Today’s marketers are facing increasing pressure to tie marketing into the business process, catching them between two often conflicting terms: brand storytelling and performance marketing.
Recently, this conversation has been on the rise among advertisers, and it was discussed on at least three panels on Monday at this year’s Advertising Week conference in New York.
The brand-versus-performance debate started even before Advertising Week, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, according to Advertising Week co-founder and CEO Lance Pillersdorf. A relevant article during this year’s event was given a hodgepodge of new media channels, such as advertising advertising, and economic winds that pressure advertising budgets and changes in technology, such as generative AI, which promised to promote creativity faster than ever, according to advertisers. agency executives.
“This is something that’s been art versus science since the invention of it, then [with] media platforms to deploy these skills,” Pillersdoff said from this year’s conference near Penn Station in Manhattan. “It’s a conversation that has evolved over time with the changes in technology.”
In hindsight, there should always be a balance between storytelling quality and performance goals. (It helps that buyers know about the brand before they buy.) But in the last few years, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction in which buyers have become more reliant on short-term, performance-driven marketing strategies.
The conundrum it created is “inconsistent messages across touchpoints, poorly segmented campaigns, and wasted resources that duplicate efforts and create inefficiencies,” said Eddie Gonzalez, head of strategy in Razorfish’s marketing department, in an email to Digiday.
That said, there have been a lot of marketing efforts since late to do a lot of brand-building and storytelling. Since January, organizations say they are seeing an increase in requests for proposals involving quality building materials. So it makes sense that panels like “Brand as a ‘Multiplier’ – Why We Need to Rethink Brand vs Performance” and “Closing the Gap: Performance Marketing Meets Brand Building” were featured in Monday’s Advertising Week lineup.
“Lack of investment in brand marketing inadvertently pushes brands to the left,” said Ken Favaro.
chief strategy officer at BERA Brand Management, a brand tech platform; Favaro spoke at the “Brand as a ‘Multiplier’ – Why We Need to Rethink Brand vs Performance” panel on Monday. “So you have to invest more in performance marketing to produce the same results, which means you’re investing less in brand marketing, shifting your brand to the left, and around, and around.”
As the 2025 cycle continues, retailers expect the conversation to continue, where they are encouraging consumers to split dollars between brands and make them work together as opposed to being two separate things, according to Cody Mohon, associate media officer at GS&F. ad agency.
“This allows budgeting and optimizations to build on each other for stronger results across the board,” Mohon said.
Elsewhere from Marketing Week:
OMG’s AI Buying Agent implementation program aims to ensure that advertisers’ needs are kept in mind when platforms create automated ad product algorithms.
Coming soon:
8 a.m Why It’s Hard to Meet Customer Needs – and How to Succeed at Penn 1 Social Stair
9:40 a.m AI in Action: A New Era of Marketing Success at the Innovation Stage
10:10 a.m From Click to Conversation: How to Build Links and Engage Your Audience at the Insights Stage.
11:30 a.m Fandoms, Tropes and Reaching Gen Z Through Storytelling on the Insights Stage
12:45 a.m Becoming a Gamer: Winning Big in Women’s Sports at the Creative Level
3:30 p.m The House of Data: Advanced Advertising in a Fragmented Media Ecosystem at the Media Stage
https://digiday.com/?p=557368
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