Every year, millions of people set goals they genuinely mean to keep. Organisations launch strategies they genuinely intend to deliver. Employees sign up to values they genuinely believe in. And then, quietly, not very much changes.

This isn’t hypocrisy. It isn’t laziness. It’s one of the most well-documented phenomena in behavioural science: the intention / action gap.

This paper draws on evidence from leading behavioural science and marketing effectiveness research to make a commercially grounded argument about where brand investment fails to deliver, what that costs, and what organisations can do about it.