Agenz Newsletter · Issue 01 Brand Growth Intelligence

Rethinking brand growth in 2026.

Every brand you scroll past today spent money to be there. Why does none of it stick? The answer isn't more content or bigger budgets. It's positioning.

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Vol.01Field notes
on growth

Issue01 · May 2026

DeskBrand Growth

Read~9 minutes

ForFounders · CMOs · Marketers

The brief

Every brand is online now, so being online stopped being the advantage. Budgets keep climbing while recall keeps falling. This issue is about the one thing that still separates the brands people remember from the ones they scroll past, positioning. What it is, why most brands get it wrong, and how to find yours in 2026.

In this issue

Spending to be seennot spending to be rememberedSpending to be seennot spending to be remembered

The problem

Every brand is spending. Almost none of it is remembered.

Here's a question no one asked a decade ago: if every brand is online, how do you actually stand out?

…and why does spending more only make it worse?

The numbers

Going digital was the advantage in 2015. By 2025, it became the default.

Traditional media held 65% of India's ad market in FY20. By FY25, it fell to ~46%, while digital nearly doubled its share. When everyone follows the same path, the path stops being an advantage.

Digital overtakes traditional · India ad share

Digital ad share Traditional media

Digital ad share FY25

Nearly doubled from 24% in FY20

Total ad market 2025

₹0L Cr

Projected ₹2L Cr by 2026

Digital growth rate

Down from 30%+ in earlier years

Avg. CAC per customer

₹0–1,200

Up 25–40% YoY on Meta

Sources: IBEF / Crisil FY25 · Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2025 · Mordor Intelligence D2C Report 2026

01 / The efficiency trap

When the playbook becomes the blueprint.

Take energy drinks. Every brand screams "high performance" with edgy visuals and extreme sports, all chasing the Red Bull formula. They're all trying to be different, and the result is that everything feels the same.

You could swap the logo on three brand pages and the audience wouldn't notice.

Any one of them could be the different one. That is the problem.

Same space. Same style. Same tone. Spending to be seen, not to be remembered.

It's that digital alone doesn't differentiate. As more brands followed the same playbook, it didn't just become common, it created the efficiency trap: when optimising for the same metrics, on the same platforms, with the same playbook makes every brand indistinguishable.

The same pattern plays out in D2C beauty, fashion, and food delivery. Content looks interchangeable. The spend grows. The recall doesn't. Brands need to combine reach with real memorability: repeated exposure, stories that stay, and a point of view strong enough that people remember who said it.

Some brands find that differentiation entirely online. Some find it offline. Some find it in the intersection. The channel isn't the answer. Positioning is.

They didn't have bigger budgetsthey were unforgettableThey didn't have bigger budgetsthey were unforgettable

02 / Brands that built recall

Legacy brands built recall before digital even existed.

No Instagram. No performance marketing. What they had was clarity about what they stood for, and the discipline to say it the same way for decades.

Glue · since 1959

Fevicol

One idea, repeated for decades. "Fevicol ka jod hai, tutega nahi" is remembered across generations, tied to everyday moments, never chasing trends.

What they get right

One idea, repeated for decades. Emotional connection through everyday relevance, not novelty.

Paint · 20+ yrs

Asian Paints

With "Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai," they didn't sell paint, they told the story of homes and lives. They re-ran the same ad 22 years later because the line is the positioning.

What they get right

Positioned around an emotion (home as identity), not a category (paint). Consistent for 20+ years.

Butter · since 1966

Amul

The Amul Girl has run since 1966, topical, witty, present in culture every single week for five decades. The brand doesn't react to the trend. It is the trend.

What they get right

Cultural participation as a strategy, weekly relevance that never relies on short-term bursts.

“

We don't reach for Parle-G because of one viral campaign. They were building something that would outlast any campaign.

Built on generations of consistent presence not ROAS ✗

Proof · now

New-age brands proved the exact same formula still works.

Zomato

Zomato understood this earliest. Not just food delivery, fun, relatable, timely conversations people remembered. They started the brainrot-content era on Instagram in India.

When every brand copied the playbook, Zomato didn't defend the territory. They pivoted to hustle culture, aspirational content, black-and-white aesthetics. New positioning, new whitespace, same discipline.

Zomato 'arreee yaaar' meme tweet replying to people who searched bat soup

Real Zomato content · the brainrot era

Zomato hustle-culture content grid: Fuel Your Hustle, Azhar Sayyed skateboarder, This is not a sad story, CAT aspirants

The pivot: hustle culture, aspirational, black-and-white. Same brand. New whitespace.

The pattern

Legacy or new-age, they all follow the same three principles.

Clarity of definition

They know exactly what they stand for. Not a category. Not a product feature. An idea.

Consistency of repetition

Messaging repeated across time and media. They don't abandon what works the moment something newer appears. They let it compound.

Value beyond the product

Emotional or cultural relevance makes them memorable. A reason to care that has nothing to do with the transaction.

By doing this, you move from visibility to memorability. People don't just see the brand, they remember it, trust it, and prefer it. That's what breaks the efficiency trap.

The real problem

The real problem isn't reach.
It's positioning.

If the formula is this clear, why aren't more brands following it? Because positioning is the decision about what you'll stand for, and the discipline to stick to it long enough for the audience to feel it.

Where brands go wrong

Most brands copy the formula without understanding the objective.

They paste the same content, format and tone without asking: Who am I talking to? What do I want them to feel? What space can I own that nobody else is in? Four failure modes show up again and again.

Performance marketing is easy to justify. Influencer reach looks good in reports. Long-term positioning is harder to measure and harder to defend in a Monday review, so brands keep spending on what's measurable and ignore what actually builds recall.

Mamaearth and mCaffeine scaled fast on paid acquisition. When Honasa (Mamaearth's parent) went public, the market questioned whether the brand had equity beyond ad spend. The stock fell over 40% from its listing high. When recall disappears the moment you stop spending, you don't have a brand, you have a customer-acquisition line item.

Every brand needed a face, so the page slowly turned into a stream of collaborations. The reach shows up; the brand itself isn't compounding anything. Impressions spike, but recall and distinctiveness stay flat.

The gap isn't influencer marketing, it's how it's used. When the page feels like a collection of paid moments instead of a clear brand story, it stops building something that belongs to the brand.

Brands want results fast, so they copy-paste what's already working without asking what they're actually targeting. Not every brand wants the same thing, some want customers, some want press, some want a community. The same strategy doesn't serve all three equally.

And as content volume keeps rising, attention per brand keeps shrinking. Generic content, paid or organic, gets scrolled past without a second thought.

As AI-generated content floods the internet, demand for content that feels human is rising, the same dynamic that happened with offline events when everything went digital. Audiences develop a taste for the real thing precisely because the artificial version is everywhere.

Brands that lean entirely on AI optimise for volume at the cost of distinctiveness. The irony is stark: the tool meant to scale content is actually commoditising it.

Think of your brand as a characterwhich one are you?Think of your brand as a characterwhich one are you?

03 / Which character is your brand?

So what does good positioning actually look like?

There isn't one right answer. There are archetypes different brands inhabit, and the best brands understand which one fits them, then play it consistently. Think of your brand as a character.

The Pitcher

Barney Stinson

Always pitching, loud, high-energy. The moment he stops showing up, he's forgotten.

= Performance marketing. Always on, no memory without spending.

mCaffeineearly Mamaearth

The Personality

Michael Scott

Personality first, genuinely funny, builds relationships through constant interaction.

= Organic content done right. Not forced, but consistently present.

DuolingoLiquid IV

The Closer

Harvey Specter

Positions himself as premium. Doesn't chase. People come to him.

= Brand equity that pulls. You don't pitch, you've already been decided on.

FevicolAmulboAt

The Showman

Tony Stark

Loud, attention-grabbing, makes moves that get noticed in the room and outside it.

= Experiential + digital. Always doing something worth watching.

Red BullZomato

The brands getting it right aren't playing one of these. They understand which one fits, and play it consistently.

In the wild

Four brands. Four channels. One thing in common: clarity.

Each solved the positioning problem differently. What matters isn't the channel, it's the clarity of the space they chose to own.

Organic content

Zomato

The brand we checked to know the trend, acting fast, making the most fun content. When the landscape shifted, they moved to aspirational and hustle culture. The page always had a point of view that evolves.

What they get right

Constant repositioning within content, not abandoning the platform.

Personality-first

Duolingo

An edtech brand in a boring, too-educational category, that people actually follow. The owl isn't a mascot; it's a character with opinions doing extreme things for shareability.

What they get right

They turned a boring category into entertainment. Online and offline persona are the same.

Influencer marketing

Liquid IV

Collaboration series like their Thirst Behaviour IP. Most brands hand the page to creators until it's a moodboard of promotions. Liquid IV keeps its persona and picks creators who add to it.

What they get right

Influencers serve the brand's positioning, not the other way around.

Paid ads

Booking.com

A textbook of decision-stage targeting. Leave their app and you're reminded of the same products you checked. Performance marketing with positioning clarity, not interrupting, reminding at the right moment.

What they get right

No budget wasted on top-funnel awareness. Every rupee spent on shown intent.

04 / The five forces of positioning

The five forces that shape positioning.

Positioning doesn't happen in a vacuum. Where your brand sits on each spectrum changes what positioning is even possible. The forces don't give you the answer, they give you the map.

01Audience

Gen Z, digital-native, short attention spans

Short-form, memes, creator collabs. e.g. Duolingo → unhinged TikTok persona.

40+, trust-driven, longer decision cycles

Editorial, offline presence, word of mouth. e.g. Asian Paints → TV + in-store.

02Price point

Mass / affordable

Needs volume and visibility. Performance marketing fits. e.g. Zepto → billboard collabs.

Premium / luxury

Needs aspiration and exclusivity. Pull, not push. e.g. boAt → lifestyle events.

03Distribution

Online-first

Performance signals, retargeting, social proof. e.g. Booking.com → intent-based retargeting.

Offline-first / omnichannel

Trust through ubiquity and presence. e.g. Lenskart → Tier-2 stores at ₹850 CAC.

04Category maturity

New / emerging

Needs education, explain why the category exists. e.g. Liquid IV in a new Indian market.

Crowded / mature

Needs differentiation, the question is "why you". e.g. Zomato → content personality.

05Competitive landscape

Few competitors, open whitespace

First-mover advantage in voice. e.g. early Zomato meme era.

Many competitors, saturated

You pick the whitespace, not in isolation. e.g. Diet Coke vs Coca-Cola.

What's right for you

Your coordinates decide your route.

A premium, offline-first brand in a crowded category plays completely differently from an affordable, online-first brand in a new one. Find yours.

Premium + low competition + older audience

Harvey Specter →

Build pull equity. Don't chase. Let consistent quality, offline presence and cultural relevance make people come to you. Signal aspiration, not promotion.

Think Rolex, DailyObjects

Young audience + online-first + open whitespace

Michael Scott →

Own a content personality. Build a page people follow for the content, not the product. Platform-native formats, a distinct voice, creators who serve the identity.

Think Duolingo, Liquid IV, early Zomato

Crowded category + mid/mass price + mixed distribution

Tony Stark →

Create experiences worth watching. Offline activations that generate content. The flywheel: experience → content → distribution → conversion. Break from category norms.

Think Red Bull, Zomato's current era

New category + mass product + online-heavy

Barney Stinson →

Performance marketing as the engine, but invest 20–30% in brand-building. Decision-stage targeting over top-funnel spray. Plan a transition as the brand matures.

Think Booking.com, early-stage D2C

Digital gives you reachphysical gives you memoryDigital gives you reachphysical gives you memory

05 / The offline reinvestment

The offline reinvestment.

An increasing number of digital-native brands are finding their audience's attention isn't only online anymore. Offline isn't a retreat, it's a strategic investment in recall, growth and content creation. The data is striking.

Live events market

₹0 Cr

India, 2025 (EY-BookMyShow)

Live events growth

Fastest M&E segment, 2025

Prefer experiences

of Indian consumers

Brands increasing spend

Plan structured experiential

D2C share of retail leasing

Doubled in a single year, H1 2024 → H1 2025

Experiential marketing impact

% of event attendees · 7,450 surveyed

Only ₹8 of every ₹100 Indians spend on shopping happens online. The other ₹92 goes to physical stores. A brand that only exists online is fighting for a thin slice of a very large pie.

Sources: EY-Parthenon & BookMyShow "Beyond Attention. Into Immersion" (March 2026) · FICCI-EY Report 2026 · CBRE India

From the field · Agenz × Ather Community Day

The live event economy is sitting on its best content, and throwing most of it away.

Most events pour their budget into the wrong footage: B-rolls, after-movies, drone shots of the crowd, slow-motion clips of people clapping. It looks nice and says nothing. The real value, the keynote speeches, the ideas people actually showed up for, gets buried in a recap reel weeks later, or never captured at all.

views generated across Ather Community Day, captured and distributed live, while the event was still happening.

Ather Community Day · keynote captured live by Agenz

At Ather Community Day, we treated the stage as the story. Instead of waiting weeks for a polished after-movie, we cut and pushed the keynote moments while the room was still full, so the ideas travelled the same day they were said.

That is the shift. An event is not a thing you document afterwards. It is a live content engine. The keynote is the asset. The crowd shot is the garnish.

10M+ views · captured & distributed live · no wasted after-movie

Community, not just content

Simba Uproar didn't chase the hip-hop scene. They built a real one, and became a name it trusts.

No borrowed clout, no rented audience. A genuine community around the music, the nights and the people, the kind of belonging that turns a name into a fixture. That is what positioning looks like when it is lived, not advertised, and it is exactly the kind of cultural equity the rest of this issue is about.

On the radar · Zepto

Quick-commerce noticed too. After Fake Sangeet broke out, Zepto ran its own sangeet-style riff, proof the format we invented has become a playbook others now borrow.

On the radar · SuperKicks × Puma

SuperKicks built Nani Ka Ghar for the Puma Palermo Jamun launch, a recreated grandmother's courtyard with jamun-stomping and champi. Retail as a feeling, not a shelf.

Digital-native, going physical

Brands that reach you online, and remember you offline.

These aren't brands running from digital. They understand digital gives you reach, and physical gives you memory. Building both is the only complete picture.

Netflix House

Netflix

100,000+ sq ft venues, Stranger Things, Squid Game, Bridgerton as immersive experiences. In India, a storytelling pavilion at WAVES 2025 let fans step into sets and dub iconic scenes.

What they get right

Turned passive viewers into active participants. Content creates the experience; the experience creates new content.

Concerts & cricket

Budweiser

Present at concerts and matches through booths and activations, consistently associated with the feeling of being somewhere fun with people you like. A repeated, recognisable presence.

What they get right

Owned a feeling (fun with friends), not a product benefit. The brand is the atmosphere, not the drink.

Community space

Gully / Nothing

Gully Labs built Baithak, a community space with music and discussion. Nothing has a community meeting area inside its Bangalore store. People come for the experience, not just the product.

What they get right

Community as a physical space, adding to the experience of buying from their store.

Self-aware

Cashify

Showed up at comedy shows and let people mock the brand. The mockery still fulfils the objective, the brand gets talked about. Attention is attention.

What they get right

Self-awareness as positioning. Being mocked by your audience still means they're thinking about you.

Billboard collabs

Zepto

Billboard collaborations with complementary brands, visual moments that serve both parties and catch attention in the physical environment.

What they get right

Co-branded outdoor becomes social content. The physical medium is the digital content source.

Digital gives you reach.
Physical gives you memory.

The growth framework for 2026

Four layers that feed into each other.

Layer 1, Offline experience

Make the emotional deposit

Offline IPs, community events, activations. When Budweiser shows up at a concert, people don't think "ad", they think "this brand is part of my good time."

Layer 2, Content creation

Mine the experience

Photo booths, UGC incentives, media partnerships. The event doesn't end when the lights go off, every reel filmed at an activation is organic reach you didn't pay for.

Layer 3, Digital distribution

Reach with proof of life

The content generated offline fuels your channels online. Not a stock image with a caption, real people, at a real event, having a real experience with the brand.

Layer 4, Conversion & retention

Close the loop, then reopen it

People who experienced the brand and then saw the content are far more likely to buy, sign up, or come back. Each cycle strengthens the next.

↻ The loop compounds, every cycle strengthens the next

06 / How to find your position

It's not "go offline" or "double down on digital." The answer depends on your brand. The process is the same.

Audit where your attention comes from today

Map your current brand interactions. Where do people encounter you? Which do they remember? If the answer is "only when we're spending on ads," you're in the Barney Stinson quadrant, that's a signal, not a death sentence.

Run the five forces

Plot your brand on audience, price point, distribution, category maturity and competitive landscape. The combination tells you which positioning territories are available. Don't copy a playbook if your coordinates are different.

Pick your character

Are you building pull equity (Harvey) or staying visible through presence (Michael)? Creating experiences worth watching (Tony) or running always-on performance (Barney)? Pick one and give it time to show results.

Find the whitespace

Look at what every competitor does, the content, the channels, the tone. Now find the gap. Zomato didn't win by being a better food-delivery brand on social. They won by being the only one that felt like a person with opinions.

Commit for long enough

This is where 90% of brands fail, they test for two months, see no instant result, and pivot. Positioning compounds. Fevicol ran the same idea for decades. The audience needs time to feel it. Six weeks is not enough.

Final takeaways

If you remember six things from this issue.

01
Reach is table stakes. Going digital was the edge in 2015. By 2025 it is the default, and the default never differentiates.
02
Beware the efficiency trap. Same platforms, same metrics, same playbook makes every brand look interchangeable. Swap the logos and no one notices.
03
Positioning beats spend. Decide what you stand for, then repeat it long enough for people to actually feel it. Visibility is not memorability.
04
Pick your character. Pull (Harvey), personality (Michael), spectacle (Tony) or always-on performance (Barney). Choose one and play it consistently.
05
Your coordinates decide your route. Run the five forces. Don't copy a playbook built for a brand with different audience, price and distribution.
06
Digital gives reach, physical gives memory. A live event is a content engine. The keynote is the asset; the crowd shot is the garnish. Commit long enough to compound.

AgenzIssue 01
filed 2026

The takeaway

That's the only kind of growth that compounds.

The brands that win in 2026 won't have the biggest budgets or the most content. They'll be the ones who figured out their positioning, picked the right channels for their audience, and had the discipline to stay the course long enough for it to compound.

Brought to you by Agenz

We don't just write about positioning. We build the IPs that own it.

Agenz is the storytelling studio behind 5B+ organic views for 100+ brands, and the offline IPs people now travel between cities for. Two of our own, built from scratch:

Global offline IP

Fake Sangeet

The Fake Sangeet movement is an Agenz original, a format we invented and now run across cities as Jumma Ki Raat. 15K+ tickets sold, covered by ThePrint, WION, Storyboard18 and a dozen others. We built the market, the brand, the ticketing and the community.

@jummaakiraat →

Community IP

Seedz Club

A highly intimate community for book and movie lovers, led by Noharika Gangaramany. It runs once a month across multiple cities, an Agenz-owned IP built around the kind of belonging that no ad can buy.

@seedzclub →