Mack Trucks’ Brand Campaign Anchors ANA’s B2B Underinvestment Research
Mack Trucks ran a brand campaign called “By America’s Side.” ANA Magazine says it proves brand spending pays off. The campaign helped Mack gain 28% more market share. ANA pairs that result with new research. The research finds that 80% of B2B marketers may be underinvesting in brand. ANA says that gap could grow as AI changes how buyers find vendors.
What the Mack Trucks Campaign and ANA Brand Research Found
Mack Trucks built the campaign around its bulldog mascot. The ads placed the bulldog next to famous American landmarks, including the Hoover Dam and the Empire State Building. Stein is the B2B agency behind the campaign. Stein’s public case study reports strong results. The campaign drove 34% higher engagement than Mack’s earlier brand work. It did this at a 59% lower paid media budget. By the fourth quarter of 2024, demand for Mack trucks had grown. Heavy-duty truck orders rose 26%. The order waitlist passed 264,000. Stein says these results come directly from the campaign. The work is now on permanent display inside the Mack Trucks Historical Museum. Other Mack markets have adopted the campaign on their own, including Canada, Colombia, Australia and Mexico.
ANA Magazine uses these results to introduce a bigger finding: new research shows 80% of B2B marketers may be underinvesting in brand. Matt Kinsman wrote the ANA piece, which published on August 10, 2026. The article frames this as a growing risk. Artificial intelligence is changing how buyers discover and shortlist vendors, often before a salesperson gets involved.
Where the Mack Trucks and Brand Underinvestment Reporting Comes From
This article draws on two sources. The first is ANA Magazine’s August 10, 2026 feature. It is titled “How B2B Marketers Ascend the Brand.” The second is Stein’s published case study of the Mack Trucks campaign. ANA’s full article sits behind a free member login. So the campaign figures cited here, like engagement, budget, orders and the waitlist, come from Stein’s public case study.
How Brand Underinvestment Fits B2B’s 2026 Budget Fight
The ANA piece lands inside a bigger argument: B2B marketers keep asking whether brand spend earns its keep. ANA’s own Masters of B2B conference in June helps answer that. It anchored on a report valuing the top 300 B2B brands at $4 trillion, which shows strongly branded businesses trade at a real premium. But brand still struggles to win budget fights. WFA and Ebiquity research found only 15% of senior marketers say effectiveness data drives their budget decisions. That helps explain why brand loses even when the numbers favor it. The fight is personal too. Lippincott’s CMO Outlook found just 28% of CMOs feel they hold high organizational influence. Many choose short-term wins instead, because those are easier to defend. Mack’s result offers a counterexample: a campaign built for brand, not direct response, that still produced share gains a CFO can read on a spreadsheet.
Talking Shift: Brand Work Pays a Bill Performance Marketing Takes Credit For
Start Some Shift sees Mack’s numbers as a credit problem inside B2B budgets. Brand campaigns build trust for months before a buyer ever clicks an ad. When that buyer finally searches or clicks, the performance channel gets credit for a decision brand work already made. Mack spent 59% less on paid media and still gained market share, because the bulldog campaign had already done the convincing. Start Some Shift’s take: “Performance marketing often collects a debt that brand work already paid.” Marketers who cut brand budget to fund more ads are quietly running down the trust their brand spent years building. Someone eventually notices when that well runs dry. For established brands sitting on decades of reputation, that is a lever competitors without the history cannot easily copy.
What B2B Marketers Should Do About Brand Underinvestment
- Model your brand spend against Mack’s ratio: cut paid media, invest more in brand story, and measure share gain over quarters, not clicks.
- Translate brand results into finance language your CFO already trusts, using premium and valuation figures like those in the ANA brand ranking.
- Protect a fixed share of budget for brand work before short-term demands claim it, especially if your CMO holds low organizational influence.
- Build a campaign around one clear symbol or story, the way Mack built around its bulldog, instead of splitting your message across many campaigns.
- Track engagement per dollar spent, not just total spend, so a leaner brand budget can still prove its case.
- Audit whether recent performance wins are actually brand-driven demand that got wrongly credited to your last-click channel.
- Benchmark your brand’s share and engagement trend against direct competitors before your next budget cycle.
What to Watch Next in B2B Brand Investment
Watch for other legacy B2B brands publishing similar brand-first case studies now that Mack’s results are circulating. Also watch whether ANA’s 80% underinvestment figure gets tested by other research houses. One magazine feature is not yet an industry consensus.
