Damon Berger, Head of Consumer Digital Engagement at Gap Inc., joined the Brand Builder’s Playbook to explain how marketing mix modeling becomes more than a finance tool. For him, it’s a mirror that reflects how well a brand connects with its customers. When you treat the model as a scorecard for relevance, not just return, it reshapes how marketing earns trust across the business.
Brand value is still misunderstood
Brand still feels intangible inside many organizations. Finance teams want clear returns, while marketers speak in the language of awareness and storytelling. Berger’s view is that both sides are right, and both are incomplete. Short-term performance data shows what works now, but it misses the compounding effect of brand familiarity, trust, and emotion that drive sales later. When a company underfunds brand, it also weakens the efficiency of every performance channel.
Measuring what really moves the business
Brand and finance share the same scorecard at Gap. The marketing mix model tracks how dollars flow and how consumers respond across channels. It looks at the relationship between creative quality, cultural relevance, and conversion rather than separating them into disconnected streams. Berger’s team uses the model to understand whether content resonates with customers, which channels amplify that resonance, and how relevance translates to revenue.
The model is not an answer machine. It is a tool that helps teams see which creative investments make media more efficient and which ones require heavier spend to compensate for weaker ideas. The real goal is to make every dollar work harder by making the brand stronger.
Relevance is the multiplier
Gap’s turnaround began with a clear philosophy from CEO Richard Dixon: relevance drives revenue. The company focused on reconnecting its brands to culture through music, art, and fashion that reflect the energy of the moment. Each label—Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Athleta—interprets that goal differently but follows the same principle: connect to culture in ways that feel natural to the brand’s DNA.
This approach has made Gap’s marketing mix more efficient. When the creative and cultural connection is right, organic engagement rises, and paid media becomes amplification rather than dependency. The financial outcome is visible in both brand equity metrics and sales performance.
Data with curiosity behind it
A marketing mix model only works when the culture behind it welcomes experimentation. Gap’s leadership built what Berger calls a culture of curiosity. Teams are encouraged to ask why something worked, what could work better, and what risks are worth taking next. This mindset keeps the model from becoming a static report and turns it into a living system for continuous learning.
The goal is not to chase perfect data but to stay close to the consumer and use insight to shape decisions in real time. That curiosity has fueled both creativity and accountability across the portfolio.
Practical takeaways for brand leaders
From Gap’s experience, three lessons stand out for anyone rethinking their mix:
- Treat your marketing model as a reflection of consumer response, not a scoreboard for budget cuts.
- Keep brand and performance connected by measuring how awareness fuels efficiency, not just how spend drives clicks.
- Build a culture that treats curiosity as rigor. Data is most powerful when people use it to ask better questions, not defend old answers.
The line to remember
Marketing mix modeling is not about finding the perfect formula. It is about building a system where relevance and results inform each other. The brands that master that balance turn culture into compounding growth.
