This post is taken from our monthly email. Have the email land in your inbox, roughly once a month, with a mix of insight, info and interesting updates to the marketing world. Sign up in the box on the right (desktop) or bottom (mobile).

Brand Is Back

Did it ever really go away?

Probably not, but marketers, especially those with ‘digital’ in their title, have forgotten about it for a while.

There are many people, usually slightly longer in the tooth, who have been around marketing for a while and remember when brand building was H.O.T and still preach about it now.

I count myself in that bracket! Last year at Search Love I repeated a conversation I’d had with a youth who said “TV is the best SEO tool there is”. There are many reasons why you might disagree with that statement, but the wider point is brand building has a huge impact on digital marketing.

Which brings us to Adidas.

Adidas’ Global Media Director admitted they’d over invested in digital marketing at the expense of brand. Why? They’d be drawn in to the last click attribution model, blinded by the mantra of you can’t manage what you can’t measure and set off on a journey of investing in short term wins.

Adidas brand marketing
Credit: Matthew Barra

Now, no one is saying don’t invest in short term wins! Running out of cash is the quickest way to kill a business. And what this story also highlighted is the strength of digital marketing – Adidas kept investing because, in most cases, it kept delivering.

In the same week, I came across an interview with Bruce Buchanan, the CEO of the tech company, Rokt. He said “Primarily it is measurement that’s driving the thinking of where to spend, as opposed to stepping back and saying where are we actually getting value”, which neatly sums up where marketing is at the minute.

What’s clear is there is value in both. Just because brand marketing is harder to measure, doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Research from Binet and Field reckons you should invest about 60% of your budget in brand and 40% in bottom of the funnel conversions.

How does that look compared to your budget? Anyone even close? Didn’t think so…

Do dig into the study, as that’s not a rule of thumb for every industry. They break it down with a lot more detail than I’ll achieve in 100 words.

If you want to join the debate about brand marketing, go and let off some steam on the Facebook post or my LinkedIn page.