The last week has seen what has been described as a defining week in post-World War II geopolitics.
President Trump's consistent and persistent demands to acquire Greenland from Denmark has sparked a huge diplomatic row between the United States and much of Europe (and Canada), and has raised further question marks over the future of Europe. But it also highlights how supposedly smart short-term thinking can have long-term catastrophic effects.
As Europe is finding out now, there is a particular kind of decision that looks clever right up until the moment it proves catastrophic. For Europe, that decision was cutting defence spending to the minimum. The consequences of that short-sightedness is now coming back to bite the continent.
Cutting brand investment is another such 'smart' choice that is in the same camp.
Across Europe, the last decade has provided a live case study in what happens when nations decide that defence is an optional expense rather than a form of insurance. When the risk feels remote, reallocating those budgets looks prudent. When the risk materialises, the cost of rebuilding capability—financially, strategically, and politically—is vastly higher than the savings ever achieved.
The same flawed logic is now visible in boardrooms as companies respond to economic pressure by trimming brand spend. It is framed as discipline. It is justified as short-term efficiency. However, structurally, it is the same error.
That logic works in several different ways. First, defence spending works as deterrence only if it is continuous. You do not wait for an invasion before investing in your armed forces. The credibility of defence lies precisely in the fact that it is always present, even when nothing appears to be happening. Brand operates in the same way. It prevents price erosion, commoditisation, and margin collapse before those pressures become visible in the numbers. Once the damage shows up in market share or pricing power, the preventative opportunity has already passed.
There is also a persistent misunderstanding about cost. Readiness is almost always cheaper than mobilisation. A military that is trained, equipped, and prepared before a conflict is in a fundamentally stronger position than one scrambling to rebuild capability after the fact. Rebuilding brand presence after a period of silence follows the same pattern. It is more expensive, less effective, and takes longer than maintaining momentum while competitors pull back.
This is where the performance versus brand debate is often misframed. Performance marketing wins battles. Brand wins wars. Performance converts existing demand; brand creates, shapes, and protects it. In military terms, performance is tactics. Brand is strategy. Confusing the two leads to organisations optimising for short-term skirmishes while steadily losing the broader campaign.
The discomfort with brand investment often stems from its appearance. Maintenance always looks like waste until something breaks. Physical infrastructure requires ongoing capital expenditure not because it is exciting, but because neglect guarantees failure. Brand should be treated in exactly the same way: as intangible capital expenditure. It is an asset that depreciates when unsupported - quietly at first, then suddenly. The absence of immediate pain is not proof of efficiency; it is often a lagging indicator.
It is also why brand advertising budgets should be treated as floors rather than ceilings. In defence policy, minimum spending thresholds exist because downside risk is asymmetric. A conflict may never occur, but if it does, the consequences of underinvestment are existential. Brand operates under the same asymmetry. The inflationary shock of 2022–23 demonstrated this clearly. Brands that had maintained investment entered that period with resilience and pricing power. Those that had treated brand as discretionary found themselves fighting for relevance at exactly the wrong moment.
Even cybersecurity offers a useful parallel. Cutting cyber spend saves money until the breach. Cutting brand spend saves money until demand collapses. In both cases, the apparent savings are illusory, and the recovery costs dwarf the original investment.
Managements, and advertisers, should very much remember the phrase when it comes to war: "If you seek peace, prepare for war". In just the same way the smartest nations understand that strength today reduces conflict tomorrow so the smartest advertisers realise that in competitive markets, silence is not neutral. It creates space for competitors to define you, reposition you, or replace you in the consumer’s mind.
Put simply, brand spend is not discretionary, it is strategic readiness. And like defence, it is most valuable precisely when nothing seems to be happening.
As usual, this is not investment advice.
Ian Whittaker is the founder and managing director of Liberty Sky Advisors. He writes a regular column for Campaign about the advertising landscape from a financial standpoint.
