For the past decade, marketing has been reshaped by one dominant idea:
If it can’t be measured, it shouldn’t be funded.
On the surface, this seems rational. Accountable. Even disciplined.
In practice, it has led many organizations, especially performance-driven ones, to systematically underinvest in one of the most important drivers of long-term growth:
Brand building.
This is not a philosophical argument. It is a well-documented strategic mistake.
The rise of digital platforms brought with it a seductive promise:
For CFOs and CEOs, this looked like progress. Marketing, finally, could be managed like a financial instrument.
So budgets followed:
Over time, a new assumption emerged:
Performance marketing is more effective because it is measurable. That assumption is flawed.
The most comprehensive research on this topic comes from Les Binet and Peter Field, based on analysis of over 1,000 campaigns through the IPA Databank.
Their conclusion is both simple and uncomfortable:
The most effective marketing strategies balance short-term activation with long-term brand building.
Their findings, summarized in The Long and the Short of It, show:
They also identified an optimal balance for many categories:
This is not arbitrary. It reflects how markets actually behave over time.
Most performance marketing does one thing very well:
It captures existing demand.
When someone searches, clicks, or engages with a direct-response ad, they are often already in-market. The intent exists before the ad appears.
Brand advertising does something fundamentally different:
It creates future demand.
It increases:
These effects are not immediately visible in a dashboard. But they materially impact future conversion rates, pricing power, and customer acquisition cost.
A useful way to frame it:
Organizations that only harvest eventually run out of field.
A critical flaw in many KPI-driven strategies is the assumption that digital channels are fully measurable.
They are not.
Modern attribution systems systematically miss:
Since iOS privacy changes and the decline of third-party cookies, these gaps have widened significantly.
This creates a dangerous situation:
The most visible metrics are not the most complete metrics.
Performance dashboards often over-credit the last interaction and under-credit the broader system that made that interaction possible.
Brand advertising is not unmeasurable. The harsh truth is that measuring it properly requires time, statistical rigor, and investment, through tools like brand lift studies or econometric modeling. For most organizations, that level of measurement is out of reach and impractical, so brand advertising typically gets labeled as “unmeasurable,” while easier, but incomplete, metrics take its place.
Companies that aggressively shift toward measurable channels tend to follow a predictable pattern:
This is not hypothetical. It is repeatedly observed across industries.
Harvard Business Review has noted the same trend, warning that performance marketing has crowded out brand building because it is easier to measure, not because it is more effective.
One of the most persistent misconceptions is that brand advertising is vague or intangible.
In reality, its effects are highly concrete:
Research from Ehrenberg-Bass Institute reinforces this through the concept of mental availability:
Buyers are more likely to choose brands that come to mind easily.
Broad-reach, emotionally resonant advertising increases the likelihood that your brand is considered when a buying decision is made.
That advantage compounds over time.
Ironically, the case for brand investment is becoming stronger, not weaker.
Three structural shifts are driving this:
In this environment, relying solely on measurable channels is not just incomplete. It is risky.
The goal is not to abandon performance marketing.
It is to rebalance it.
A more effective model recognizes:
Or more directly:
If you only measure what is easy, you will optimize for what is incomplete.
The question is not whether brand advertising “works.”
The evidence is clear that it does.
The real question is whether organizations are willing to invest in outcomes that are:
The companies that get this right are not choosing between brand and performance.
They are managing both, deliberately, with a longer-term view of growth.
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