The short answer is yes. But the more useful answer is: it depends on when, for whom, and what you’re trying to accomplish. Consumer brands tend to think of thought leadership as a nice-to-have, something you do when you have extra budget and a slow news cycle. I’ve seen that assumption cost companies real money.
There are three moments in a consumer brand’s lifecycle when thought leadership stops being optional. When you’re raising money. When you’re heading toward an exit, whether that’s an IPO or an acquisition. And right now, when AI is reshaping how investors, analysts, and acquirers form their first impression of your brand before they ever open your deck.
When You’re Raising: Share of Voice Is a Growth Signal
At the Series A and Series B stage, founders tend to think the work is all product: penetration, iteration, opening new channels. That’s the baseline. That’s what investors expect. The brands that command higher valuations and better multiples have done something beyond that. They’ve built marketplace authority.
Owning conversations in your category, showing up consistently in earned media, building share of voice: these aren’t vanity metrics. Research published in WARC by strategist James Hankins demonstrates that share of search is one of the most accurate proxies for market share available, holding true across categories from CPG to automotive to SaaS, with category-level R² correlations above 0.6 at 95% confidence. And per the Excess Share of Voice principle, documented across more than 4,000 brands in Millward Brown research: when your share of voice exceeds your market share, you grow. When it doesn’t, you decline.
Investors know this. When a brand has clear marketplace authority, the brand itself has value. That’s where higher multiples come from. It’s not just a product story anymore. It’s a market position story.
AI Is Now the First and Last Pass in Due Diligence
Something has shifted in how deals get evaluated, and most consumer brands haven’t caught up to it yet. AI tools are now part of due diligence. Not as a novelty, but as actual workflow.
Before an analyst or deal team ever opens your pitch deck, someone has run your brand through ChatGPT or Perplexity. A quick AI search adds context about whether your deck is worth the time. At the back end of the process, when deeper questions are being asked about credibility, category leadership, and product integrity, AI is used again. It’s the filter at the door and the closing argument.
That means your brand needs to show up clearly in AI-generated responses. Not just mentioned. Positioned. Investors and deal teams want to see that you’re understood as a category leader, that your product philosophy is legible, that the brand is credible. If AI can’t answer basic questions about your company with confidence, that’s a signal. And not a good one.
I see this in how our clients are evaluated. The brands with clear narrative penetration in AI search create fewer friction points in the deal process. The ones who show up inconsistently, or not at all, create doubt. Doubt slows deals down, and sometimes even stops them.
Pre-IPO: You’re Not Convincing One Deal Team. You’re Convincing a Market.
An IPO creates a different kind of complexity. You’re not managing one set of decision makers. You have investors, customers, and potentially regulators, and they don’t all want the same thing.
Investors want consistent growth, clean financials, and a brand with a defensible position. Customers want something different. They want to know that going public won’t degrade the product they love, that the company will continue to act in alignment with their values, that they’ll actually benefit in some way from the brand’s success. There are moments when investor needs and customer needs are in direct tension.
But here’s how I think about resolving that tension: if your customers are happy, if you’re acquiring new ones and retaining existing ones, brand investments stay defensible. Customer loyalty is an investor argument. You don’t have to choose between the two audiences if your PR strategy is built correctly.
What that requires is two distinct but aligned strategies running in parallel. For investors, you need strong financials and PR financial storytelling, executed within regulatory constraints. For customers, you need marketing and PR working together to meet them where they are and tell the right story consistently. These can’t be siloed. Narrative leakage happens when the investor story and the customer story are pulling in different directions. And by the time you notice it, the damage is already done.
There’s a Regulatory Window and Most Brands Miss It
Pre-IPO consumer brands have a window. There’s considerably more latitude to tell your story in the 12 months before an IPO than there is once you’re in the quiet period or have filed. The story you build during that time needs to match the story that adds value during the IPO itself. Consistency between those two phases isn’t optional. It’s scrutinized.
And you cannot get the regulatory piece wrong. For many consumer brands, especially those in wellness, food, or any category with product claims, there’s an additional layer beyond standard IPO compliance. The FTC, FDA, and category-specific regulatory bodies are paying attention. A cease and desist from a regulatory body will blow an IPO faster than almost anything else. The risk isn’t theoretical. I’ve watched it happen.
The brands that execute this well start early. They build the narrative deliberately, they stay within bounds, and they make sure every public-facing message during that window is calibrated for where they’re going, not just where they are.
What Actually Creates the Valuation Story
I’ve worked with a consumer wellness brand that achieved 300% stock growth at IPO. What made the difference wasn’t one brilliant PR move. It was integration.
They went from a largely manual manufacturing operation to one that was almost fully automated. They got there by becoming one of the top 3 brands in their sector first. And they did it by committing fully: PR, content, SEO, smart industry sponsorship, celebrity spokespersons, deep investment in their local market. They didn’t lean on any one tactic. They built a plan and they executed it at every level.
Because it was genuinely integrated, every channel elevated the others. The PR made the content more credible. The SEO made the PR more findable. The sponsorships reinforced the brand positioning that everything else was building. That’s how you create a valuation story. Not by doing one thing well, but by doing everything in alignment.
The brands that go into a raise or an exit underprepared are the ones that treated thought leadership as a campaign. Something you turn on when you need it. By the time you need it, you’re already behind.
The best time to build the narrative was 18 months ago. The second best time is now.
Ready to Build Your Brand’s Authority Before You Need It?
If you’re a venture-backed consumer brand preparing for a raise, an IPO, or an acquisition, the narrative you build today directly affects the valuation you command tomorrow. Start with an assessment of where you stand, with an experienced PR partner.
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Sources:
- James Hankins, “Share of Search: The Most Important Metric You’ve Never Heard Of,” WARC, January 2021.
- Millward Brown brand study via BrightEdge, “Understanding Share of Voice in Digital Markets.”
- Cometly, “What Is Share of Voice: The Complete Guide,” January 2026.
The Invisible Asset, written by Avaans Media founder Tara Coomans, is the PR ROI framework that builds brand equity, drives valuation, attracts capital, and wins high-stakes moments. It’s built for CMOs defending budgets, CEOs preparing for a capital event, and operators in regulated categories. Get the book →
