Finding the Efficiency/Effectiveness Balance

Summary

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The Marketing Architects - Episode Summary

Episode: Finding the Efficiency/Effectiveness Balance
Date: November 18, 2025
Hosts: Elena Jasper (Director of Marketing), Angela Voss (CEO), Rob DeMars (Chief Product Architect)

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Overview

This episode of The Marketing Architects explores a hot debate in marketing: the tension between efficiency (doing more with less, optimizing for ROI) and effectiveness (achieving real business growth through scale and reach). Inspired by new research from Les Binet and Will Davis presented at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference, the hosts unpack the surprising finding that marketing budget—not ROI—is the primary driver of profit growth. The team discusses why this is misunderstood across the industry, the dangers of over-optimizing for efficiency, and practical steps for rebalancing marketing investments toward effectiveness and growth.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Efficiency vs. Effectiveness in Marketing (03:17)

• Efficiency: How much you get per dollar spent. Focuses on short-term measurements like cost per lead and ROI. "It becomes more about optimization, reducing waste, lowering cost per lead, ultimately all in effort to try to improve that ROI." — Angela Voss (03:17)
• Effectiveness: The total impact on business outcomes like sales, profit, and market share. It’s about growing the business in a meaningful way, driven by scale and broad reach.

Memorable Quote:

“Real effectiveness requires scale, reach, investment—spending enough to actually grow the business.” — Angela Voss (03:17)

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2. Budget Is 8x More Important than ROI for Profit Growth (01:22, 08:02)

Binet and Davis’ research, based on hundreds of case studies, found that in award-winning campaigns:

• Budget accounts for 89% of the variance in profit.
• ROI only explains 11%.
• Yet, most marketers believe ROI is the most important driver.

Notable Stat:

• “In a survey of 500 senior marketing leaders, 65% said ROI was the biggest contributor to success. Only 35% named budget.” — Elena Jasper (02:24)

Explanation:

"Profit from advertising is ROI times spend. So, if ROI moves a bit but spend swings a lot, spend explains most of the variation in profit." — Angela Voss (08:21)

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3. Why ROI Is So Beloved (05:14, 06:20)

• ROI feels safe and rational—“something you can defend in a boardroom.”
• Small campaigns can have high ROI (small denominator), even if they barely impact total profit.
• Dashboards and finance teams reinforce this focus, making ROI the main headline instead of actual profit or market share.

Quote:

“You can be an absolute idiot in a boardroom. Someone can propose an idea, and all you have to say is, well, what's the ROI on that? And you sound smart, right?”
— Rob DeMars (06:20)

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4. The "Death Spiral" of Over-Optimizing Efficiency (03:36, 12:21)

• Brands chasing only efficiency start hyper-targeting, reducing budgets, focusing on small segments, and neglecting broader audiences.
• Creates a negative cycle: smaller budgets → less reach → smaller profits → more pressure for efficiency.

Quote:

“You can literally optimize yourself into irrelevance.”
— Rob DeMars (12:21)

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5. Channel Planning: Rethinking the "Where" (13:37)

• Shift from asking “which channels are most efficient?” to “which channels can deliver the scale and exposures that we actually need to grow?”
• Focusing solely within digital silos ignores the bigger picture.
• For significant impact, brands often need campaign exposures in the tens or hundreds of millions.

Quote:

“Not every brand is at a point in which they can meaningfully go big or go home. TV is not right for everybody. But if budget and reach explain the majority of the variation in profit, then the question is... which channels can deliver the scale and the exposures that we actually need to grow?” — Angela Voss (13:48)

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6. Scale, Cost, and Media Buying (17:13)

• The cost of media controls your reach: high CPMs choke scale, while affordable mass media unlocks broad reach.
• Linear and Connected TV, radio, and high-impact digital are viable options for building scale when used smartly.

Quote:

“If effectiveness depends on scale, then the cost of your media dictates how much scale you can actually buy.” — Angela Voss (17:13)

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7. Balancing Efficiency and Effectiveness (18:59)

• Efficiency = minimize waste and optimize spend today.
• Effectiveness = invest in future growth and brand strength via reach and memory-building.
• Optimal balance is often a 60/40 split: 60% brand-building, 40% short-term activation per IPA/Binet.
• Use efficiency metrics as a tuning knob, but make effectiveness the steering wheel.

Quote:

“If you only chase that efficiency... you end up with beautiful dashboards but a shrinking brand.” — Angela Voss (18:59)

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8. Creativity at Scale (21:04)

• Creative still matters, but less than budget and reach in terms of moving the needle.
• Focus on big, campaignable ideas that are extensible across channels (“Creative engines” like Geico’s gecko or Apple’s “Shot on iPhone”).
• Consistency trumps endless variety; underexposure is a bigger problem than wearout.

Quote:

“Creativity at scale does not mean a thousand tickety-tock videos and a prayer. It still comes back to the fundamentals—one big, amazing, campaignable idea that can survive every format.”
— Rob DeMars (21:04)

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9. Going Big: What it Looks Like (22:30)

• Set budgets based on growth goals, not “last year plus inflation.”
• Model profit impact of spend, don’t treat budget setting as an afterthought.
• Prioritize media and creative that can deliver mass reach affordably and consistently.
• Fewer, bigger bets and ideas; assets that run long enough to work.

Quote:

“Going big means setting budgets based on those growth goals versus what we spent last year or the ROI that we're seeing out of each channel in Q4... Budget setting is the most important decision in marketing.”
— Angela Voss (22:30)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “[ROI] has just been this comfy blanket we can all agree upon... and now it gets dispelled.” — Rob DeMars (06:20)
• “The biggest brands are the biggest and they spend the most on marketing.” — Elena Jasper recalling Dale’s prior episode (10:09)
• “Wear out is mostly a myth. Underexposure is the bigger problem.” — Angela Voss (23:52)

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Practical Advice & Takeaways

• When making the case internally, reframe budget as a growth lever, not a cost center.

“Instead of saying we need more budget, say we're leaving profit on the table.” — Rob DeMars (10:52)

• Use research (like the 89% stat) to educate stakeholders about the real drivers of profit.
• Plan media buys and creative for scale and consistency—don’t get lost optimizing tiny segments or endless creative tweaks.
• Remember, marketing is about effectiveness in the long run—efficiency is a tool, not the destination.
• Be bold: do something different from your category to stand out.

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Fun Segment: Efficiency vs. Effectiveness in Life (24:49)

The hosts humorously reflect on ways they've been “too efficient” in their personal lives—Angela with over-optimized travel plans, Rob tracking health data obsessively, Elena speed-reading but not retaining books—highlighting how chasing efficiency can sometimes undermine true effectiveness.

“I literally considered a urine tracker... my only problem is I pee in too many toilets.” — Rob DeMars (25:25)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:00 – The efficiency vs. effectiveness debate introduction
• 03:17 – Defining efficiency vs. effectiveness
• 08:02 – Why budget is the biggest driver of profit
• 10:52 – Making the case for budget internally
• 12:21 – The “death spiral” of efficiency overkill
• 13:48 – Channel planning and reach
• 17:13 – CPM, scale, and media buying
• 18:59 – Balancing efficiency and effectiveness
• 21:04 – Creativity at scale
• 22:30 – “Go big or go home” in practice
• 24:49 – Personal stories on (in)efficiency

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Final Thoughts

This episode challenges marketers to rethink their obsession with efficiency and ROI. The research is clear: scale and broad reach—enabled by sufficient investment—drive sustainable growth. Marketers are urged to rebalance their strategies, advocate for bigger, growth-oriented budgets, and focus on big, lasting creative ideas that reach the widest possible audience. Efficiency matters, but only in service of effectiveness.

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Transcript

[Angela Voss]

Not every brand is at a point in which they can meaningfully go big or go home. I think the question is shifting from which channels are most efficient to which channels can deliver the scale and the exposures that we actually need to grow.

[Elena Jasper]

Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects and I'm joined by my co hosts Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects, and Rob DeMars, the chief product architect of misfits and machines.

[Rob DeMars]

Hello.

[Angela Voss]

Hi guys.

[Elena Jasper]

We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions in data research and what drives business results. Today we're talking about the balance of efficiency and effectiveness. This episode was inspired by new research that's making the rounds from Lesbinette and Will Davis. They presented this at the 2025 IPA Effectiveness Conference and the research reveals a major misunderstanding at the heart of marketing today. Over the past decade, marketing has become obsessed with efficiency. How do we get more clicks for less money? How do we optimize our roas and how do we prove short term performance? But this mindset, while logical, has come at a cost which is long term effectiveness. And that's the research we are going to open with today. And we're going to start with a finding that's probably going to shock everybody listening to this right now. According to Binette and Davis analysis of the IPA DataBank, budget is eight times more important than ROI in driving marketing effectiveness. In award winning campaigns, ROI explained only 11% of profit variation while budget explained a whopping 89%. Yet marketers tend to have this backwards. In a survey of 500 senior marketing leaders, 65% said ROI was the biggest contributor to success. Only 35% named budget. And this misunderstanding is shaping how brands plan their marketing. With tighter budgets, marketers scale back their ambition. They start to target small segments over focus on digital performance and neglect older audiences who actually drive half of consumer spending. Lesbinette warns that this creates a quote unquote death spiral. Smaller budgets lead to smaller reach, smaller profits and more pressure to do more with less. Instead, this data shows that big media and broad reach drive growth. Bennett and Davis argue that to escape the spiral, marketers need to go big or go home. So what would that look like? They talk about a few different things. One is focusing less on efficiency, more on effectiveness. ROI has gone up since COVID but profits are down. Efficiency doesn't always translate into growth. Relearn the Power of budget and scale. Outstanding creative and planning matter, but not as much as how much you invest. Be better at budget setting. Most budgets are decided with crude methods and little financial modeling, even though it's the single most important decision. And think big media campaigns need tens or hundreds of millions of exposures to drive meaningful results. Without broad reach, growth tends to stagnate. Okay, there's a lot to unpack here. I really wanted to talk about this today because I've seen this debate getting greater and greater in the marketing world and sometimes it confuses me a little bit. I thought it'd be good to cover on the show, but let's start by defining some key terms. What do we mean Ang when we talk about marketing efficiency versus marketing effectiveness?

[Angela Voss]

I think a lot of people are confused by this. It doesn't get enough attention. So I was so excited to see the research. When we talk about efficiency in marketing, we're talking about how much you get for every dollar you spend. Generally that's what we hear from clients, et cetera. I put a dollar in. How much can I track I got out of that? So it becomes more about optimization, reducing waste, lowering cost per lead, ultimately all in effort to try to improve that roi. And so efficiency looks more inward and ask, how tight can we make? This machine versus effectiveness is about outcomes. It's that total impact that your marketing has on business growth, on sales, on profit, on market share. Ultimately, it's not just how well you spend in the short term, it's whether what you're spending is actually moving the needle. And Binette and Davis are warning against chasing higher ROI. With tighter targeting, marketers have optimized themselves into smaller and smaller worlds. To your point, Elena, maybe it looks efficient, but it's not long term effective. Real effectiveness requires scale, reach, investment spending enough to actually grow the business.

[Elena Jasper]

Maybe one example might be your most efficient marketing plan. Might just have looked like bottom of the funnel, paid search advertising. That's going to get you the most efficient result, the most kind of bang for your buck, but it's not going to grow your brand in the long term. There's no scale there.

[Angela Voss]

Yeah. And I think when you really understand the marketing effectiveness research, whether it be long and short, there's been a lot that has been produced by a variety of players over the years. This is all still tied back to reach, so it makes sense. But 8x is a big number. I don't know that any of us would have said it was 8x.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, and I was surprised too in the research Most marketers thought that ROI was the primary driver of success. Why do we think that's become the case?

[Angela Voss]

Well, I think we're all under pressure to deliver. If I, as CEO, don't deliver outcomes today for our owner, like, that's a problem, right? So ROI feels like a safe, rational number, something you can defend in a boardroom. It's tidy, it fits in a spreadsheet, and especially when budgets are tight. Showing that you're getting more out of every dollar feels like the responsible thing to do and might actually be, depending on the situation that you're in as a business. But the problem is ROI is only a part of the story. It's rewarding that efficiency, but not necessarily the impact. And so a very small campaign can have a huge ROI because the denominator is small, but it might barely move total sales or profit. So CMOs end up optimizing to look good on paper instead of creating real business growth. And that's reinforced by finance teams and dashboards that make ROI the headline, while actual profit or market share gains are buried. Or maybe it's just hard to track. And so what they feel they can track gets the focus.

[Rob DeMars]

Don't we, like, on the most primal level, get a little bit bummed out about this finding? And what I mean by that is we want clarity as humans, right? We just want to be aligned with our fellow human beings. We find out, like, oh, don't eat carbs, and you'll lose weight. Great. Life's good again, right? Don't eat carbs. I got it. I'm clear. You're clear on what that means? I'm clear. And then it turns out maybe that's not the healthiest thing for you in the long run. And when you find out a fact like this, ROI has just been this comfy blanket we can all agree upon. You can be an absolute idiot in a boardroom. Someone can propose an idea, and all you have to say is, well, what's the ROI on that? And you sound smart, right? And so it does just become this universal language of alignment. And marketing's hard enough to align on what success looks like. So to have these three little letters now get dispelled. And I totally agree with the. I mean, it totally makes sense. And so I'm not arguing with the science or the physics of this study, but there's a part of you going, gosh, I doubt we finally figured out how to get along. And it turns out it's not quite that easy.

[Elena Jasper]

I think, too, like, ROI has become something that Marketers hang their hat on. And I've even fallen into that trap. Like, marketing should drive revenue. You know, marketing should be responsible for things beyond making it pretty. Not to call ourselves out, but I believe one of our many taglines at one point was ROI asap.

[Rob DeMars]

It was, and I did, I did.

[Elena Jasper]

Come up with that, and Rob's responsible for that. So we're not saying we weren't once part of the problem.

[Rob DeMars]

That's what I'm saying is, like, I also used to, you know, not eat carbs.

[Angela Voss]

Right.

[Elena Jasper]

Well, so this research, it was very definitive. Budget explains 89% of profit variation. That's pretty damning of ROI. Why do we think budget is such a powerful driver?

[Angela Voss]

Yeah, I think we have to be careful because even at 11, it is 11% ROI does matter. So, short answer, I think, to your question is because profit is mostly a scale game and budget is the throttle for scale. This is why it dominates. Profit from advertising is ROI time spend. That's why ROI still matters. So if ROI moves a bit, but spend swings a lot, spend explains most of the variation in profit, and that's exactly what Bennett and Davis see in this data. I think another important understanding too, is that ROIs tend to cluster within a band across brands, but budgets range very wildly across brands and campaigns. So budget ends up explaining the majority of the profit variation versus that 11% for ROI. Hence, budget is 8x more important. But this, again, all ties back to reach drives growth, and it's budget that unlocks that reach.

[Rob DeMars]

Absolutely. It's physics, right? It's like the budget is basically gravity, and there's nothing you can do to escape gravity. The more you invest, the more mass your brand builds. And Ben, to your point, more impressions, more memory, more sales. So even if your. Your creative is perfect and your targeting is just pristine, you just, you can't deny gravity.

[Angela Voss]

If you're targeting as pristine, you're probably doing it wrong. Transparently.

[Rob DeMars]

Right? Like, right. I know.

[Angela Voss]

Probably needs to be more broad.

[Rob DeMars]

That's what everybody thinks, right?

[Angela Voss]

Yep. Brilliant creative, well targeted, perfectly targeted.

[Rob DeMars]

Not gonna defy gravity.

[Angela Voss]

Yep.

[Elena Jasper]

This reminds me of when we had Dale on the podcast and he was talking about how you can see this from category to category, the biggest brands are the biggest and they spend the most on marketing. Like almost every category that holds true. And even if you look at Salesforce's marketing budget versus HubSpot's, HubSpot is a fraction. Even if HubSpot has a much higher ROI on all their marketing channels, you still can't Compete with just like the scale of a category leader. And so that tends to hold true. Well, say I'm a marketer, Rob, and my finance team is super focused on roi, so maybe I'm already small in my category and they're just overly focused on that. How could a marketer make the case internally for a bigger budget or more of a focus on reach when ROI has been the norm?

[Rob DeMars]

Since you are a marketer, Elena, I would challenge you to eat your own dog food and say, okay, well, I have an audience and I have a challenge that I have to reframe. Right. Because that's what marketing is. We take a product, we reframe it so the audience can see the value in it. And I think we have to reframe what spending means. Turn it from a cost center into a growth engine. Right. Instead of saying we need more budget, say we're leaving profit on the table. And the data shows that bigger budgets lead to bigger opportunity. Kind of like jiu jitsu. Right. So take ROI and flip it and say, okay, let's say if we spend too little, we may actually not hit our goals. Right. So it's that lever, it's that growth move, it's that power move instead of it's this thing we have to do. It's like the electric bill. It's not the electric bill, it's the engine.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah. I think too, marketers, we don't have this type of research all that often, so maybe you could open your budget planning meeting with this research too. You could slap that 89% on a PowerPoint slide and see if that helps you make the case. So one phrase that stood out to me was death spiral lesbinette. He called this current situation, we're in a bit of a death spiral. Rob, have we seen this play out with brands that have over optimized towards efficiency?

[Rob DeMars]

Yeah. I think, again, going back to the point of this whole thing, I think those that chase math, if you're caught up your world, your brand is all caught up in a spreadsheet, it actually makes sense that you would trim your budget. Right. Because when you trim your budget, all of a sudden your ROI looks better. Right. Makes sense in the short term. Right. So then your boss is like, hey, great job. So what do you do? You trim a little bit more and all of a sudden your ROI looks better again, again in the short term. And you can literally optimize yourself into relevance.

[Elena Jasper]

So I was speaking earlier.

[Rob DeMars]

That's all I got to say about that.

[Elena Jasper]

Okay, great. You don't Want to leave any silence on this podcast because Rob's gonna fill it with something like that. All right, well, one thing that I thought could be fun to talk about is we like to cover research on this show, but we also try to make it a little bit practical. So it's one thing to say, okay, budget matters. Maybe I take that into my planning for next year. I advocate for more. I look at where I'm at in my category. I think this could also influence what channels brands decide to invest in. I think that's another takeaway we could have from this if we're trying to have more effective marketing. So, Ang, what do you think? How should this change those channel plans for next year?

[Angela Voss]

We've said this before, too. No, I was just gonna say. I was just gonna say not every brand is.

[Rob DeMars]

What do you think about tv, Ange? Is that one we should consider?

[Angela Voss]

Not every brand is at a point in which they can meaningfully go big or go home. TV is not right for everybody. But I would just say, like, if budget and reach explain the majority of the variation in profit, then I think the question is shifting from which channels are most efficient to which channels can deliver the scale and the exposures that we actually need to grow. So instead of optimizing within silos, what's my best performing digital channel? Start by asking, where can I reach the most potential buyers, including the Lightwoods? Bennett and Davis remind us that fewer than half of CMOs maximize reach, and that's a huge missed opportunity. Use ROI as a tuning metric versus a steering wheel for your marketing plan. ROI does tell you efficiency within a channel, but when you're deciding between channels, you need to look at the total profit contribution, and that's driven by that audience size and that exposure. Practically speaking, an example related to television is we measure everything. We're just absolutely obsessed with data. We can track when people hit a client's website, et cetera. Does that happen immediately? Does it happen within seven days? Does it happen with 30 days? There's a lot of technology that allows you to do things like that today, and we've talked about how harmful that can be at times. We don't only optimize to that data. We definitely look at it channel versus channel. And by channel, I mean Fox News versus the CNN or something like that. But we also plan to audience as well because we know not everyone's in market right now, and those impressions and those exposures matter. And then I think the go big or go home piece, as they say, just to keep in Mind to move those markets, you do need 30 to 60 million expos for a statistically significant sales lift and 200 million to 1 billion for that real share growth. So the right channels are the ones that can get you there affordably, repeatedly. Also help you deliver quality creative things like that.

[Rob DeMars]

I figured Ang would cover reach and anything related to math. So I'm going to go the other route and say also don't forget to invest in the channels that really help build those memory structures. Video, audio, the nature of outdoor things that can still really add the added value of tapping into people's emotions. Because we all know those are the sticky things, right? And that tied with the reach is definitely something to be mindful of. But like we've said earlier, the creative is only a small part of that. But let's not forget it. Let's not forget to make them memorable.

[Elena Jasper]

I would add that Rob and I, we covered a SNERD alert recently that did find TV as the most effective channel. So if you're looking for scale, TV is going to have the greatest scale possible. And you mentioned in your answer there that this study is honestly just full of fun surprises. But one of the stats they shared was that you need 30 to 16 million campaign exposures minimum to see real results. And you even pointed out that gets even higher. Like 200 million to a billion is what you said. I think for like long term growth, that's a lot like how do brands think practically about hitting that sort of scale.

[Angela Voss]

I think this isn't about spending recklessly, it's about understanding how the cost of media determines what's even possible. And I think sometimes people get confused because we, we hear things like it's not efficiency, it's effectiveness. So then all of a sudden it's like, well, efficient media maybe works against you. And that's where I think you can get tripped up. If effectiveness depends on scale, then the cost of your media dictates how much scale you can actually buy. When CPMs are high. This feels dumb to be saying this, but it's. When CPMs are high, you hit a ceiling really fast, Reach gets capped, frequency spikes, your effective audience shrinks. When CPMs are lower, not recklessly, not targeting anyone and just buying overnights and things like that. But when CPMs are lower, like in TV, like we talk about radio, other broadreach channels, you can afford the repetition and exposure levels that really drive that behavior change. And that's why Banette's message ties so closely to ours. Everything works at zero. We've Said that before, the lower your cost per thousand, the more chances you have to reach real people and make your creative work harder.

[Elena Jasper]

I know people get upset about that argument, but TV is just sort of a different type of channel. Even with digital media, if you can buy quality media for less like you said, you're going to be able to reach more people and get that sort of scale. Gonna be really hard, especially if you're not a giant brand to get the type of scale you need if you're paying a premium for these different channels. All right, so like you said Ange, ROI is not responsible for zero, it's 11. So that it still matters in this equation. So if efficiency helps us optimize in the short term, effectiveness drives at long term growth, how should we think about balancing the two?

[Angela Voss]

I think efficiency is about today, making sure each dollar is well spent, minimizing waste. You know, it's how you learn, you iterate and you stay accountable. Effectiveness is about tomorrow, building the kind of memory structures that mental availability and that reach that create future demand and ultimately pricing power and profit. The problem is when one side completely crowds out the other. If you only chase that efficiency, whether that be optimizing for clicks, et cetera, short term roi, micro targeting, you end up with beautiful dashboards but a shrinking brand. If you ignore efficiency altogether, you risk burning through budget without learning or scaling smartly. So it's sequencing in proportion in my head using those efficiency metrics to optimize within your effectiveness plan. But set those effectiveness goals, reach profit penetration as your North Star. The IPA and Binette's work consistently shows that the best performing brands balance their investment roughly that 60, 40 split between brand building and short term activation. The long term work builds that growth and the short term work keeps the machine funded and running well. So it's like it's efficiency in service of effectiveness.

[Elena Jasper]

I was listening to Mark Gritson podcast this morning and he was talking about a theme that he speaks about frequently which marketers probably don't love. But it's the truth that creative is less important than we think. Sorry Rob, but it's true. And this study finds the same thing. Budget and scale matter a lot more than optimizing your creative. But that doesn't mean creative doesn't matter or that it's not important. But reading this study I was thinking about how this could shift marketers mindset. A lot of marketers right now are obsessed with optimizing their creative, testing thousands of different versions. How do we adapt quickly? And that's not saying that's not important. But this research seems like it's pushing us to rediscover a bit of what does it mean to be creative at scale. But we have all this fragmentation and we have momentum pushing against us. So Rob, how do you think marketers can respond creatively to this research?

[Rob DeMars]

Creativity at scale does not mean a thousand tickety tock videos. And in a prayer, right, it still comes back to the fundamentals. What is that one big gigantic amazing campaignable idea that can survive every format that you throw at it. It's about building really a system of thinking versus one off ads. You can obviously heard it a thousand times. Geico. Fifteen minutes could save you thousands using a gecko. You can use that a thousand different ways in a thousand different channels. Apple's shot on iPhone. Right. Translates amazingly well. Tv, social, videos. It's just, it's an idea that has likes. These are scalable creative engines and that doesn't require a ton of people. It just requires a framework that can generate new expressions of the same idea over and over again.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, so it doesn't necessarily mean you have to just have one 30 second spot that you run over and over again. But how can you keep things consistent with the campaign idea or the overarching story or assets over time? One thing in the research was they mentioned that if you want to escape the death spiral, there is a way you need to go big or go home. So what would it look like for a brand to really go big or go home next year?

[Angela Voss]

I think it's having courage to invest at the level that your growth ambitions actually require. And sometimes setting growth ambitions that feel like a stretch can get you to think different too. So I'm a little easier for privately held company to say versus a public company, but those are things that you can do when you're a private company. And then I think just in terms of the plan, going big means setting budgets based on those growth goals versus what we spent last year or the ROI that we're seeing out of each channel in Q4, what we think Q1 is going to look like. They'd use financial modeling to tie budget to potential profit instead of last year's plus some X factor in inflation or percent in inflation. As Bennett says, budget setting is the most important decision in marketing. And most companies still treat it as a bit of an afterthought as they are doing annual planning. I think buy big media at smart prices, they'd prioritize channels that deliver that mass reach at the lowest cpm linear and Connected tv, Rob, are great ways to do that. Radio is great to do that. High impact video, even digital. It's just about thinking, where are those exposures that you need in order to ultimately tie your growth to the reach that you need in order to get there. And then Rob, I think just said it best related to creative commitment. These brands would focus on fewer, bigger, better ideas. Assets that run long enough to work, not endless one off bursts, wear out is mostly a myth. And underexposure is the bigger problem.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, I love the advice to be bold. I think that it's just human nature. Rob was talking about this earlier, to want to have easy answers, to want to fit in and be like everybody else. But what's something your brand is doing next year that's different from your category? If you're in the United States, maybe commit to marketing effectiveness because that would probably be pretty different than what most brands are doing. The best athletes, people who break through barriers, they're usually doing something different, like they're not using the exact same formula as everybody else. So that'd be my challenge is how could you challenge your brand to do something that would stand out in the category next year? To wrap us up with something fun. What is something in your life that you've been way too efficient about, but maybe not so effective ang you want to get us started?

[Angela Voss]

Yes. One came to mind immediately for me, and it's a tension point between myself and my husband. I'm very type A, and so if we travel, I have every minute optimized of that trip. No room for spontaneity, no room for relaxation necessarily. So was it effective or was it just efficient?

[Rob DeMars]

Do you actually schedule your relaxation time as well?

[Angela Voss]

Would you call pool time, quote, unquote, relaxation time?

[Rob DeMars]

Right, exactly. So you. Yeah, maybe you've got any.

[Angela Voss]

He means like, you know, potentially time in a hotel room doing nothing like.

[Rob DeMars]

Oh, yeah, right. Serendipity. Yeah, that's a good one. I literally track all of my health data for reasons I don't know. I mean, I, I measure my blood oxygen when I'm sleeping. I. I'm check VO2 max. I literally considered a urine tracker. There's like this thing you can put in your toilet and it gives you like, readouts on your.

[Elena Jasper]

Wait, you're doing that?

[Rob DeMars]

No, no, I thought about that one. Oh, that one I didn't do. I literally was debating it, but I, my only problem is I pee in too many toilets, so the data would be wrong. So that would, that would bug me and I'll even feed all of this into ChatGPT so it can, like, help me understand. And ChatGPT will literally tell me, I think you might burn yourself out tracking all of this stuff. Is this. Actually. So I actually am not sure I've gotten any value out of taking my blood pressure every day, but I do it anyways.

[Angela Voss]

I'm just so happy that this is out in the world now and Elena and I don't have to sit with this insight that you have a spreadsheet that you're plugging into every day now. You really know Snoop, Rob people.

[Elena Jasper]

You really.

[Angela Voss]

You're in the inside circle.

[Rob DeMars]

This is true.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, I can see how that is. Too much efficiency.

[Rob DeMars]

I did stop daily checking my blood glucose voluntarily because it started to hurt my finger. So that one did. I did.

[Angela Voss]

I did.

[Elena Jasper]

Stop doing that to yourself, you poor thing.

[Rob DeMars]

I was. I don't know, I wasn't even diabetic and taking my own finger.

[Angela Voss]

I'm surprised you didn't have the one on your.

[Rob DeMars]

You know, I did do that. I did do that until it exploded. The capsule that you inject on your arm exploded and it bled all over my pants. And I said, okay, I'm out on that one.

[Elena Jasper]

I also say, for my own experience, doctors, I can imagine you walking into Mayo Clinic with all this information. They're probably going to do their own labs. You know, they're going to get their own.

[Rob DeMars]

I literally pull my laptop out during our conversations, and they're like, we don't look at your data.

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, they don't.

[Rob DeMars]

It's new prop.

[Angela Voss]

Oh, my gosh.

[Elena Jasper]

But you've got it. You've got it.

[Angela Voss]

What's yours, Elena?

[Elena Jasper]

Yeah, so I'm a speed reader. I'm not like, an elite speed reader, but I have taken tests online about my speed reading ability. And, yeah, and it's up there. So I read a lot of books and I read them really, really fast, and I take pride in that. But I recently started rereading some series that I've read before. I'm like, wow. I don't retain much when I'm reading, so I think maybe I'm a little too efficient. Not quite as effective. Might be helpful to slow down, but there's nothing better than getting through a book that fast. No, there's no real reason to, but I just like it.

[Rob DeMars]

That is such a superpower. I literally. I read so slow that I have to remind myself I'm reading like, I. You've been on the same page for three days.

[Elena Jasper]

I've definitely done something where you read a page so fast, I'm like, I.

[Angela Voss]

Have to read that again because I have no idea.

[Elena Jasper]

I didn't retain any of that. It's completely gone. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor Delos Reyes for producing the show. You can connect with us on LinkedIn. And if you like the podcast, please leave us a review. Now go forth and build great marketing.

[Angela Voss]

Are you talking?

[Elena Jasper]

We can't hear you. You're on mute. Okay, whatever.

[Angela Voss]

What is he doing? Are you trying to talk to us?

[Rob DeMars]

This is harder. This is a lot of hand eye coordination.

[Elena Jasper]

Okay, What Marketing Architects?