The original article was published in Campaign UK. 

For years, brand building was seen as the main route to growth. Then digital came along, and pressure for faster results pushed performance marketing to the front. Now, many marketers are stuck trying to balance the two.

But growth doesn’t come from choosing one over the other. Brand and performance work best when they work together – not as rivals, but as parts of the same system.

“It shouldn’t be about brand versus performance, it should be about brand and performance,” said Fred Schuster, chief executive officer of InnerGroup.

“By overthinking brand or performance, you risk neglecting what lies in between – the bridge.”

Bridging the gap

Separating the two and marketers risk becoming isolated and trapped. Also, consumers just don’t think that way.

“Our agency was born of the observation that everyone puts brand and commerce as binaries. But we are proud to be both-ists,” said Gabriela Lungu, chief creative officer of brand commerce agency Le Shop, part of Publicis.

“Creativity can turn performance marketing that is functional into something highly emotive and that will eventually build the brand,” she added.

“Every single commerce experience should be a brand moment, and every single brand experience should lead to commerce.”

Short-term wins, long-term value

More important than distinguishing between brand or performance is whether you are investing in current or future demand.

“There is still evidence that the 60/40 rule [that allocating roughly 60% to brand building and 40% to sale activation is the way to scale business] still works,” said Sara Tate, partner at TwentyFirstCenturyBrand.

“And, also, that it helps improve lifetime customer value.”

Even so, there are also times when separating brand and performance can be useful, especially for younger, newer brands. This creates clarity, making it easier to secure the investment needed for the brand to grow.

Seeing brand as infrastructure

Whether or not a marketer approaches brand and performance together, it is critical to have a single view of how marketing drives growth in their businesses – the three or four needle-movers – and think of brand not as marketing output but as the operating system for the business.

Ben Brown, head of media and channel activation at Allwyn, pointed to the importance of having a “North Star metric to aim for”.

In Allwyn’s case, that’s the money raised for Good Causes.

Then it’s about “building up a matrix of metrics that support towards that North Star, whether weekly sales, monthly brand metrics or quarterly econometric reads,” he suggested.

“Fandom is our north star. Moving towards the fandom model has not only impacted how we approach growing our brands and finding those needle-movers, but also commercialising,” said Jasmine Dawson, senior vice president, digital, at BBC Studios’ brands and licensing division.

“We take all the fandom knowledge we have built and apply it to our partners to be sure whatever we do will build our brands as part of the cultural zeitgeist. With a brand like Bluey – a runaway hit – the fandom owns the brand, and we let them play with it.”

Performance in disguise

At experiential agency Sparks, many of its clients are sales organisations that, by nature, focus on sales conversions, so they typically think the only marketing is performance marketing. The focus is on bringing brands to life, which drives sales.

“The brand part of the brand vs performance conversation is like a Trojan horse for a sales team,” said Jason Megson, Sparks’ senior vice president, international.

“We’ve turned events and experiences into the sales calls for the sales organisations we work with. They don’t realise that they are buying into the long- and the short-term by buying into the brand or platform or asset we have created for them,” he adds.

“For us, success is turning sales organisations into brand evangelists.”

“There’s a difference between what a brand wants to do at the start of a year and what happens later. When there are financial pressures and you’re looking at your targets and figuring out what to do next, best intentions can crumble. And the gut reaction then often is to go performance. The problem is, how agencies are structured means you are talking to different teams depending on what you want to do – performance, acquisition, brand. If you don’t own your audiences and data and stay consistent with that, everything can go to pot,” said Jasmine Dawson, senior vice president, digital, at BBC Studios

Aligning from the start

In today’s highly commercial world, clients pressure for more tactical marketing. Yet, building a brand is also necessary to achieve longer-term success and ensure future growth.

In light of this, bringing brand and sales closer together is an essential step, with the importance and value of both clearly articulated to all with a business from the get-go.

“If you are thinking about the right brand experience and behaviours you attract, you are putting your audience at the centre of everything,” said Dawson.

“Then, it’s less about ‘Is it about brand or product?’, more about designing a consumer experience for all of them.”