C (2:37)

Yeah, we love to count, don't we? It feels like progress sometimes. Activities feels like progress. So easy to measure has I think to some degree warped our priorities. Things like clicks, last touch, roi, those are things that are visible and they're fast and they're addictive. But they often reward things maybe like couponing or retargeting potentially low attention placements that juice these short term numbers and quietly hollow out distinctiveness or things like pricing power. We've talked about this before. It's not brand versus performance, but brand multiplies performance. Strong brands make every dollar of activation work harder. So yes, I think we've been underestimating how measurable brand can be. If you treat brand equity as a composite KPI as the article suggests, looking at things like familiarity regard, the article talks about meaning and uniqueness. Refresh it frequently by segment, by market and link those movements revenue or to shareholder value. Using proper modeling, brand can become accountable as accountable as performance and performance work can be held accountable to brand impact which helps to avoid kind of false positive ROIs.

B (3:58)

Yeah, just because not as many maybe marketers are aware of how to measure brand doesn't mean that it can't be measured. So speaking of this kind of performance and brand debate, earlier this year we had Lexi Wolf on the show. She's from work and they talked about their report which is the multiplier effect, which went pretty viral as far as like marketing reports can go. And their research found that not only are both brand and performance necessary, they work better together. Which and you were talking about personally, I think many marketers today will acknowledge that both brand and performance marketing have roles to play. It's a pretty common point of view. But where we might still be falling behind is in our separation of the two. So given all this evidence in front of us, why do we think so many organizations still keep their brand and performance teams separate?

C (4:40)

Well, I think most companies are still built to reward what can be proven quickly. And org changes are hard. They're really hard. Not necessarily what creates lasting growth for the organization. Performance marketing Fits neatly into that system. It runs on weekly targets and dashboards and immediate roi. Brand building plays out over longer cycles. Research, distinctiveness, future demand, which just makes it harder to justify under the same lens. It almost feels like different belief systems. You know, I think that's where the both ism mentality comes in. And trying to kind of shift that lens. Finance and operations too, I think reinforce the divide with things like just having separate budgets, separate agencies, separate KPIs. So each team ends up defending their own strategy and their own scorecard. And I think the tools we use to deepen what we think we understand also help the divide grow larger. Today's Martech stacks are geared towards clicks and conversion, while brand teams live in trackers and creative testing. So you have things like career paths diverging just in terms of our areas of specialty growth. Leaders are trained to ship numbers. Now brand leaders are responsible for stewarding equity over time. And the result is that this integration becomes everyone's job, which of course we know means that no one owns it. I think you've got pressure for short term revenue which drives short term decision making. And attribution models that undervalue brand silos persist even when leaders say they want a full funnel approach. The real fix isn't surface level collaboration, but it's really deep shared incentives. A single brand equity metric tied to revenue, something like that, like the article suggests. And ultimately one accountable owner for that entire plan.

A (6:46)

It just seems like the practicality of trying to reorganize a large company to take two very different entities with different reward systems and trying to bring them into one. It's like no one disagrees that it should go that way. But like the handbook for how to do that and how to do that well seems to still not really exist in a smaller company or a smaller brand. You can be agile. If you're a Fortune 500 company, sometimes you're not even in the same building. Like how do you bring people together and do it well? You just. You hit on so many good points too. It's not just the lines that are drawn in the boxes on the paper. It's the career paths like you mentioned, Ange, and just the experience. And how do you merge knowledge sets and reward Systems? It's daunting, 100%.

B (7:39)

I think that even if the people like the idea of shared incentives or like one accountable owner merging the teams, you're right. Sometimes it's just inertia. And that the teens have been separate for so long, it's hard to bring them Together I think it's a lot of times just kind of the way things are. So when the separation exists, how do we think that can affect like an agency client relationship or even the incentive of a CMO at a brand?

C (8:04)

It skews incentives on both sides of the equation. I would say agencies are usually set up with separate profit centers, brand and creative maybe on one side, performance and media on the other. And their fee structures reward what volume and short term activity. So each group optimizes for its own slice instead of overall business growth. The way results are reported again only deepens the divide even further. Brand agencies are highlighting these trackers and awards even maybe while performance agencies are showing that last search roas. Neither is accountable for how the two work together. So that's one big problem. On the other side, CMOs are often judged on annual or even quarterly targets. At times with bonuses that might be tied to pipeline, they could be tied to cac, they could be tied to cost savings. We don't know what they're tied to, but they all matter. And that pushes them to overrule what's immediately measurable and undervalued the slower building assets potentially like distinctiveness and memory. Things like distribution, procurement if we love to be procurement's friend. But like that also reinforces the split with siloed scopes and board updates even tend to celebrate quick wins. So the outcome becomes predictable. You know, when growth stalls, creative ends up blaming media, media blames creative, agency rosters churn. Growth remains fragile. It's a problem.

A (9:38)

There's nothing more awkward than those all agency summits where a client brings in everyone from oh, we're the brand shop, we're the digital shop, we're the. Wow, talk about a dysfunctional group of marketing egos.

C (9:55)

Yeah, yeah, it's hard because I want to assume the best in our competitors. Right?

A (10:00)

For sure.

C (10:00)

They're all there for the benefit of the brand. And how do we grow the brand together? But just given the fragmentation with consumer behavior and the vast amount of choices we have in terms of how to purchase a product, how do we learn about a product and how we purchase a product? It's a really hard challenge. I have seen it done well. It can be done well. But you're right there. There are definitely awkward moments sometimes.

B (10:25)

Yep. It is funny how often we hear too that like if you added up all your different agency partners are doing your marketing return would be like way over a hundred percent. Right? Like we heard that a lot. That must be an awkward moment. It's like Somebody's not pulling their weight.

C (10:41)

Totally.

B (10:42)

So speaking of challenges, one challenge that I hear come up a lot when we talk about combining brand and performance is creative. Because I think it's easy to say, easy to understand, but then you think about practically executing on that, especially in a channel like tv, it can be very difficult. So, Rob, how do you think a marketer should think about their creative strategy if they want to develop these campaigns that drive both brand and performance?

A (11:06)

Absolutely. I mean, it is respecting both and recognizing that there is art and science in doing it well. But it all comes back to first and foremost, are you anchored to a big idea, something that has legs and can transcend all your channels? Are you able to take that idea and pull out its distinctiveness so that as you start to look at the activation levers, they don't just feel like ads filled with activation levers and nothing that's building your brand. Right. So get that format, get that big idea. But then recognize that you have to still use things that drive interest, that drive response, especially if you're looking for the brand. Yep. You have your distinctive assets, but are you asking the customers to do something? Are you looking at ways that you could potentially incentivize them? Not full on couponing necessarily, but do you have a URL? Do you have other things in your ad to continue the customer journey, to continue the funnel, especially with television. Right. Balancing that emotion, recognizing emotion is a brand building medium, if you will. But it's also a driver of action. Right. If you can really inspire someone to respond. But again, using those distinctive assets across all those channels so that every, that all things. Sorry, all. What is the rise, boats, tides, all channels. Right.

B (12:38)

We're just.

C (12:40)

It's a rising tide.

B (12:41)

Rob.

C (12:42)

Rob. It's a rising tide.

B (12:44)

Okay, I think, Rob, that is a good point though, about when we love when brands want to invest in their brand, do big brand campaigns. But there seems to be a misconception that if you have some sort of call to action or compelling reason to buy, all the brand stuff just evaporates. We found that's not true. You can have, you can have both in the same.

A (13:03)

And don't forget, we've talked a lot about it on this show is the importance of pre testing because that also can help you go, oh, are we pulling too strong in one direction or the other?

B (13:14)

Speaking of commercials, I wanted to talk about TV a little bit because we're a TV agency, so that's where our expertise really lies here. TV advertising has historically kind of put in the Brand bucket, I would say. Why do we think that is? Is it necessarily fair? Not fair.

A (13:30)

It's the big stage, right? Everybody goes wow, look mom, we're on tv. It has that historical wow factor, but absolutely it is becoming more and more a channel that can deliver performance and brand. But it's natural to go, oh yeah, it's the super bowl, right? It's that thing that glows on the wall of your house and it's not that hard work and direct mail piece that's staring at you in your mailbox. But of course it all kinds of opportunities, especially in today's world. If you look at the ability to look at how digital is changing the landscape and that's something obviously Angela could talk much more about looking at better attribution. We're really better attribution modeling and also looking at things that can drive immediate response in the television channel. We've talked about that before, like things like QR codes and also just shoppable TV and really seeing the rise of really being able to interact with the television in ways we've never been able to interact before. So yes, it's historically been a top of funnel channel, but it's really my migrating to a full channel experience for consumers.

C (14:39)

I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this, but there's so much to unpack when you think of quote unquote marketing effectiveness which is our topic of this podcast. And I was like what is the most in my head important principle? Like I'd be curious what your guys take is on this but because there's great ones. 95.5 and I do think that it makes sense that Lesbinette and Peter Field's report that really shattered the industry. The long and short of it, like to me it's that short term activation versus long term brand building and that understanding of in market versus future demand really helped helps crystallize why it's so important and how to think about a channel like tv. Because you're always hitting people that are in market today and you're hitting people that are out of market and the majority is out of market. So that's where the bigger gain should be played. That's why emotional storytelling matters. But it doesn't mean that there aren't people today that need to buy a car, that need whatever the product might be. And why would you allow your competitor to get in front of that audience and steal that share from you when you have the opportunity to do both? And to your point, Elena. Yes, like it's infuriating to me this idea that if we're focused on brand then we can't be focused on driving sales today. It somehow is going to pull away from our ability to be memorable, to tell a story and to ultimately drive future demand for the brand.

B (16:16)

If we know TV can be this bridge between brand and performance, that also does make it harder to measure, unfortunately. So how do we know which part of the funnel TVs working hardest in? Because I can imagine, Mark, you're listening to this episode and they're thinking all right, TV might do both. That's great but how do I actually measure that and prove it to my cfo?

C (16:35)

My.

B (16:35)

My CEO?

C (16:36)

Yeah, I think it's by separating how you measure from what you optimize. Separate how you measure from what you opt. I even have to think about it. So things like using a dual scorecard for short term performance you can use market level incrementality geomatch tests. You could do phased rollouts to estimate those incremental sales that could be app startups signups. Pair that with ACR set top exposure logs to attribute lift by network daypart creative watch the downstream effects like lower paid search CPA branded search lift during flights and then for long term brand track a composite equity metric and there's a lot of them. The article talks about familiarity regard meaning uniqueness. Link it to revenue via an MMM. It could be elasticity modeling. Verify TV's role by showing persistent base sales shifts after flights and long term. And this does take a while. We should be able to look at things like pricing power, customer retention in exposed regions. Creative diagnostics like ad memory and emotion tests will help reveal whether TV is building distinctiveness and then bring that to your CFO as one a cost per incremental action from a channel like TV2 Halo savings that could be cheaper CPAs in digital while TV runs, you know my direct mail is more impactful or effective and then three model the revenue from those equity gains. And lastly what does your payback curve look like? Weeks versus quarters. Every brand is unique of course but that's the type of way to be thinking about ways to measure kind of the both ism of a channel like tv.

B (18:30)

Yeah and probably important to when you're dealing with your CEO and CFO to set the expectation from the beginning. Like these are the different things we're going to look for because sometimes I think some of TV success too is being willing to look for those longer impacts like being willing to have the patience and the being willing to Invest enough to believe that those impacts are going to come. That's like half the battle.

C (18:51)

I love the signals versus success. Let's look for immediate signals versus immediate success. And transparently, sometimes out of the gate in television we will see immediate success. Right? Client comes in and defines an roi. They need a three or, they need a four or whatever and it's just boom. There was enough in market demand, we got the message right, the media was priced right and you're, it's right there. But we have to remember that's just a fraction of what's to come. So don't overly focus on that. You will always find signals if you're looking in the right area. So it's also not a situation in which we need to go, okay, we turned it on. So let's close our eyes and plug our ears for six months and at the end of six months, hope we, you know, wake back up and see this plethora of sales activity.

B (19:39)

And sometimes even those like we've seen with clients, those short term results can take a little while to get going too. So it's like there's everything in between you could be looking for. TV itself, as we know, is undergoing a lot of change. More people are watching streaming. Robbie mentioned some of the QR codes, shoppable ads. There's a new way to interact with tv. AI is going to change everything. We had Jonathan Rob from your team on a couple months ago and he was talking about how his TV prediction is that we're all going to be watching our own personalized AI generated content made specifically for us. Our own movies, our own TV shows, which sounds crazy, but who knows? Rob, how do you see TV's role as this brand builder and a sales driver in the marketing mix changing faster than ever before?

A (20:24)

Television is starting to behave like a digital channel. And what does that mean? I think people have always loved digital because of its flexibility and the ability to generate assets and customize those assets and place them in ways that connect to their audiences. And we've spent a lot of time already starting to talk about how streaming attribution, how you can measure all of that. But we're entering a whole new era of asset generation, which is really exciting when you look at the ability to. Because a lot of people will look at television as well. Great, but just the cost of entry is too high, right? Like I have to put on this amazing ball gown if I'm going to show up on television. But that's, that's not the truth anymore. You're Able to generate amazing assets at a cost that has never been seen before. And so you can make your brand show up just as big as the big dollar competitors out there. And that really levels the playing field and opens up all new opportunities. Think about how you can now mass customize television commercials like you never could before. That was expensive and time consuming, but AI we're already seeing it now is able to mass customize the audio and the visuals to meet your objectives of your campaigns based on. You could do ads based on weather, ads based on geography. All the things that we've loved in digital is coming into television. So it's really ushering in this whole new opportunity to bring your brand to life in an accountable way that people have always loved in digital. Well, it's, it's shifting into the big stage. So that's really exciting, exciting time to be in tv.

B (22:01)

And we're seeing that people predicted ads would be gone, we'd all want to pay for content, but that's turning out not to be true. So ad supportive TV is. So we're going to, we're going to have opportunities to use all this cool new stuff, which is great. All right, I got kind of a fun question to wrap us up here. What is one decision in your personal life where you prioritized long term brand building over short term performance? Rob, why don't you get us started here?

A (22:25)

Oh, wow. We're talking about, you know, trying to think, do something in your life. Start slow, but hopefully it'll build. And for me, a year ago, I downloaded the couch to 5K app and I said, I'm just gonna start to walk run, and I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna try to get into this and work my way into to running a full marathon. And so before that, I had only 51. Before that, only ran to a White Castle. So this was a big thing for me. It started slow, but slowly built. And now I'm running frequently throughout the week. So that'd be my. My slow to. Does that work? Is that, does that work for your analogy? Okay, fantastic.

B (23:06)

The brand has been built. Rob. Yeah, Rob's PR in his five case. That's great.

C (23:11)

Good job, Rob.

B (23:12)

Ange, what about you? Yeah.

C (23:14)

So I am in the dead middle of raising teenage girls. Three of them to be exact. I guess one of them is a preteen, but she thinks she's 30. So very much consumed with what I would call short term win versus long term win parenting moments. And this is a very timely. This was a timely question so this past weekend, I personally believe that it is not necessary and and is developmentally detrimental to allow my 13 year old to watch a horror movie like Saw with her friends. The short win would say, we would say, yes, she would feel happy. She feels like we trust her, she feels included. But that's not the route we chose, which was therefore a short term loss for long term gain. We're the worst parents ever. But hopefully in the end we end up on the positive side of that equation.

B (24:10)

I think you will. I wish my parents had prevented me from seeing the human Centipede when I was that age because I'll never forget it. Never.

A (24:17)

So, see, I was all about Nightmare on Elm street when I was was that age. So I still have fond memories of Freddy Krueger. So I don't know, risk, reward.

C (24:27)

I mean, I could be. We could be totally wrong. Like we're going to end up with like sheltered children that can't deal with anything because they didn't watch a main Saw his own leg off or something.

A (24:37)

Right? Exactly.

B (24:39)

Yeah. I've never seen Saw.

A (24:40)

How about you, Elena?

B (24:42)

I hope this isn't too personal for the podcast. I think it's fine. I decided to go alcohol free in my early twenties for no reason other than just like decided to do it. And I feel like that was a great life decision for me. That's gonna build up over time and.

C (24:56)

Be a good one.

B (24:57)

And I think more young people are choosing that too.

C (25:00)

Yeah, there's been a bit of a revolution around drinking and mocktails.

A (25:05)

Yeah.

C (25:06)

Oh, yeah, Great one.

B (25:08)

All right, well, before we wrap up, I want to do a quick shout out. We recently partnered with WARC to produce a research report that digs into what we talked about today. So if everyone remembers, we've mentioned the multiplier effect a lot. That covers the advantages of combining both your brand and performance efforts. But we really wanted to take that a step further into TV specifically, so we partnered with work to do that. It was super interesting what we were able to put together. And you can find that report by visiting our website@marketingarchitects.com we'd love to know what you think. 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. Marketing Architects.