Think creative investment is essential for success? Prove it

The stereotype of the penny-pinching CFO is fading. Finance leaders understand that lasting competitive advantage often comes from intangibles such as brand strength and design excellence. In fact, 73% of CFOs are already supportive or at least open to creative investment when it’s tied to measurable business outcomes (a relief in this new age of AI).

To convert CFO interest into active support, creative teams must prove financial impact at every stage, showing how design systems cut costs, how user experience lifts revenue, and how brand storytelling protects margins. After all, the best rebrands needed serious investment and they paid off in droves.

Decision-makers want efficiency and consistency

Creative teams can deliver measurable savings and faster speed-to-market by building design systems, or shared frameworks of rules, reusable components, and usage guidelines across products, channels, and teams. A well-built design system standardizes the look and feel of everything from digital interfaces to marketing collateral. It frees talented designers from repetitive tasks so they can focus on higher-value projects that move the business forward.

For CFOs, this standardization translates into lower labor costs, faster launches, and creative output that scales without inflating budgets. It also creates a predictable production process that finance leaders can model and forecast with confidence.

Action plan

• Audit current creative spend and asset-production time to establish a financial baseline.
• Pilot a design system for one product line and track cost-per-asset, time-to-market, and error rates.
• Report before-and-after savings to finance, highlighting efficiency gains and faster turnaround.
• Scale the system across the organization with CFO input on how to reinvest savings for further growth.

User Experience as a Revenue Multiplier

Every digital initiative promises growth, but only those rooted in superior design deliver it. Poor UX creates friction and drives abandonment; strong UX, whether in a B2B dashboard or a retail checkout flow, reduces drop-off and encourages conversions. When the experience is seamless, customers buy more often, stay longer, and cost less to serve.

CFOs welcome projects with clear metrics, and UX offers them in abundance: A/B testing, customer-journey analytics, reduced support tickets, and higher repeat-purchase rates all translate into hard numbers.

Action plan

• Identify a high-friction customer flow that, if improved, would generate measurable gains.
• Design a testable UX enhancement and pre-align with finance on KPIs such as conversion rate, churn, and cost-to-serve.
• Share outcomes. positive or negative, during the monthly operations review to prove accountability.
• Example ROI for illustrative purposes: a 0.5 percent conversion lift on $50 million in annual sales equals roughly $250,000 in additional revenue, an impact any CFO can appreciate.

Storytelling Converts and Defends

Features and pricing can be copied; compelling brand narratives create loyalty that competitors can’t easily erode. Story-driven campaigns boost conversion rates by 30% or more and build the kind of emotional connection that keeps customers coming back even when rivals cut prices. In a downturn, memorable storytelling protects market share and shortens the path to recovery.

Action plan

• Quantify storytelling’s effect on retention, repeat sales, and customer advocacy through surveys and analytics.
• Track share-of-voice, net promoter score, and organic referrals on a quarterly basis.
• Present results jointly with finance during board reviews to reinforce the link between storytelling and revenue protection.

Brand Equity as a Financial Asset

Brands with high equity hold pricing power and recover faster when markets turn volatile. A 4% increase in brand equity can yield about one-percent annual revenue growth and a 1.5% rise in shareholder value. Conversely, companies that cut creative budgets during a downturn often see their recovery lag for years.

CFOs who think defensively recognise brand as the ultimate anti-fragile asset. Strengthening it during uncertain times provides a moat that protects margins and market share.

Action plan

• Treat brand-equity building as a capital investment with clear ROI projections, including price premium and market-entry speed.
• Track brand metrics like awareness, preference, and loyalty alongside financial KPIs each quarter to make brand value visible in financial reporting.
• Use external benchmarks and case studies to show the long-term cost of underinvesting in brand during challenging periods.

Frame creative value for CFOs

Winning budget debates requires fluency in financial as well as creative language. The most effective leaders present layered business cases that combine operational efficiency, customer economics, market defensibility, and risk mitigation. They position creative spending not as a gamble but as a managed bet with both short- and long-term payoffs. (If you are trying to grow your business, see this guide).

Action plan

• Build proposals around efficiency, customer value, and defensibility to meet the metrics CFOs care about most.
• Use phased investments and visible milestones to reduce perceived risk and make performance easy to track.
• Ask finance early which evidence matters most and incorporate those data points into presentations and dashboards.

Competitive advantage in an age of sameness

In commoditised markets, creative differentiation drives margins, loyalty, and resilience. Design acts as the premium SKU, raising perceived value beyond product features. Companies that consistently invest in design and creative branding widen their lead as competitors cut prices or imitate product features.

Action plan

• Position creative investment as a core growth lever, not just a marketing expense.
• Benchmark media attention, employee engagement, and revenue against less-creative competitors to demonstrate the gap creativity creates.
• Share wins across the C-suite to reinforce how creative trust builds measurable business value.

Creative spending Is no longer discretionary

Sustained, measurable creative investment now drives growth and resilience. Creative leaders who speak the language of business, measure what matters, and deliver results build a foundation of trust no downturn can shake. For CFOs, the mandate is to fund what compounds (growth, resilience, and durable competitive strength) and the creative team that demonstrates this discipline will earn their advocacy.

For more advice, see our guide on how to price your work.