The false dichotomy of brand vs. performance marketing

There are two types of people in this world. People who think in false dichotomies, and llamas. It’s a bad joke, but it makes an important point. Dichotomies are usually comfortable shortcuts, not accurate reflections of reality. When complex problems are reduced to neat either-or choices, progress tends to stall. More often than not, “both” is the better answer. Few debates in modern marketing demonstrate this more clearly than brand vs performance. It’s a tension that sits at the heart of many marketing teams, influencing how budgets are split, how teams are structured, how creative is developed, and how success is measured. We’re hardwired to simplify complexity so we can move quickly. But when that instinct shapes marketing strategy, it creates silos, misalignment, and short-term thinking. The perceived divide between brand and performance is one such false choice, and it’s quietly limiting growth for brands and agencies alike.  

How the divide silos thinking

High-performing marketing organisations bring cognitively diverse thinkers together. Analytical and creative. Deductive and inductive. Data-led and intuition-led. The brand vs performance split does the opposite. By labelling work as one or the other, we’ve artificially separated people who should be solving the same problems together. Creative, emotion-led storytelling is often reserved for “brand”. Performance is expected to be rational, functional, and safe. But the best storytelling works on both levels. It appeals to hearts and minds. It builds memory and drives action. The same is true of funnel thinking. Great campaigns can generate sales tomorrow and build brand equity over time. Yet we continue to categorise activity as either top-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel, and measure it in isolation. The result is fragmentation.  

The truth: they both drive growth

We’ve known for years that brand drives performance. Binet and Field showed it. And we’ve also seen how performance-led growth, particularly in digital-native and high-frequency businesses, can strengthen brands over time when executed well. The more effective model treats them as interdependent. Less tug of war, more tandem bikes. One direction. Shared momentum. Different roles, same goal. Brands and agencies built this way become performance brands. They invest in short-term revenue without eroding long-term brand value. They embed vision, mission, and values into everything they do, including performance activity. And they don’t accept vague brand building. They measure impact in the short and long term. Click here for real-world growth outcomes.  

What performance brands do differently 

Follow a ‘4C’ strategy

An effective marketing strategy starts with ‘customers’. Who are we speaking to and how can we affect a behavioural change? This allows us to understand the right channel mix to interact with these customers; the right creative to resonate; and the right company strategy (yes, including price and product). By starting with the customer rather than the channel, you shift the first conversation from being ‘performance or brand’ to ‘how do we change behaviour’ through every medium available. We all know we should start with the customer, but rarely does a customer-centric brief sit at the centre of a marketing department; it’s often already been siloed into separate performance and brand segments long before a coherent strategy is developed.  

Get rid of ‘either-or’ OKRs

Set long-term KPIs against sales-driving activity, and short-term KPIs against brand activity A frequently asked question is “how long will it take for this brand activity to result in sales”? In high-frequency industries, or for very large brands, the tangible answer could be ‘immediately’. At an extreme, a super-bowl ad can have an immediate impact on sales of relatively low-frequency products like shoes, whilst increasing ‘brand metrics’ like awareness immediately. The challenge is caused by either-or OKRs. That ATL ad? We’ll measure unprompted awareness, ad recall, and impressions. That Facebook ad? We’ll measure CAC, ROAS and CPC. An ad that drives short-term revenue but diminishes brand value over-time is not a high-performing ad, and shouldn’t be measured as such.  

Use data to unlock braver creativity

There’s a claim from many marketing ‘thought-leaders’ that we’ve become obsessed with ‘historical’ data, blinding us to potential new, unproven, creative solutions. The reality is that by being obsessed with the truth that data provides, we free up creativity to become more brave in the knowledge that we are operating in a lower-risk environment. Data doesn’t hinder the judgement of those who understand data well. It hinders the judgement of those who struggle to interpret it. It’s a bit like saying ‘our strong sense of taste is hindering our sense of smell’. Both just provide signals to the brain to tell us more information – it’s up to our brains to use that information to work out whether it’s mud or chocolate in front of us. If you create positive tension between people who think about the world differently, you’ll quickly see an increase in conceptual creativity, and higher performing content emerge. So the answer isn’t to be less obsessed with data. It’s to be more obsessed with humans – how we think and feel – and creativity. Both of which, funnily enough, can be understood better using data. Creating agile, cross-functional teams with diverse cognitive backgrounds rather than discipline-led operating models will facilitate this.  

Reviewing creative through the right lenses

Review creative through a variety of lenses. Not (just) in terms of results it generates, but test for criteria such as consistency, cut-through and coverage across the right customers. Full creative reviews across all channels are conducted far too rarely. An exercise as simple as printing off all of your creative, sticking it on a wall, and taking 20 steps back to review consistency with the overarching vision, mission and values can be an evolutionary step in the right direction. The key is assessing ‘performance creative’ with the same creative lens as brand-building creative.  

Move past brand vs performance marketing

The debate around brand vs performance marketing is not just outdated, it’s actively unhelpful. Brand is not the opposite of performance, and performance is not the enemy of brand building. Your brand is the sum of how people feel when they interact with you, across all mediums, at all times. It shouldn’t be siloed to specific channels or mediums. Performance is applicable to so-called brand marketing as it is to so-called performance marketing. It’s time for these two worlds to collide. It’s time to stop asking whether marketing activity is “brand” or “performance” and start asking whether it drives meaningful, measurable growth in the short and long term. When these two worlds collide, brands don’t just perform better. They grow stronger, faster and more sustainably.  

Connect with the team

Wondering what a more integrated brand and performance strategy could unlock for your business? Get in touch.