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The Marketing Architects
How to Build a Media Mix That Actually Works
00:24:27
Concern over short-termism has more than doubled in three years, from 25% of marketers calling it the biggest industry issue in 2022 to 55% in 2025. And yet, budget allocation has barely moved. This week, Elena, Angela, and Rob dig into why the...
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- [00:00]
A
We talk a lot about distinctive assets. We don't always have that same lens on our media channel. We just flock to where all our competitors are. But there's a real opportunity to zig when everyone else is zagging. And that's where you find things like audio and TV can really shine.
- [00:15]
B
Marketing Architects hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions. I'm Linda 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. Hello. Hello. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news. Always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results. Today we're going to talk about how to build a media mix using marketing effectiveness principles. And we're going to start with this. If marketers largely know what works, why does so few of them actually do it? So I'm going to kick us off with, as I always do, with some research. And today's piece is from work. It's written by David Tiltman, who is their Chief Content officer. It's titled what's Stopping CMOS from Investing in Brand Building? And it builds on work's earlier Multiplier Effect report, which proves that stronger brand equity acts as a multiplier, driving greater impact and efficiency for your performance advertising. It's the most successful report that WORK has ever launched. And yet Tiltman opens with this follow up by noting that marketers keep asking the same questions, things like how do I prove brand investment has financial value? How do I get internal alignment? What does good actually look like? And his argument is that the problem really isn't theory anymore. There's now this consensus on how advertising investment most profitably pays back. The problem is this a do gap, which we've talked about on the podcast before, the distance between knowing the right thing and then actually doing it. So work's own Voice of the Marketer survey found that concern over short termism has risen from 25% of marketers, calling it the biggest industry issue in 2022 to to 55% in 2025. So that has more than doubled in three years. And yet budget allocation has barely moved as a result. So David Tiltman, he identifies these different structural, procedural and cultural blockers that prevent CMOs from changing course. Things like misalignment, the C suite, measurement systems that are out of whack, and fragmented media are just a couple of those challenges. So I know we've talked about the sei do gap before. We're going to use it today for a jumping off point again because it's worth discussing again. The media mix is really where this gap becomes a real between what people say, what they actually do. But first, the article makes the point that this isn't a knowledge problem. Marketers know what works. Why do we think the safe do gap is still so persistent?
- [02:35]
C
I think you can pick your poison because there's a lot of reasons. But probably the easy answer is just incentives and the culture that you exist in internally at the brand. The harder answer is probably the measurement systems that punish that right behavior. So when a CFO is asking what did that campaign do? The only thing most brands can answer confidently with is something tied back to last click attribution roas on something like paid search, a cost per lead. And those numbers exist because the tools were built to produce them. Brand building produces different signals in longer time frames, harder to pinpoint on a dashboard. And very often I think too they're built with models that are a little harder to trust. It does require some belief that you're doing the right thing. So what ends up happening is the CMO maybe knows the 6040 principle. She's read Bennett and Field and believes in it. But then when you walk into a budget review where every performance channel has a clean ROI number and brand has a deck with a regression model that nobody fully trusts, it's easier to cut brand just because the measurement infrastruct made one choice more defensible maybe than the other. The other felt more like faith. So it's kind of a structural trap that CMOs deal with. Until brands fix what they're measuring and have that belief underneath the numbers, they'll keep making decisions that look rational on paper but kind of work against them at the portfolio level.
- [04:08]
A
I have never been a cmo. My history has been in creative. And one of the best parts of being a creative is you get to pop off and not be accountable for things. And this topic in particular, I popped off on in the past and said it's not a knowledge problem, it's a courage problem. Right, Says the creative guy who never had to stand in front of a board and present why the numbers don't look great. So I'm just going to add a different slight vantage point to this, a compassion, which is. It's hard, right? It's hard to have that trust, that faith that you're talking about, Angela. That's a hard journey. I mean it's why see it GMOs earn the title that they have. But it's hard, you know, trying to convince shareholders to wait, that it's going to get better, that we need to invest in things that we can't see. This immediate performance from is a tough journey. So I just wanted to throw that out there since I've never had to actually do that journey that I have compassion for.
- [05:09]
B
It must especially be hard and frustrating when you're at a brand that doesn't have those traditional beliefs and maybe isn't doing great. That feels like the worst situation for a marketer to try to come in and shift belief systems because like if I'm going to keep my job, I've got to behave in a certain way. So we've named the problem. If we accept this gap exists. Let's talk about what a media mix could look like if we resist the pull towards performance and build it on effectiveness principles instead. So Angie mentioned Bennett and Field 6040 rule. Roughly 60% of your budget should go towards long term brand building, 40% towards short term activation. Talked about that a lot on the podcast before. I'm curious Ange. For a brand that has been, you know, we're in a heavier percentage on their performance, which is most brands we talk to I feel like are unbalanced in that way. What does rebalancing actually look like in practice? Like in terms of real channel decisions they can make.
- [06:01]
C
And I think too like we've said before, 6040 is a principle, not a hard 60 40%. Bentonfield will tell you the same thing. So I think it's trying to understand what is your 60 40. It might be 70 30, might actually be 8020 could be something more like 50 50. But trying to get a better understanding of your in versus out of market consumers I think is the first place to start. And then thinking about this as a multi year shift, you know, for a brand that's been maybe 80% performance for three years, a sudden reallocation is going to cause some major internal whiplash and it might actually hurt your short term numbers before those brand effects compound and start working in your favor. In terms of channel decisions, carving out budgets specifically for channels like reach oriented television, broad reach, linear or streaming that puts you in front of people who are out of market today. Running creative with a strong cta, but a measurement stack and measurement plan that helps us better understand across the full funnel top of funnel brand awareness, preference, intent all the way down to bottom funnel conversion metrics gives you a better map to operate off from. And it doesn't, it doesn't feel so jarring internally to be making those budget shifts and tracking new metrics along the way that help us understand that we're on the right path.
- [07:22]
B
Yeah. So kind of making it more gradual instead of feeling like they're falling off a cliff. So, Rob, if I come into a brand and they are spending most of their budget on performance, like they're really over indexed on sales activation, what do you think would be some warning signs that would exist if that was happening?
- [07:40]
A
Crazy. Success would be an opportunity to pause. And what does that mean? If you are doing an activation and you're like, holy smokes, this is going off the chart. We could build our business on this activation. It's doing so well. That's the time to pause and go, are we riding the brand while we're riding the success? In the best story I can think of in this, it's a little bit of a parallel story, but is Red Lobster. Okay, so Red Lobster had an all you can eat shrimp special.
- [08:16]
B
I remember hearing about this when.
- [08:18]
A
Freaking bananas. I mean, come on, you put me in front of an all you can eat shrimp, I'm going to beat the house. I'm going to walk out of there having made money, right? So they built their empire as of recently on that notion, and then they filed for bankruptcy. New CEO comes in, right? And he's speaking our language. He's like, I'm investing in the brand. I'm going to write this ship. We're going to focus in on what matters. But here's why. It's a cautionary tale, right? Guess what just made the headlines. He's bringing back the all you can eat shrimp. So I swear to God, you can't make it up. So you just look at the paradox we live in, but then you're not seeing the signals right away and like, you just retreat back to your instincts. It's a limited time offer and they're increasing the cost of it. So maybe this time they'll see it as the way it should have been. Not an everlasting gobstopper of an offer, but instead something that can trigger response. But I guess my point is, is be careful because we're all looking for signals and sometimes those signals can get us so excited. And just make sure you're not rotting your brand quietly while you're celebrating at the same time.
- [09:31]
B
Yeah, that's a really great point. Both of your points. First, about if you're launching a new channel and the results seem too good to be true, they are probably actually too good to be true. And two, just like the pull of performance and like those sales activations, it's just like so hard to resist. Angie mentioned this earlier, but one founding principle of marketing effectiveness is that brands grow by reaching their light buyers and their non buyers. And you should really take time to understand who are my light buyers, who's not buying, who's in market, who's out of market, not by just deepening relationships with existing customers. So that's a lot of Ehrenberg Bass work, Byron Sharp. But most of these performance heavy media mixes are doing the opposite. They're optimizing towards who's most likely to buy right now, which are usually people who are already close to buying your product or service. So I'm curious, if we understand this principle and want to apply it, how would this translate into picking my marketing channels? Like if reach is my goal, what does that mean for where I should think about putting my budget when I'm planning my media mix?
- [10:24]
C
It's hard because again, when we talk about incentives and bias internally, usually there's a data set that's pointing us in that direction. And so these activation heavy mixes like optimized towards people that are either close to buying or they would have bought anyway. And so that's where I think the compassion that Rob has for this group is totally fair. I mean, when you think about channel, think about the measurement stack regardless of the channel. Do we have a view of incrementality? Because if we don't, this is going to be really hard when we get into channels that both convert existing demand and need to drive new demand. So whether that's search, whether that's television, whether it's radio, incrementality is super important. And then it does require you to work against some internal poll that you probably have meaning. Reach Media gets you in front of people who aren't raising their hands. Television does that. It also puts you in front of people that are raising their hands. But broad reach Audio, national, digital, true prospecting built well outside a CRM can do that. And so the question I'd push on brands to ask is what percent of my media budget is actually reaching people where I have zero data of prior interaction with my brand? What percent? Start small because that's hard, right? You've got a lot of data that supports that we should be retargeting and we're converting these people. Okay, fine, but start to slice away into channels where you can prove that you've got incremental reach. And you can prove that the people that you are converting with that incremental reach wouldn't have already been there anyway.
- [12:01]
B
So, speaking of reach, one principle I was trying to think about, like, what are all the market effectiveness principles that if you're really invested in, that would go into your planning when you're thinking about your media mix? And one of them was the shared voice principle. It's popularized by Bennett and Field, and it basically means if your share of voice exceeds your share market, you tend to grow. If it's below, you tend to not grow. And I think it's fun to think about how should that come into planning decisions when you're looking at what is my competition spending? Where are they spending? How can I sort of out shout them? Rob, how do you think that share voice principle, or just a competitive comparison in general, how much should it be shaping what channels we choose to advertise on?
- [12:40]
A
We talk a lot about distinctive assets, right? Like how do we differentiate ourselves in our color choices, in our story and our jingles? We don't always have that same lens on our media channel. We almost do the opposite. We just flock to where all our competitors are because we feel like that's the way that we're going to win. But there's a real opportunity to again, zig when everyone else is zagging. And look at channels where your competition isn't necessarily saturating and shouting. It's easier to win that share of voice, share of market when you're the loudest. And perhaps a channel where your customers still are but your competition isn't. And that's where you find things like audio and TV and big mental availability channels can really shine.
- [13:22]
B
Yeah, I think that part's key because I know one thing people have said about the share of voice principle is if you're just comparing flat media spend to your competitor, it might not be helpful because if your competitor has 90% of their spend on digital, their share of voice might actually not be as high as you think for their spend. So, yeah, you're right. Like looking at what are channels where we know it can increase share of voice and how do I invest there? I think that's why the principle, they say, was more applicable back when there were more traditional marketing channel investments. But I still think there's a way to to do that analysis and use it to plan in some way, or at least what you're saying, like, can I use it to thread the needle and see where are my competitors light in their investment while Speaking of share voice and channels that are great at driving it, Binet and Field, they've put out this median focus study and they found that TV only campaigns drove a 33% increase in very large business effects. Online video drove 25% and when they did that together, that jumped to 54%. So as a TV agency, I thought we should talk about this because TV is becoming increasingly more common to have in your marketing mix with the rise of connected tv. So Ange, the marketers planning out their media mix, how do you think they should think about TV's role in that plan?
- [14:29]
C
Yeah, a lot of opportunity, super powerful channels. TV builds those memory structures that make a brand easy to recall when someone enters that buying situation months or even potentially years later. But to your point, TV means a lot of things today. It's fractured in comparison to what it used to be. And so when we think about linear versus ctv, you know, we often say to brands, consumers just see a screen on the wall, they don't really differentiate between one or the other. They don't go what am I watching right now? Am I on my media comm subscription or is the ctv? And yet from a marketer's perspective, they are different instruments that need to be thought of differently. Linear delivers something that CTV can't match, which is massive simultaneous reach. And more and more it's becoming more and more efficient in comparison to ctv. You're buying an audience watching the same thing at the same time with limited ability to skip those commercials. Right. That shared attention builds mental availability at scale. And that's why linear still anchors the brand building case. CTV gives you that living room screen. Still emotional storytelling with a targeting layer on top. I think it's the most defensible use of that precision we believe is geographic zip code level targeting is real, it works, it gives brands something linear. Genuinely just can't do at that granularity. Especially if you have a retail footprint, specific trade areas or markets where you are under indexed for whatever reason. Zip level CTV is a legitimate tool. But I think on the CTV side related to targeting, where the story gets a little shaky or where you just need to be aware of is that third party audience segmentation. Right. Match rates are lower I think than vendors represent. So that's the first watch out. I think data is often stale or modeled and you're paying for a meaningful CPM premium for accuracy that maybe just doesn't hold up. And so pressure testing the audience targeting claims are really important. I think a lot of times people think, well yeah, CTV is more expensive, but I'm only paying for the impressions that matter in comparison to linear. And we need to think about the third party accuracy of that data. We also need to think about the fact that it is a screen on the wall. We don't really know who's in the room. So those are just important considerations to think about as you're trying to decide what BDMX makes sense between those two channels.
- [17:02]
B
Yeah, definitely not as simple as just turn on CTV and hope it works. That would be another one of those channels where Rob was saying if right away your results look like the best thing you've ever seen in your life, you maybe want to double click into that and take a look. Ang, you mentioned quite a bit about measurement because that's just sort of a theme throughout this whole conversations. But work in the article, they do identify that as one of the main structural blockers to investing in brand because performance channels are easier to measure, which makes them easier to defend. But if your measurement system is only capturing the short term, that lower funnel activity, you're going to underinvest in what's building the long term demand. So, and what do you think a measurement approach would look like for a brand that's committed to investing in a media mix that values both brand and performance, not just what's easiest to track?
- [17:49]
C
Yeah, I mean I think the first thing I'd say is if we're going to be serious about measuring a full mix, we have to abandon the idea that a single model can tell us the truth. Every methodology has a blind spot. I think the discipline is knowing what each one sees, what each one misses and trying to triangulate all of those viewpoints to get a better understanding of what's actually working. So when we think about measurement of something like television marketing, mix modeling is your long run revenue lens. I think when done well, it runs continuously, it's maybe refitted quarterly. It's built to better understand base level sales from incremental. Mmm is where brand investment typically shows up better. Brand effects are invisible kind of in that short term attribution. They show up in a rising maybe baseline over time. And most brands mistake those just as baseline. It's harder to see because it's a slow build. So run it as an operating infrastructure and use it to set investment levels across your mix of media. Then look at things like geotesting. It's a great way for causal proof when you want to know whether a channel is actually driving business outcomes. Incremental customers, incremental revenue, a well designed geotest I think will give you the cleanest answer and it's more nimble than something like mmm. MMM might tell you that correlation at scale, but geotests give you that causation in a more controlled environment. And I think the two together are pretty defensible, much more defensible than either one of them alone. I wouldn't stop there though. Looking at things like time series microanalysis do give you responsiveness at a more granular level. Week over week, market by market, you can catch signal in between bigger tests. When spend goes up in a market and something moves downstream, that's a data point. It might not mean exactly what the model is saying, but it gives you a relative view of maybe what's happening in your data set. Looking at things like ACR data, automatic content recognition, it's powerful to television, helps you understand that actual exposure at the household level, which means you can connect TV impressions to that downstream behavior. Again, we still need a view of incrementality. ACR data can get quite aggressive in terms of taking credit and then just continuing things like brand tracking just to better understand what that mental availability looks like. This is the layer that connects everything to more long term growth. How easily your brand comes to mind in a buying situation. The mechanism through which brand advertising is is compound over time. Measure it through that unaided awareness, look at category, entry point associations, brand salience and purchase decisions and just track it continuously and benchmark it against your competitors and of course where you used to be and just treat that movement in those numbers as a leading indicator of future revenue.
- [20:44]
B
Right thorough. People should just put that into cloud and say give me a six month plan to apply all of that. I like to how you mentioned I feel like there's this movement towards mmm which is great but there's also I've seen people in my comments recently being like just use MMM and you won't have any of these problems. It's like okay, I like it too but I don't know if that's entirely accurate like that. You can just depend on MBAB to get all your answers. Unfortunately if that was that simple that'd be pretty great, but I don't think it is. All right, well to wrap us up, what is something in your own life where you know exactly what you should be doing? You just continue to not do it. Angie, we can start with you.
- [21:21]
C
I am really bad at sitting still. So no phone, no agenda, no productivity attached to it. And I think there's quite a bit of evidence that your Decision quality could improve. It can reduce anxiety, maybe makes me a better leader, and I sort of believe in all of that. But I feel structurally terrible at doing nothing, which means I consistently skip the thing that would probably make everything else work better.
- [21:47]
A
I think that's a BS answer. That's one of those, like, interview questions where they're like, what's your challenge? I'm too organized.
- [21:57]
B
You know, sitting still, just.
- [21:59]
A
Oh, I just. I get too much stuff done.
- [22:01]
B
That is a real challenge for people, Rob, though, that is a thing.
- [22:05]
A
All right, all right, all right. That's great.
- [22:06]
C
I. I actually should. It shouldn't be sitting still. It should be, like, letting my mind be still.
- [22:12]
B
Okay, there you go. That's hard. Like, no screens. Just, like, sitting with your own thoughts. I find that very hard.
- [22:18]
C
Yes.
- [22:18]
A
All right, well, I had too many to choose from, and so I'm just gonna go with the simple one, which is eating before bedtime. I just love to do that. I love to just, you know, go after the Cheerios and goat milk while I'm watching Netflix.
- [22:33]
C
You're drinking goat milk?
- [22:35]
A
Oh, it's so good.
- [22:36]
B
Oh, absolutely.
- [22:37]
C
Okay.
- [22:38]
A
Yes, for sure.
- [22:39]
B
For sure. Where do you get your goat milk from?
- [22:41]
A
From the goat.
- [22:43]
B
It's at just, like, normal grocery stores.
- [22:45]
A
Yes, it's delicious. It's delicious. How about you, Elena?
- [22:49]
B
I'm a homeowner, been for a couple years, and I know I should do something with, like, the gardens. The person who lived here before, she did a lovely job with, like, we've got some hosta, and then. My mom's a great gardener. I know I should just get, like, a flower box or do something, but I just cannot bring myself to do it. I just hate gardening. I just don't know why. I just don't want anything to do with it. And it would probably look so much better, but every year I'm like, I'm gonna do something with it.
- [23:12]
C
It just.
- [23:13]
B
It never happens.
- [23:14]
A
Don't you just thank the previous owner for the perennials and you're just like, oh, thank you for doing that.
- [23:20]
B
Yeah.
- [23:21]
A
At least it doesn't look like.
- [23:22]
C
I'm not doing that.
- [23:23]
B
No, that's my ideal sort of. Gardening is, like, stuff that just comes back year over year. No problem.
- [23:29]
A
Absolutely. Like, good branding.
- [23:32]
B
That should be, like, a gardening. Yeah.
- [23:34]
A
See what I did there? I just tried to make a metaphor that really didn't work, but it kind of sounds like a should have worked, but it didn't.
- [23:39]
B
I just thought of a business idea.
- [23:41]
A
You have to nurture the branding.
- [23:42]
B
You should to be, like, a gardener. That's like, hire me once and you'll never see me again. Like, I will plant things that will just come back year over year. Like, hire me and fire me. Gardening services.
- [23:53]
C
Oh, I love that.
- [23:54]
A
I like it. That's a great idea.
- [23:55]
B
I could use that. But I.
- [23:57]
C
Be a marketer.
- [23:58]
B
Yeah. All right. Good at it. Perfect. That's it for this episode of the Marketing Architects. We'd like to thank Taylor de Los 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 architects.