four out of five conversations about brands don’t mention the advertising at all (Keller Fay Group). A lot of what people say comes from their own experience instead: what they paid, whether the product did its job, and how they were treated when something went wrong.
Those are the decisions marketing is being pushed away from. So when a company says brand is its top priority, in practice that often means a new campaign, a refreshed logo or a new tone of voice. That work matters, but it’s only a small part of how people actually experience a brand.
It usually goes something like this. The price goes up, or the product changes to save money, and then marketing gets the brief to explain it to customers.
Getting a seat back at those tables is hard. Most finance teams aren’t about to hand over pricing. What marketing can do is make the brand clear enough that the people setting prices, building products and handling complaints can use it too. If they can’t tell what the brand would do in their situation, they’ll make the call without it.
Worth asking
Pick one decision coming up outside marketing, like a price change or a new product. Could the team making it use your brand strategy to decide?
If not, what would your brand strategy need to tell them?
