Too Big to Hide, Too Small to Grow

The Broken Economics of Scale

“Nothing fails like success,” said Oscar Wilde. He might have added that nothing stagnates quite like the businesses we forget to notice, those that are neither fledgling nor colossal, and therefore of no use to political speeches or investor decks.

Walk through the corridors of Westminster or the offices of City institutions, and you'll hear two kinds of companies talked about in reverent tones. Start-ups brave, buzzy, and freshly hatched are treated like miracle infants. Then there are the FTSE mainstays and global titans, the old money with new AI toys, whose market moves can still summon headlines and handshakes in Washington.

But between these poles lies a middle Britain that no one seems to know how to handle. Mid-sized firms, the ones turning over between £25m and £500m a year, employing a third of the UK workforce are treated like economic wallpaper. Too big for grants, too small for influence. Too complex to support, too boring to romanticise.

And yet these companies are precisely where Britain’s growth problem festers. Not in how many businesses we start. But in how few we grow.

And now, the economy is shrinking. GDP fell 0.3% in April, with sectors from manufacturing to retail under pressure. This isn’t just statistical noise. It’s a sign that the UK isn’t merely failing to grow it’s actively regressing. We can't afford to rely solely on macro levers like interest rates or vague innovation plans. We need real, scalable engines of demand and confidence. That means focusing on the firms in the middle: those that already contribute a third of UK employment, and could do far more; if anyone helped them grow.

The Valley of Death: Not a Metaphor

The Financial Times recently diagnosed the real rot in Britain’s growth prospects. It’s not a shortage of startups, or a lack of billion-pound IPOs. It’s that promising, productive, mid-sized firms are running out of runway. They struggle to expand, to professionalise, to reach new markets or attract patient capital.

What’s killing them isn’t lack of ambition. It’s lack of belief, belief that growth is possible, sustainable, and rewarded. These firms aren’t asking for charity. But they do need support systems: from financing to hiring, tech infrastructure to governance. And critically they need visibility.

This is where advertising should come in.

And ironically, they often underuse the very advantages they do have. As Mark Ritson and Les Binet point out in Mailchimp’s How to Grow Your Brand, mid-sized brands are unusually well-positioned for two types of growth: punching up through “versus positioning” against larger rivals, or owning a niche that larger players can't credibly enter. Yet too few realise the power of either.

The Misunderstood Engine

Advertising, properly done, is not a cost. It’s not a stunt. It’s not even, despite what the industry likes to pretend, an act of artistic expression. It is infrastructure. It is investment. It is long term competitive advantage.

And it is sorely misunderstood by both the financial establishment and the policy elite.

Mid-sized firms often treat advertising like a luxury something you spend on once you're big, or when sales are soft. Their investors treat it worse: as a drag on profit margins and a distraction from “serious” capital allocation. The result? A slow starvation of brand salience. A failure to build demand ahead of supply. A nation of companies stuck in the waiting room of scale, wondering why the phone never rings.

They’re also often guided by the wrong map. Most advertising research over-indexes on digital performance and hyper-targeting tactics that work best for scale-ups chasing VC growth, or multinationals with the data and infrastructure to make them efficient. But for mid-caps, this can be a trap. Only 5% of buyers are in-market. The other 95% won’t see your clever targeting, unless you’ve already earned a place in their memory

The Gilded Cage of Scale

Meanwhile, the very large; the Apples, the Walmarts, the JPMorgans, enjoy their own kind of distortion. As The Economist recently outlined, big firms are pulling ahead not just in revenue, but in resilience. They’ve cornered the markets for AI adoption, data advantage, and political access. They are, in effect, too big to ignore and sometimes, too big to suffer.

But their scale has become both shield and shackle. They face tariffs, regulatory heat, and the temperamental attention of political leaders who no longer pretend to play neutral. Size makes them stable, yes. But also slow, soft-targeted, and, increasingly, distrusted.

And here again, advertising plays a role. Not as a direct response to political risk, but as a hedge against disconnection. Big companies need brand not just to sell, but to defend. To explain themselves. To earn forgiveness before mistakes are made. In a post-truth, pre-tariff world, fame isn’t frivolous it’s a form of insurance.

Crucially, this is also where mid-caps could catch up if they act. AI can be a leveller, not just an amplifier. Where once only the biggest firms could afford marketing diagnostics, segmentation and strategic planning, AI is now unlocking those capabilities for smaller players. But only if they recognise that the tools once reserved for multinationals are now available and act accordingly

Advertising as Strategic Infrastructure

So here we are. Stuck between the frustrated middle and the nervous giant. In both cases, advertising — long-term, strategic, creatively courageous advertising — is the missing link. It’s what enables the mid-sized to grow. And what allows the super-sized to hold their place without becoming targets.

Yet we treat it as expendable. In the UK, it's increasingly common for banks to deny mid-sized firms credit for advertising investment. High street lending has shrunk, 77% of brokers say banks are scaling back SME funding, with only around 50% of applications now approved (down from 67% in 2018). Meanwhile, over 60% of SME finance now comes from challenger and specialist lenders not the established high-street institutions. In boardrooms, brands slash brand budgets the moment results dip. Governments talk about infrastructure, innovation, and investment and never once mention the role of demand.

And that, in truth, is the central flaw in how we think about growth. We believe it’s something you build. But it’s also something you earn. You earn it with attention. With trust. With emotional connection. With, yes, advertising.

What Now?

If Britain wants growth not the illusion of growth, not the unicorn fantasy but actual, broad-based economic expansion, then it must start taking its mid-sized firms seriously. That means capital with patience. Talent with experience. Policy with clarity.

And advertising with conviction.

It’s time we recognised that Advertising isn’t the icing. It’s the fermentation. Without it, nothing rises. Not companies. Not confidence. Not GDP.

Let the start-ups sparkle. Let the giants bellow. But if we want growth, we need to give mid-sized firms the strategic tools to create it starting with brand investment, not finishing with it.