A Founder POV for modern CEOs, CMOs, and Commercial Leaders
Around this time of the year, companies around the world perform the same ritual: They gather in meeting rooms, open a fresh slide deck, and announce, “Let’s build our 2026 plan.”
"What is our GTM plan? Commercial Growth Strategy? Marketing Strategy?"
Whatever you call it, it all comes down to "how do we grow in 2026?".
And yet — here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most 2026 plans are not plans. They’re presentations of ambition, not engines of growth.
Why? Because they aren’t connected to numbers that explain where growth actually comes from. The logic is missing. The mechanism is missing. The math is missing.
THE BLIND SPOT: MOST PLANS ARE NOT CONNECTED TO CHOICE
The most worrying thing about 2026 planning season is this: Teams are crafting brand strategies, marketing strategies, innovation roadmaps, and commercial growth plans without grounding them in the only thing that creates growth:
Customer choice.
The lifeblood of every business.
You grow only when more people choose you, or the same people choose you more often, or when they pay more when they choose you.
Everything else — campaigns, line extensions, channel plays, product launches — is theatre unless it moves one of these levers.
THE ONLY THREE WAYS TO GROW
Every business, every category, every market, every model ultimately comes down to three numbers:
1. Penetration — How many people choose you.
More buyers, more households, more trial. This is the growth engine for 90% of brands, yet it’s the least explicitly modeled.
2. Frequency — How often they choose you.
Your existing customers already know you and already buy you. Often the biggest, fastest win in FMCG and retail is increasing the number of occasions you exist in.
A 20–30% increase in frequency can transform a brand — without a single new product. But you only see that when you break your numbers down.
3. Pricing Power — How much they pay when they choose you.
Premiumisation isn't a slogan. It’s the commercial reward for building meaning, relevance, distinctiveness, and trust.
If your 2026 plan talks about “brand building” without connecting it to pricing power, you’re not doing strategy — you’re doing poetry.
THE MOMENTS YOU AREN’T IN ARE THE GROWTH YOU DON’T HAVE
If you’re an FMCG or D2C brand, for example, frequency is usually the biggest blind spot. Ask yourself:
- How many times per week, month, or season should people be buying?
- How many times do they actually buy?
- Where are the missing occasions?
- What moments are you invisible in?
- What rituals haven’t you created?
If you are bought 3 times a month, and you can become a 4-times-a-month brand, you don’t need a new market — you need to enter the moments that matter.
Growth hides in the calendar: mornings, commutes, workouts, late nights, celebrations, recoveries, holidays, winters, summers.
Strategy is about owning more of these moments.
THE 2026 REALITY CHECK
Too many 2026 plans are built around launches, campaigns, or expansion — not around the mechanics of how money will actually be made.
Here’s the rule: If your plan doesn’t start with penetration, frequency, and pricing power, it’s not a growth plan. It’s a wishlist.
And wishlists don’t survive in competitive markets.
THE SHIFT LEADERS MUST MAKE
1. Start with the numbers, not the narrative.
Before you talk about “brand love” or “modernisation” or “awareness,” ask: Where, precisely, will revenue grow? From whom? In which lever? In which market? In which moment?
2. Tie every strategic choice to one of the three growth levers.
If it doesn’t move penetration, frequency, or pricing power, cut it, shrink it, or ignore it.
3. Recognise that growth = choice.
This is the through-line of your entire 2026 strategy. Your job isn’t to get seen — it’s to get chosen.
THE BOTTOM LINE
If your 2026 plan isn’t built on the math of choice, you’re not preparing for growth — you’re preparing to be disappointed.
Growth isn’t mysterious. It’s mechanical. It’s measurable. It’s predictable.
More people choose you. People choose you more often. People choose to pay more when they choose you.
Everything else is noise.
If you want to anchor your 2026 plan to the hard commercial truth of how growth actually happens, DM “2026” and I’ll show you where your biggest relevance — and revenue — gaps are hiding.
🚀 And, if you want, we can help you create a GTMP plan, Growth Strategy, Marketing Strategy, (or whatever name you prefer) that drives growth through CHOICE.
Written by
