Don’t be too short-sighted.
The next on the hit list of Mark Ritson’s recent Cannes talk name-drops are Les Binet and Peter Field. Their 2013 IPA seminal report, 'The Long and The Short of It', woke up the advertising industry to the dangers of short-termism.
They looked at nearly 1,000 campaigns and found something that changed everything; the most effective brands split their budgets 60/40: 60% on brand building, 40% on activation.
Many brands get that backwards. Which means when all the brands are screaming ‘sale, sale, sale’ at the same time (Christmas, stocktake, EOFY) their limited time offer is having a limited impact.
But the smart brands? They've been long-term building something more valuable. They've been earning a place in people's minds so that when the moment comes - when someone's laptop finally dies, when their insurance comes up for renewal, or when they decide to sell their home, guess whose name comes up first?
It's not about pushing people to buy when they're not ready. It's about being remembered when they are, because most people aren’t in the market to buy what you’re selling right now. But they eventually will be (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute puts the figure at 95:5, referring to B2B customers, as in 95% are not in the market right now, but I can’t see a massive shift from that across the board.
Brand building creativity is the emotional work that builds mental availability over time. The 40%? That’s the rational work that converts people ready to buy.
Look at through the lens of John Lewis. Their annual (and rightly celebrated) Christmas spot, versus their digital sales banners. Same brand, completely different jobs.
So now what?
A good brief is either asking us to build the brand or activate sales. Understanding which one changes everything, the tone, the strategy, how we measure success, even the music we choose.
The magic happens when you do both, but in the right proportion. Too much activation and your brand slowly dies. Too much brand building and you're not capturing demand when it's there.
Consistency is key; brand building creative gets stronger over time, which is why those John Lewis Christmas ads work better now than they did in year one because they've built mental structures that compound.
But the key take out for me is that once again, the more things change, the fundamentals don’t.
Human behaviour is incredibly hard to shift. Binet and Field report "no change in the relationship between market share and share of voice, over the last 30 or even 40 years". Remarkable, said Binet, "given all the changes in the media landscape."
So, don’t necessarily believe the hype. TV isn’t dead, AI won’t take over the world. And what it takes to build a successful, long-lasting brand has been proven time and time again over the last 50+ years.
For the Pitch Collective: We help clients understand which kind of effectiveness they need, because great execution of the wrong brief is still ineffective work.
#60-40Rule #CreativeBalance #ThePitchCollective