Professor Tammo Bijmolt - Groningen University

Brand growth is one of marketing’s most talked-about ambitions, and one of its least clearly defined concepts. Ask ten marketers how to achieve it, and you will likely hear ten different answers. Ask academia, and the answer becomes even more nuanced.

In a conversation with Tammo Bijmolt, Professor of Marketing Research at the University of Groningen, one thing becomes clear: brand growth is not a single lever to pull, but a system of interconnected forces that must be carefully balanced over time. As Professor Bijmolt reflects, “If I knew one simple answer, I would probably be a millionaire.” It captures the essence: growth is complex, contextual, and cumulative.

Sales Up? That Doesn’t Mean Your Brand Is Growing

One of the most important misconceptions Tammo addresses is the idea that brand growth can be reduced to short-term commercial success. He argues that growth operates on two dimensions simultaneously. “Brand growth should be on two dimensions; on the one hand, higher sales, but on the other hand, it comes with a positive attitude, a positive brand image.”

This duality lies at the heart of sustainable growth. Sales without brand strength are fragile; brand perception without sales is ineffective. The real challenge for marketers is managing both at once. This perspective aligns with what many organisations experience in practice: a constant tension between financial KPIs and brand health metrics. While short-term indicators such as revenue or profit are immediately visible, long-term indicators, like brand equity, trust, and emotional connection, require patience and consistent investment. And importantly, short-term success can be bought. Long-term brand growth has to be built.

“Brand growth should be on two dimensions; on the one hand, higher sales, but on the other hand, it comes with a positive attitude, a positive brand image.”

The Short-Term vs Long-Term Tension

Few debates in marketing are as persistent as the balance between short-term activation and long-term brand building. Tammo’s view is clear: both are necessary, but they serve fundamentally different purposes. As he puts it, “If you just want to have more sales next week, you need to do a promotion, but if you run a lot of promotions, it might harm your brand image in the long run.”

Both are necessary, but they serve different roles. Sustainable growth comes from combining them, not choosing between them. The brands that grow most sustainably are those that can drive demand in the short term without losing sight of the longer-term task of building preference.

“If you just want to have more sales next week, you need to do a promotion, but if you run a lot of promotions, it might harm your brand image in the long run.”

Why Integration Is The Next Level

What Tammo finds particularly interesting is not just which ingredients drive growth, but how rarely they are studied together. What’s often missing, both in academia and in practice, is integration. Pricing, communication, promotions and innovation are usually treated separately, while consumers experience one brand.

As he notes, “There’s not so much work looking at the integration of those things, what kind of communication matches with a certain pricing strategy, for example.” That, according to Professor Bijmolt, is where an important gap remains. Growth is not only about improving individual levers, but about understanding how they work together, and whether they create a consistent picture of the brand.

The implication is that effectiveness does not only depend on doing the right things, but on doing them coherently. A premium positioning, for instance, must be reflected consistently across pricing, communication, product experience, and distribution. A brand cannot claim to stand for quality and emotional value while relying heavily on discount-led messaging that signals the opposite.

That’s why the role of the CMO is shifting, from managing channels to orchestrating the full system, connecting different functions, from data and technology to sales and innovation. In other words, brand growth is no longer about optimising individual channels or tactics. It is about aligning the entire system.

Consistency As a Driver For Growth

When asked what advice he would give to marketers today, Tammo returns to a principle that underpins everything discussed: consistency. As he says, “Try to be consistent. What you do in pricing or communication should lead to a coherent picture of what your brand is.”

Consistency is what transforms individual activities into a recognisable, trustworthy brand. But consistency alone is not enough. Tammo also stresses the importance of humility and continuous learning, urging marketers to “not believe that you know everything, but try to do marketing based on actual insights.”

In a world where companies generate vast amounts of data—from campaigns, promotions, and customer interactions—there is a significant opportunity to learn and improve continuously. As Tammo puts it, “Why in the world would you not use these data and get better and better?” With advances in AI and analytics, extracting these insights has become more accessible than ever. The challenge is not the availability of data, but using it effectively.

“Try to be consistent. What you do in pricing or communication should lead to a coherent picture of what your brand is.”

Collaboration Between Academia And Practice

Tammo ends with a point that feels especially relevant in a field as complex as brand growth: the need for stronger collaboration between academia and practice. As he puts it, “In science, there’s a lot of expertise; in practice, there’s a lot of data and challenges to solve. Let’s collaborate to learn from each other.” If brand growth is shaped by multiple drivers, long and short-term tensions, and the interaction between different marketing levers, then no single perspective is enough on its own.

That is perhaps the clearest takeaway from this conversation. Brand growth is an evolving discipline that requires different perspectives, continuous learning, and a willingness to look beyond easy answers. Growth emerges from how well brands balance sales and perception, activation and brand building, individual actions and overall coherence. Or, as Tammo puts it, “Don’t believe in easy solutions.” For marketers, that may not be the most convenient conclusion, but it is probably the most honest and the most useful.

“In science, there’s a lot of expertise; in practice, there’s a lot of data and challenges to solve. Let’s collaborate to learn from each other.”