From growth to recognition: How scale-ups can build their brand

As one of the most prominent consumer markets in the world, London turns out ambitious businesses just for fun. 

Every year, new companies emerge with great ideas, innovative products and plans to become the next big thing. But as much as we focus on helping those businesses grow through funding, talent and technology, we don’t spend enough time talking about recognition. Plenty of scale-up businesses are doing well, indeed some of them brilliantly, but a lot of them, you and I have never heard of, because growth and fame aren’t the same thing.

At the start of their journey much of their marketing is performance based and digital. For many scale-ups, growth initially comes from a combination of social media generating interest and advocacy, and search-engine marketing capitalising on the demand that follows. It’s a highly effective model when you’re offering something that feels new, different or disruptive to the market.

However, eventually most scale-ups face the same reality. What made them different at launch, and during the early stages becomes easier for competitors to replicate. Markets become crowded, customer acquisition gets harder and growth starts to slow. At that point, success is less about having the best product and more about being the brand people remember, trust and choose. The focus shifts from capturing existing demand to creating it. In other words, it’s time to invest in brand building. Not because your product isn’t good enough, it’s because people tend to place their trust in brands they’ve heard of.  You need more people to know who you are, and that’s where visibility and trust start to matter more.

Cities like London offer something that’s increasingly rare, a public stage where brands can make a statement. For example, take a walk through Piccadilly Circus and you’ll see global giants alongside businesses that are still on the early stages of their journey.

For those emerging brands, the value isn’t just the audience they reach. It’s the signal they send. Appearing in an iconic location tells people that you’re ambitious, and confident. For a scale-up looking to build credibility, that can be every bit as important as the impressions themselves.

Places like Piccadilly Lights, Outernet and other high-profile locations aren’t just advertising spaces, they’re part of London’s cultural fabric, and appearing in those environments sends a strong signal of intent.

But the opportunity isn’t limited to places like Piccadilly Lights. OOH remains one of the few channels where ambitious challenger brands can genuinely compete alongside established players. On social media, visibility is often at the mercy of algorithms, and in search, you’re competing for clicks. But in the physical world, a growing business can show up in the same spaces, in front of the same audiences, as some of the biggest brands in the country. For a scale-up brand looking to build recognition, that is a significant advantage.

And it also makes brands feel closer and more human at a time when we’re increasingly physically removed from the goods and services we buy. Most advertising today is seen by one person at a time through a screen in their hand.

But OOH is different. It’s public, collective, something people experience together. It can’t be ignored or skipped. And whilst the social feed is all important we know from our own research ‘The Point of Social’ that social media, when consumed outdoors, is 5 times more likely to be in the company of friends. People still notice what happens in the physical world and brands are built in the company of others.

The next generation of global brands won’t be built through performance marketing alone. At some point, growth depends on becoming known, not just being found.

For scale-ups looking to take that next step, OOH offers something increasingly valuable, the ability to build fame, credibility and recognition in the places where people live, work and play. 

It gives growing businesses the chance to put themselves in front of a wider audience and start building recognition beyond their existing customer base. The most ambitious scale-ups won’t see it as something to do once they’ve become a success. They’ll see it as something that can help them get there.