The spreadsheets were useful. The politics of defending a brand line item were not in the syllabus.
Uzoma DanielSep 2, 2026 · 1 min read
Business school taught me to model return on marketing investment. It did not teach me how to defend a brand budget in a room full of people who can see sales numbers and cannot see reputation.
What works: tie brand spend to a metric leadership already cares about — shorter sales cycles, fewer discount requests, better referral rates — and report on it every quarter, even when the numbers are small.
Brand is the budget line that pays back slowest and gets cut fastest. Protect it with evidence.
Leadership When marketing learns about features at launch, the story is always late. Put both teams in the same room earlier.
Leadership Listen, audit, then ship one visible win. A simple rhythm for stepping into a marketing role at a tech company.
Branding Walk through Balogun on a Saturday and you’ll see brand-building older than any agency deck. The lesson for tech companies is uncomfortable.
