31/12/2025
Brand and performance marketing activities multiply each other, given that one role of marketing feeds into the other. Since most of our potential audience isn’t yet ready to buy, we need to build favorable and relevant associations among potential category buyers so that when they do come into the market, the brand comes to mind easily.
Takeaways from the model
1. Stronger brands drive stronger performance. This is a fundamental finding: strengthening brand equity leads to better ability to convert through performance advertising.
2. Media investment is largely “double duty”. Most media investment has both a short-term and a prolonged, longer-term impact – this can vary by channel, but is generally between 1.1x and 2x.
3. The modern funnel has to take account of a “messy middle”. The reality is that consumers do not go through a series of stages leading to a purchase.
4. Strong brands have pricing power. New research underlines the role of strong brands as a way to reduce consumers’ price sensitivity.
Bottom line
In short, the relationship between brand and performance advertising is x not +.
Stronger brand equity acts as a multiplier, driving extra impact and greater efficiency from performance advertising.
The evidence is clear here: switching from a performance strategy to a combined approach can boost total revenue returns by somewhere in the range of 25% to 100%. The median is an incredible 90% uplift.
source: Warc
