European marketers value brand over AI visibility
Why have senior communication leaders decided that branding is the top priority again?
When Dyson launched its first vacuum cleaner, the technology was genuinely better. But James Dyson spent five years being turned down by manufacturers who couldn't see past the brand names already on the shelves. Here’s why brand value is still the biggest driver of success.
McKinsey has just surveyed 500 senior marketing leaders across Europe and found that brand, not AI, is their number one priority for 2026.
The headline finding from McKinsey's State of Marketing Europe 2026 report is not what most marketing teams would predict. Based on a survey of 500 senior marketing leaders across Europe, the UK included, covering B2B organisations alongside B2C and B2B2C across 14 industries, it found that branding ranked first among CMO priorities for 2026, while generative AI and agentic AI came 17th out of 20.
The report does not dismiss AI. It finds that 94 per cent of European marketing organisations have yet to advance their generative AI maturity, and that the six per cent who describe their AI use as mature have seen 22 per cent efficiency gains, with expectations rising to 28 per cent.
What Europe's CMOs are saying is that brand is the more urgent priority right now, and that for most organisations, AI visibility without a clear brand foundation is pointless.
Why brand is back at the top
The McKinsey report attributes the return of branding to two converging forces. The first is macro-economic: European markets have faced renewed trade uncertainty and stagnating growth, and buyers in volatile conditions gravitate toward stable, familiar brands that reduce perceived risk.
The second is specific to the current AI environment: as content becomes faster and easier to produce at scale, setting yourself apart by just producing lots of content no longer works. When anyone can generate unlimited material, the brands that stand out are those that produce quality human content that helps achieve their positioning goals.
Richella Odebrecht, senior vice president of global marketing at Schneider Electric, is quoted in the report: "Our priority is making long-term investments and building trust: customers want to know who will be there for them in the long run."
For engineering, science and technology companies, that observation is directly relevant to how technical buyers make decisions.
A procurement team evaluating two vendors with comparable technical specifications will default to the one they have encountered before, in trade press, at industry events or in real-life conversations, over an unknown quantity with equivalent capabilities. Brand recognition reduces the difficulty of the decision and makes technical credibility even more valuable.
Brand is the most reliable driver of growth
The Binet and Field research, referenced in the McKinsey report, consistently shows that the most effective balance between brand-building and short-term sales-led marketing sits at roughly 60:40. Most technical marketing programmes run well below that level, and the budget conversation is usually where the ambition stops.
Only three per cent of European CMOs can currently demonstrate marketing ROI on more than 50 per cent of their spend. That measurement gap is one reason brand investment remains vulnerable to short-term budget pressure, despite the evidence consistently pointing in the other direction.
McKinsey's research found that 70 per cent of European marketing leaders described purpose-driven, authentic brand experiences as essential for building distinctive emotional connections with customers.
For engineering and science companies whose marketing has historically been technical and product-led, that framing requires a change in approach – toward consistent presence across the channels where buyers form impressions well before a formal evaluation begins. Consistent earned media and named expert content in trade publications are among the most reliable ways to build that presence.
Dyson eventually got his vacuum cleaner to market. The brand that he created is worth considerably more than the technology alone. That's what the McKinsey data is pointing toward for every technical company still treating brand as secondary to lead generation.
Richard Stone is the founder of technical and automation PR agency Stone Junction, which is a corporate affiliate member of the CIPR.
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Further reading
Algorithms and earned media: Where tech PR meets digital performance