Most business leaders worry about disruptive competitors, changing customer expectations, or new technologies. Fewer worry about something more subtle: brand drift. Yet according to recent research from Gartner, 84% of companies are trapped in what analysts describe as a “brand doom loop,” a cycle in which organizations underinvest in brand measurement, lose confidence in brand performance, and subsequently reduce investment even further. The result is a gradual erosion of brand relevance that can directly affect growth.
The findings arrive at a particularly important time. Artificial intelligence is reshaping how customers discover, evaluate, and engage with businesses. As search engines increasingly incorporate AI-generated responses and recommendation systems become more influential, companies are being forced to reconsider whether their brands are equipped for a rapidly changing digital marketplace.
According to Gartner, organizations caught in the brand doom loop are only half as likely to exceed growth targets compared with companies that successfully evaluate and manage brand performance. The firm also predicts that by 2028, more than 80% of companies will make significant changes to their identity, mission, culture, or brand in response to AI-driven market changes.
When brands stop working
One of the challenges associated with branding is that failure is rarely immediate. Instead, things tend to dissipate over time. For instance, a product defect is usually obvious. Instead, a sales collapse is visible in quarterly results. Brand deterioration tends to happen gradually. A company may continue operating successfully for years while its market position steadily weakens. Messaging that once resonated with customers becomes dated. Competitors reposition themselves. Customer priorities evolve. New technologies alter buying behaviour.
Nothing appears broken, but performance begins to decline. This phenomenon is drawing increasing attention from brand strategists such as Karen Tiber Leland, president of Sterling Marketing Group and author of the forthcoming book Re-Up Your Brand. Leland argues that many organizations respond incorrectly when they notice declining brand performance.
Instead of conducting expensive and disruptive rebranding exercises, she advocates a more continuous process of reassessment and adjustment. The distinction reflects an important shift in thinking. Traditional rebranding often treats branding as a project that is completed and then left unchanged for years. A “re-up” approach assumes that brands require regular maintenance and adaptation to remain relevant.
AI is changing brand discoverability
One reason branding is becoming more complex is the growing influence of artificial intelligence on how customers gather information. Historically, companies focused on search engine visibility, advertising, public relations, and social media engagement. Increasingly, AI systems act as intermediaries between organizations and potential customers.
Consumers now use generative AI tools to compare providers, assess products, summarize reviews, and answer purchasing questions. In these environments, visibility depends not only on traditional search rankings but also on how effectively a company’s expertise, reputation, and trustworthiness are represented within AI-driven information ecosystems. Gartner analysts note that as AI accelerates commoditization and the spread of misinformation, brand trust may become one of the few durable competitive advantages available to companies.
For organisations, this means brand strategy is no longer simply a marketing concern. It is becoming a business survival issue. Provided firms avoid making key errors.
A common mistake among organizations is responding to market changes reactively. Consider this scenario: A competitor launches a new campaign, gains media attention, or adopts a different messaging strategy. Executives feel pressure to respond. Changes are introduced without a clear strategic rationale. The problem is not experimentation. The problem is making branding decisions without evidence.
Gartner’s research suggests that many organizations struggle to connect brand activities directly to business outcomes. Without reliable measurement systems, decision-making can become driven by instinct, anecdotal observations, or short-term pressures rather than customer data and strategic priorities. This creates the conditions for the so-termed doom loop. Brand performance becomes difficult to quantify, investment declines, and the organization loses visibility into what is actually working.
An increasingly influential view of branding separates performance into three distinct dimensions.
- The first is findability. Can customers locate the organization at all?
- The second is engagement. Once discovered, do customers remain interested?
- The third is distinctiveness. Is the organization remembered, or does it become interchangeable with competitors?
Many companies assume branding problems are universal when, in reality, weaknesses may exist in only one of these areas. A firm may have strong awareness but weak differentiation. Another may offer a compelling value proposition but struggle with discoverability in an AI-driven marketplace. Diagnosing the correct problem is often more important than pursuing wholesale brand transformation.
The growing concern surrounding brand performance comes amid broader leadership instability. Chief Marketing Officer tenure has declined in recent years, while CEO turnover remains elevated across many sectors. Strategic initiatives frequently outlast the executives who initiated them, making continuity difficult. At the same time, boards and investors increasingly expect marketing investments to demonstrate measurable contributions to profitability and growth.
Gartner’s findings suggest executives recognize branding as an underutilized growth driver. More than half of senior executives surveyed want CMOs to better explain the relationship between brand strategy and business performance, while 43% want clearer reporting on how brand health influences commercial results.