Connecting Design with Business KPIs

Welcome to our 101 Series, a collection of short articles that explain the fundamentals of branding; striving to demystify an industry that can sometimes hide behind abstract, lofty language. This article is all about Connecting Design with Business KPI’s and Growth Goals.

If you’re responsible for a brand, you’re under constant pressure to justify investment. Growth targets, margin expectations, market expansion and portfolio complexity all sit squarely on your desk. And yet, when it comes to brand design, the conversation can still feel vague, too often framed around taste, trends or creative preference.

The reality is this: design has a direct impact on how your brand performs. When aligned to clear business KPIs, brand design becomes one of your most powerful levers for growth.

This article explains how to connect design decisions to commercial outcomes so you can evaluate, commission and defend brand investment with confidence.

What “Design” Means for Your Business

Design is not just how your brand looks. It’s how your brand:

- Is recognised and remembered
- Signals quality, credibility and value
- Is navigated across portfolios and markets
- Competes on shelf, in bid processes or at the point of choice
- Scales across regions, categories and channels

As design thinker Don Norman famously put it, “Design is how it works”. This idea is explored in depth in The Design of Everyday Things, which underpins much of modern design thinking and emphasises usability, clarity and function over surface aesthetics.

In business terms, this means how effectively your brand drives choice, trust and loyalty. If your design isn’t doing that, it isn’t working hard enough for your business.

Why Connecting Design to KPIs Matters to You

As a brand owner or manager, you’re measured on outcomes, not intentions. You need to demonstrate how brand investment contributes to:

- Revenue growth
- Market share
- Margin protection or premiumisation
- Brand awareness and consideration
- Portfolio clarity and operational efficiency
- Long-term brand value

When design is disconnected from these metrics, it risks being treated as discretionary. When it is aligned, it becomes strategic.

How Design Impacts Your Key Business KPIs

1. Driving Growth and Sales Performance

In many categories, particularly in those that are crowded or low-engagement, design is often the first signal your customer encounters. It plays a decisive role in whether your brand is noticed, recognised and chosen.

The IPA’s long-running analysis of its Effectiveness Databank, most notably the work of Les Binet and Peter Field, shows that brands investing in long-term brand building significantly outperform those focused solely on short-term activation, delivering stronger profit growth over time.

For your business, this reinforces a critical point: design-led brand building is not at odds with performance… it is a driver of it.

2. Supporting Price Premium and Margin Protection

If your brand competes on more than price, or needs to, design is doing heavy lifting.

In sectors such as alcohol, health & beauty, aerospace and energy, design signals quality, performance and credibility long before technical detail or messaging is absorbed.

McKinsey’s research into the Business Value of Design found that companies with strong design capabilities outperform industry peers on both revenue growth and shareholder returns.

For you, this means strong brand design helps:

- Justify premium pricing
- Reduce price sensitivity
- Protect margins in competitive or commoditising markets

3. Building Brand Awareness and Recall (Memory)

Brands don’t grow simply because they are better, they grow because they are easier to remember and easier to choose.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that brands grow primarily by increasing mental availability - being easily recalled in buying situations. Distinctive, consistent brand design is a key driver of this.

For your brand, this means:

- Owning distinctive visual assets
- Applying them consistently over time
- Avoiding unnecessary redesigns that dilute recognition

Every time your brand becomes harder to recognise, growth becomes harder to achieve.

4. Simplifying Your Portfolio and Improving Efficiency

As brands expand, complexity often increases, more sub-brands, more variants and more markets. Without a clear system, this can dilute impact and slow growth.

Strong brand architecture and design systems help you:

- Simplify customer choice
- Reduce internal confusion
- Speed up launches
- Scale more efficiently across regions

This directly impacts KPIs such as time to market, operational efficiency, and brand governance – all areas where design decisions have tangible business consequences.

5. Strengthening Trust and Credibility

In high-consideration or regulated sectors such as health, energy and aerospace, trust is fundamental. Design plays a critical role in establishing credibility before any detailed evaluation takes place.

Your brand design influences:

- Perceived authority and reliability
- Confidence in performance claims
- Alignment with regulatory expectations

Poorly considered design can create friction, slow adoption or or undermine confidence, regardless of how strong the underlying proposition may be.

A Practical Way to Align Design with Your KPIs

To make design work harder for your business, clarity is essential.

Start with your growth objective

For example: grow share, defend margin, enter new markets.

Define the KPIs that matter
Revenue growth, brand consideration, price elasticity, portfolio performance.

Use design strategically
Design choices should be intentional, not aesthetic for their own sake.

Measure over time

Brand impact compounds. Track brand metrics alongside commercial results to understand design’s contribution to long-term growth.

Common Myths About Brand Design and KPIs

“Brand design is subjective.”
While taste varies, behaviour does not. Strong brands consistently outperform weaker ones on measurable metrics.

“Design impact is too long-term to measure.”
Brand effects are cumulative – but they are measurable through brand tracking, sales data and price performance.

“Design is a cost centre.”
In reality, weak design is often the hidden cost in lost sales, eroded margins and lack of differentiation.

If you’d like to know more about how we could support your rebrand please get in touch.