19/04/2026
This week’s read is a must if your work involves navigating marketing budgets, and the constant pressure to improve metrics:
“Marketing’s Misleading metric”
Alex Murrell
Murrell critiques the industry's absolute obsession with Return on Investment (RoI), calling out the dangerous trap of making it the ultimate KPI for brand-building.
While RoI is treated as a sacred, unquestionable metric, his argument exposing its mathematical and strategic flaws is completely bulletproof.
This piece cuts through the noise of modern marketing, offering a way to think about:
1️⃣ why confusing relative efficiency with absolute effectiveness actively reduces a brand's total profit,
2️⃣ how the "RoI trap" forces brands to slash media spend, simply because efficiency naturally drops as you scale,
3️⃣ and why chasing the highest ratio forces you to "preach to the choir" (targeting existing heavy buyers) instead of acquiring the new, light buyers actually needed for growth.
💥 The most gut-punching invitation to think?
"Trying to maximize RoI is a good way to destroy your brand."
Murrell quotes Les Binet and sarah carter to land his point about how setting RoI as THE goal creates a dangerous, perverse incentive.
Just like the archaeologists who offered a reward for finding Dead Sea scrolls unintentionally caused people to tear the priceless parchments in half to double their payout, marketers are tearing apart long-term potential just to hit a ratio.
RoI is a perfectly valid metric for short-term, tactical sales activations. But using it for long-term brand building will trap your brand in a doom loop—shifting investment away from future growth just to capture immediate, but shrinking, returns.
So which path will you choose long-term?
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[marketing effectiveness, return on investment, ROI trap, Alex Murrell, marketing strategy, brand building, advertising metrics, business growth, performance marketing, marketing efficiency vs effectiveness, Les Binet, Mark Ritson, media spend, customer acquisition, Goodharts Law, perverse incentives, short term vs long term marketing, brand investment, marketing science, B2B marketing]