Performance Myopia: How to Balance Branding & Efficiency

Performance Myopia happens when marketing teams place too much emphasis on making performance metrics look good, and not enough long-term brand profitability.

Owners, CMOs & VPs of Marketing responsible for driving results in the long-term need to understand the signs of performance myopia and how to correct it.

It's something we see time and time again in ad accounts. The effects were also captured recently in a study by Kantar.

When brands become transactional in their advertising, it customers take notice. A lot of the brand's magic is lost in translation.

Why Performance Myopia happens:

• Short-Sighted Agencies: Often motivated toward short-term ad budget increases, wins to report this week, and junior reps with limited knowledge of brand building & business economics.
• Ambitious In-House Marketers: Often in roles for <2 years, interested in making short-term gains for promotions and recognition, less invested in long-term outcomes.
• Conflicting Interests: When teams separately manage ad channels, they often compete for resources. This incentivizes each team to make their efforts appear more successful to justify more budget.
• Data Misinterpretation: Relying on the wrong data signals to guide creative, channel and/or budget allocation strategy.

Key Signs of Performance Myopia:

While Kantar focuses on creative analysis, campaign structures and technical setup also excerbate the decline.

1. Topline revenue growth not keeping pace with ad budgets
2. Shrinking top of funnel reaching fewer unique new customers.
3. ROAS looks better initially but attribution doesn’t add up.
4. Lifetime frequency is climbing rapidly.
5. Ad creative is stagnant and repetitive.

Correcting the Course: Balancing Brand Goals & Paid Media

We bridge brand building and performance into a unified strategy by:

• Analyzing the ratio of brand vs performance spend.
• Understanding the KPI deltas between these creative objectives.
• Decodifying winning elements from top ads in each segment.
• Applying heuristics and new messaging styles to build brand ads that perform.
• Deploying content diversification designed to work alongside algorithms.
• Structuring testing agendas to validate assumptions and build a winning playbook.
• Assessing incrementality of ad channels and campaigns for effective allocation.
• Deriving accurate attribution models and unique KPIs that speak to topline goals.

See better results Y/Y, not just W/W with a partner that optimizes toward your long-term growth.

Get in touch today to learn how we can help your business achieve its advertising goals.