Brand Doesn’t Compete with Performance. It Makes It Possible.
Building Brand Equity That Converts
Lowe’s didn’t become a $90 billion company by chasing clicks
While many brands poured budgets into digital performance channels over the last decade, Lowe’s stayed balanced. It never stopped investing in brand storytelling, reach, and emotional connection through TV and national campaigns. That consistency paid off. Lowe’s built familiarity, trust, and mental availability, the kind of brand equity that makes every promotional dollar work harder.
In 2024, Lowe’s brand value exceeded $27 billion, ranking among the world’s top 100 brands for the third consecutive year. Even as other retailers cut traditional media, Lowe’s continued to invest heavily in national TV and Connected TV (CTV/OTT), partnering with the NFL and ESPN while maintaining year-round awareness across home-improvement and lifestyle programming.
According to Kantar’s BrandZ study, Lowe’s achieved a 12% increase in brand contribution since 2022; meaning its brand equity directly improved marketing ROI and revenue efficiency. That stability helped Lowe’s deliver $90 billion in 2024 revenue and grow its Pro-contractor segment by double digits, even in a flat home-improvement market.
That’s the payoff of brand consistency. And, it’s measurable.
A Foundation for Measurable Growth
The balance between brand and performance isn’t new. It’s just newly measurable.
According to WARC and Marketing Architects’ 2025 report, TV as a Full-Funnel Channel, advertisers that integrate linear (OTA) and Connected TV (CTV) see an average ROI 17% higher than digital-only campaigns.
And creative quality, the story itself, is the biggest multiplier of all.
Marketing Architects’ 2024 study, The New Rules of Great TV Creative, found that creative drives 37% of total sales lift, outperforming media, targeting, and even reach.
That data reinforces what many AEC and BPM marketers are rediscovering: TV, in both its traditional and streaming forms, doesn’t just drive awareness. It builds the foundation for measurable growth.
You can see the same pattern across the industry:
James Hardie’s “It’s Possible” campaign and HGTV partnerships elevated the brand from functional to aspirational, fueling homeowner demand while strengthening contractor preference.
Pella’s “Make Life Brighter” campaign combined national storytelling with connected TV retargeting, driving dealer leads and brand favorability.
Kohler continues to use national TV and streaming to protect its premium positioning while expanding reach across design-conscious audiences.
Each of these brands treats TV as the anchor of their marketing system, not the relic of a previous era.
The 60/40 Rule in Action
For years, the IPA and WARC have advocated a 60/40 rule; 60% of spend dedicated to brand-building, 40% to activation.
In building products and home finishes, that balance may be the floor, not the ceiling.
Here’s why.
When brand campaigns create mental availability (the buyer’s instinctive familiarity and trust in your name) every lower-funnel dollar works harder.
Binet & Field’s research found that strong brands see: 23% lower cost-per-conversion, 1.6× higher pricing power, and up to 3× greater long-term profit growth compared to performance-heavy brands. In other words: awareness and trust don’t just “feel” good, they compress acquisition cost and expand margin.
This is the quiet math behind the 60/40 rule. Brand media drives salience; salience drives response efficiency. The more your brand is remembered, the less you have to pay to be found.
This is exactly what PGT Custom Windows & Doors saw when it relaunched its brand in May 2023.
PGT: A Case Study in Full-Funnel Growth
After years of functional, hurricane-season messaging and decreasing market share, the company needed to reclaim leadership and relevance in a market where buyers viewed windows as interchangeable.
PGT repositioned around everyday performance (security, noise reduction, efficiency, and comfort) and built a 70/30 media strategy to match. The PGT Rebrand campaign blended storytelling and precision:
Linear TV: 39 million impressions statewide
Connected TV (Roku): 18 million targeted impressions
Digital + Social: 120 million across Meta, Taboola, and Spotify
Earned Media: 81 placements across business and trade outlets
The payoff looked more like a performance campaign than a brand campaign:
+40% sales growth in four months
+37% unit sales
+46% homeowner leads and +62% lead value
2× increase in unaided brand awareness
30% decrease in Cost-per-lead
+12% lift in positive sentiment
Dealers reported shorter close cycles and higher ticket sizes on PGT products. Dealer confidence rebounded. Search volume for “PGT” doubled versus competitors.
Those are the downstream effects of upper-funnel investment: brand equity increased search efficiency dealer preference, and close rates without increasing spend per lead.
The campaign validated what the data already suggested: brand investment is a performance accelerator.
Laying the Groundwork for 2026
As marketing teams head into another planning cycle, the pressure to prove ROI will only intensify. Construction starts remain uneven, housing affordability continues to tighten, and analysts expect a slower remodeling cycle through mid-2026 as interest rates and materials costs stay elevated. Manufacturers are already feeling the squeeze with slower dealer velocity, longer quote times, and pricing power under pressure.
In this environment, it’s tempting to double down on short-term tactics: push more dollars into digital channels that produce immediate metrics. But short-term efficiency isn’t the same as long-term effectiveness.
The evidence from WARC, Marketing Architects, and real-world cases like PGT, Pella, and Hardie tells a different story. When you balance the funnel — 60% brand, 40% activation — you don’t lose performance; you multiply it. Brands that continue to invest in awareness and trust recover faster when demand rebounds, maintain price integrity when the market softens, and outperform peers who cut too deeply into brand spend.
Brand spend doesn’t compete with performance. It makes performance possible.
Lowe’s built it over decades. PGT proved it in months.
And the next generation of building-products brands who invest in both storytelling and science will define what growth looks like next.