Study: Creative capital could be a new metric for brand growth

Brands with high creative capital scores, which include influence and creativity scores, outperform others when it comes to financial performance, stock market returns and consumer advocacy, highlighting its profound value. In fact, a brand with influence alone drives better stock performance compared to the broader market.

These were the insights gleaned from WPP’s new index that also showed that brands with high levels of Creative Capital deliver double the financial return of the average brand measured by brand asset value over five years. 

Looking into a brand’s influence, the report defines the term as a brand’s level and clarity of meaning such as its impact on the minds of consumers. When leveraged strategically, a brand’s influence will help define its role and expectations of consumers through relevance and emotion.

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Interestingly, influence is able to spur relevance as the top 10% of influential brands are 53% more preferred than other brands in culture. Similarly, as influence drives emotion as well, the top influential brands in terms of culture were 60% more emotionally committed than that of other brands. To tap into a brand’s influence on their consumers, they can lean into factors such as trust, fun, authenticity and purpose to name a few.

Although influence is powerful in its own right, a brand’s creativity should not be overlooked as it builds a brand’s message, amplifies its impact and is a top driver of income growth, according to the index. Creativity captures the extent to which a brand breaks the mould and contributes to the growth of a brand by driving consumer interest, positive attitudes and engaging behaviour among consumers.

Unsurprisingly, the top 10% of influential brands are 94% differentiated by their uniqueness while 17% of the top brands are recommended compared to other brands, highlighting the ability of creativity to drive both uniqueness and advocacy.

Brands that are looking to improve their creativity scores should win in a new market by understanding its values, working in sync with human behaviours, making a brand accessible and being agile and adaptable in crises to name a few.

WPP’s index also reveals that over a seven-year period, brands with high creativity levels are able to see more than two times greater income growth regardless of their size or level of Influence.

However, a creative capital score is not the mere sum of both influence and creativity scores but is dependent on demographics and gender. For example, when looking at the gaming industry, it is perceived to have 25% more creative capital among millennials compared to boomers. On the other hand, in the dating app sector, online dating apps have 159 more creative capital among females than males.

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