Turning off ads doesn't mean no more orders, if you have a real brand.

There is a simple test that most shop owners hesitate to perform: turn off all advertising for two weeks and observe. If orders nearly disappear, it indicates that the issue is not with the marketing budget, but that the business does not have a real brand, only buying individual customers through advertising.

Advertising costs are continuously rising due to structure, not cycles.

Many people in the retail industry still view rising advertising costs as a temporary fluctuation. The truth is that the structure of digital platforms is designed to maximize revenue from sellers, not to maximize profits for sellers. As more shops compete for the same display position, the cost per competitive click will increase, with no natural stopping point.

When floor fees account for 40–45% of revenue and advertising costs continue to rise, sellers are squeezed for profit from both sides. This is why more and more retail businesses are looking to build their own channels and establish a real brand. Not out of idealism, but out of necessity.

Strong brands create active demand.

Paid advertising creates stimulated demand: customers do not know you exist until they see a banner. Strong brands create active demand: customers actively seek your name when they have a need. This difference may seem small, but the cost impact is significant. An active search costs almost nothing. A purchased impression has a price.

Byron Sharp, in his research on brand growth at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, points out that brands grow by making more people remember them at the moment they need to make a purchase. This recall does not come from seeing an advertisement once. It accumulates through consistent exposure, real experiences, and stories told in the right way. Gradually, it anchors in the long-term memory of customers.

A brand is the gut feeling customers have about a product, service, or company, not just a logo or slogan.

Marty Neumeier, The Brand Gap

That perception cannot be bought with an advertising budget. It is built through consistency over a long enough period.

Why “creating good content” is still not enough to escape dependency

A common misunderstanding: if you create content that is good enough, customers will seek you out. But good content without clear positioning will not accumulate. Customers will watch and forget, as there is nothing anchored in their memory beyond an interesting piece of content. For a brand to have pull, three things must happen simultaneously.

• Specific positioning: who you are the best choice for, in what situation, and for what reason. Not "good quality, reasonable price" because that is what everyone says.
• Consistent identity assets: colors, fonts, images, tone of voice, must be distinctive enough to be recognized and consistent enough to accumulate. According to research by Marq and Demand Metric, up to 85% of organizations have an identity system, but only about 30% implement it consistently. That gap is where brand assets leak.
• The operational experience is a commitment: a brand is behavior, according to Wally Olins. If you promise fast delivery but the logistics are chaotic, no design can save that.

Lessons from brands that have tried and failed.

Allbirds is a frequently mentioned example in the D2C (direct-to-consumer) retail space. They raised $39 million, have a clear product story about sustainability, and built a genuine community of supporters. However, when they expanded too quickly and diluted their positioning with too many product lines, their stock value plummeted by over 99% from its peak. It wasn't because they lacked a brand, but because they couldn't maintain consistency while scaling.

In the Vietnamese market, Coolmate is a notable counterexample. They have built a structured D2C model with a consistent tone. They focus on a narrow segment of men needing quality basics and invest in the post-purchase experience. The result is a brand with real pull, not just relying on an advertising budget to survive.

Budget: a 60/40 ratio and why it works

Les Binet and Peter Field, in their long-term research for the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising), analyzed hundreds of campaigns. They propose allocating approximately 60% of the budget for long-term brand building and 40% for short-term activation. The reason is that these two types of investments create two different effects that cannot replace each other.

Short-term activation, meaning performance advertising, generates orders today. Building a brand creates conditions for short-term activation to work more effectively tomorrow. Familiar brands have a higher conversion rate from advertising because customers already have a level of trust. The paradox is that investing in a brand makes advertising spending more effective, rather than competing with it.

A common issue in Vietnamese retail is that the actual ratio is close to 90–100% of the budget for performance advertising and nearly 0% for brand building. That model can generate short-term revenue, but does not accumulate anything that can withstand the next fee increase from the platform.

A practical starting point for retail businesses.

No one builds a brand with a single decision. However, there are practical starting points that do not require a large budget immediately.

• Measure current active demand: direct traffic rate, brand name searches, and repeat orders. These three metrics indicate what the brand is accumulating beyond advertising.
• Check for consistency: product images, caption tone, packaging experience, and customer response. See if they tell the same story or if each channel is communicating differently.
• Narrow before broadening: narrow and deep positioning is often more effective than broad and thin positioning, especially for brands in the early accumulation stage.

A brand is not a solution that can be turned off today and see results tomorrow. But it is the only thing that can change the cost structure in the long run. When customers seek you out because they know who you are, every advertising dollar you spend will be more effective. And each time the platform raises fees, it will be less dangerous.