Essays on brand equity, from inside the performance side. The Brand Trilemma, and the writing that applies it.https://gabrielgruter.com/en-gbhttps://gabrielgruter.com/essays/attribution-ludic-fallacy/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/attribution-ludic-fallacy/Click attribution assigns every sale to a channel down to the decimal. It treats an open market as a casino with known odds. The false precision wins budget fights by looking rigorous, not by being right.https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/cost-of-a-70-30-split/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/cost-of-a-70-30-split/Most brands drift to a 70/30 activation-to-brand budget and never defend it. Run the arithmetic and the cost shows up in the one number a performance buyer respects: the cost per click, climbing quarter after quarter.https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/graveyard-of-performance-only-brands/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/graveyard-of-performance-only-brands/The case studies that prove brand spend does not matter all share one flaw: the brands that cut brand spend and died are not on stage to tell you. You are reading a filtered sample.https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/the-dashboard-is-all-there-is/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/the-dashboard-is-all-there-is/In a budget meeting, the room treats the dashboard as the whole of reality. Equity was never on the screen, so it never enters the argument. Kahneman explained why the mind does this.https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/cac-rising-brand-weak/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/cac-rising-brand-weak/A rising cost per acquisition is usually a brand problem wearing a media costume. Here is how brand weakness shows up in the metrics a performance buyer already watches, and why no amount of bid tuning fixes it.The Brand Trilemmahttps://gabrielgruter.com/essays/positioning-is-a-bet/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/positioning-is-a-bet/Most brands describe themselves and call it positioning. A real position names who you are for and, by saying so, who you are not for. If nobody could be put off by your positioning, you do not have one.The Brand Trilemmahttps://gabrielgruter.com/essays/performance-harvests-demand/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/performance-harvests-demand/Performance captures demand that already exists. It cannot make the demand that isn't there yet, and mistaking one for the other is why growth stalls.The Brand Trilemmahttps://gabrielgruter.com/essays/the-brand-trilemma/https://gabrielgruter.com/essays/the-brand-trilemma/Every brand splits a finite budget across three corners: Equity, Activation and Identity. Brands underfund the corner that compounds.The Brand Trilemma