Building Brand Muscle: Lessons from Phil Rumbol

Last month, we welcomed Phil Rumbol, a leader who has shaped some of the UK’s best-known brands including Cadbury, Côte Restaurants and now Little Moons, for a workshop focused on one thing:

 

Building brands that drive consistent, measurable growth.

 

Phil has spent 35 years shaping category-defining brands. His message to the group was clear, blunt and refreshingly practical: Brand building isn’t fluff. Done well, it’s one of the strongest drivers of long-term growth. And critically for our members, it’s something early-stage brands can do, even on limited budgets.

Below are the key lessons founders and CEOs can apply immediately:

 

1. Brand is the protein. Performance marketing is the cardio.

 

Phil opened with a challenge many founders recognised: performance marketing simply doesn’t convert like it used to.

CPMs have climbed, attribution is messy, and incremental gains are harder to find. Many businesses respond by pushing harder on ads: more spend, more testing, more optimisation. Phil’s view on this approach was clear: it’s like doing more cardio while starving your muscles. The solution isn’t “more ads” … it’s a stronger brand. That’s the protein you need to grow.

 

The data backs up this theory:

1. Strong brands convert 1.5 – 3x more efficiently
2. The best-performing businesses invest 60% in long-term brand building and 40% in short-term conversion
3. Most brands lose momentum when they lose sight of their core concept – the sharpest, simplest reason they exist

 

So, for early-stage founders, the advice was simple: pick one primary benefit or problem you solve, shout about it clearly, and keep repeating it. If you try to communicate five things at once, none will land. Phil compared it to throwing tennis balls to someone – throw one, they catch it. Throw four, they drop them all.

 

2. Brand charisma earns attention. It doesn’t demand it.

 

Consumers are overwhelmed, distracted, and often bombarded. Especially during high promotion periods like Black Friday and Christmas. Your brand must earn attention, not demand it.

Phil refers to this as brand charisma, the emotional and visual qualities that make your brand the “most interesting person at the party.” Fortunately, this charisma doesn’t require a huge budget. Social platforms have levelled the playing field:

 

1. Small brands can engineer virality
2. Strong visual identity travels further than rational messaging
3. Personality-led storytelling beats polished corporate comms

 

Phil shared an example of a small, challenger brand that generated over 12.5 million Instagram views from a single post. Not through paid media, but by creating something visually unique, culturally relevant, and genuinely enjoyable to share.

 

The takeaway wasn’t “go viral”. It was simply:

1. Lead with personality, not polish
2. Design for sharing, not explaining
3. Let visuals do the heavy lifting before words arrive

 

That’s the equivalent of compound exercises in the gym: carry out one strong movement that works multiple muscles at once.

 

3. Strong brands are built around a clear organising idea

 

The strongest brands, from global giants to challenger start-ups, organise every decision around a single strategic idea.

 

This idea becomes the North Star and shapes:

1. product decisions
2. customer experience
3. tone of voice
4. marketing
5. hiring
6. packaging

 

Tesco’s “Every Little Helps” wasn’t just a slogan. It influenced pricing, store layouts, staff behaviour and customer expectations. The brand promise showed up in thousands of small operational decisions, reinforcing trust over time.

Wagamama’s “From Bowl to Soul” informed everything from menu design to communal seating. It wasn’t marketing-led, it was experience-led. Representing so much more than a campaign.

Phil shared that “A brand without a clear source of growth is decoration, not strategy.” If your growth comes from convenience, speed, trust, quality, or experience, your brand should amplify that single truth. If it doesn’t, you’re training the wrong muscle. Brand consistency builds strength over time.

 

4. Measure brand awareness, even when it feels imprecise

 

Founders often avoid measuring brand awareness because it feels vague. However, Phil argued the opposite in that “You can’t grow what you don’t measure.”

 

The group discussed the practicalities with some simple suggestions:

1. Monthly brand awareness surveys
2. Tracking consideration alongside awareness (the biggest red flag is when awareness stays stable, but consideration drops)
3. Using NPS as an early signal of brand strength

 

Phil highlighted that econometrics, once reserved for huge brands, are now accessible for smaller businesses, and can isolate the commercial impact of brand campaigns. Two useful tools for checking brand awareness and consideration are Attest and Brand Traction.

 

5. In a contracting market, don’t stop training. Adjust the load.

 

Several founders in the room are seeing reduced demand and tighter budgets. Phil’s advice was pragmatic, not ideological.

If your P&L is under pressure, prioritise performance marketing. You need oxygen before you can train for endurance.

However, don’t drop brand building entirely. Even 10–20% of your budget, used boldly and consistently, can create disproportionate impact. Brands that disappear during downturns lose muscle mass fast and struggle to recover when demand returns.

Phil encouraged founders with multiple sites to test different brand-to-performance ratios before committing fully. Treat it like progressive overload. Adjust, measure and learn.

Ultimately, staying visible during tough periods is what preserves long-term strength.

 

6. In hospitality and retail, your environment is your brand

 

It’s important to remember that brand doesn’t stop at the logo. For physical businesses, the space itself often communicates the brand long before any marketing does.

Take Wagamama, for example, their unique placemats were used by customers to hand select their orders, and became core brand collateral, subtly encouraging diners to explore more of the menu.

Côte Restaurants took a completely different route, introducing communal, social tables to reinforce their positioning around convivial, shared dining.

Even in retail, frozen food brands are seeing new momentum as consumers become more conscious about reducing food waste, a cultural cue that founders can actively lean into.

Micro-details matter. They communicate meaning without a single line of copy.

 

7. Be present at the moment of need

 

This notion landed especially hard for the B2B founders at the session. As Phil bluntly put it, “You need to be a plumber when someone needs a plumber.”

In practice, that means being crystal clear about the problem your brand solves, showing up at the exact moment your buyer enters the category, and making sure your performance ads line up with the real triggers that push customers into action. It also means resisting the urge to cram every value and virtue into your messaging.

Stripe is a good example of disciplined restraint in messaging:

 

“Payments infrastructure for the internet.” 

 

That’s it. Everything else is proved, not proclaimed. Trying to showcase every benefit in copy – “We’re fast, secure, innovative, customer-centric, scalable, trusted, award-winning…” – usually means the buyer remembers nothing.

 

Brands like Stripe prove that:

1. Clarity beats completeness
2. Focus over enthusiasm
3. One sharp promise is key

 

The real discipline is choosing what not to say in order to not overwhelm and turn off consumers.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Phil wrapped up the session with a message that cut right to the point. Strong brands convert better. They survive turbulence. They earn emotional attention long before they earn revenue. And in a world where AI and performance marketing are levelling the playing field, brand might be one of the only enduring unfair advantages left. For our members, that’s a huge opportunity hiding in plain sight.

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If you want to be part of conversations like this, led by leaders behind some of the UK’s most successful brands, you can explore our memberships here.