Talk about a blast from the past. The phrase “brandformance” is becoming popular across the ad industry again as marketers push to once again marry brand and performance marketing.
Call it a performance marketing correction.
It’s not a new phenomenon, per se, as Tim Peterson, executive editor, video and audio at Digiday, and the reporter who wrote this article point out on a recent episode of the Digiday Podcast. But between technological advancements and LLMs pressuring brands to reconsider their digital footprint, brand health has re-sparked marketer interest to justify their budgets.
“There’s enough data and belief that brand lift leads to business outcomes and revenue that people care and are willing to look at brand lift more,” Kevin Goodwin, svp of strategy at New Engen told Digiday.
This go-round, it’s a so-called yes-and conversation, in which marketers are looking at things like ROAS (return on ad spend) and CPA (cost per acquisition) in addition to so-called softer metrics like brand lift, marketing profitability and consideration.
For example, DSW retail company has only recently prioritized brand health. The retailer uses a brand health tracker that’s fielded twice a year to measure its performance against the category drivers that impact a shopper’s decisions in shoe buying.
“Brand health is a bit of a new muscle memory for us. It’s one I’m incredibly passionate about, and I am holding us accountable too,” said Kelly Ballou, vp of brand and creative for North American retail at Designer Brands Inc (DBI), DSW’s parent company.
The pendulum swing is there: Marketers lament about diminishing returns in performance marketing while an increase in performance marketing spend no longer means a proportional increase in results, per marketers. Advancements in tech have made sophisticated tools, like media mix modeling tools, more accessible while the rise of AI chatbots has pushed brands to ensure they have a healthy and synonymous digital footprint across the web.
It’s not just brand marketers. Publishers brought up the brand versus performance argument at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail in March of this year, according to Peterson.
Post-COVID, publishers are having to re-train salespeople hired during the 2021 e-commerce boom, who were brought up on selling performance-based ads, to now be able to pitch brand awareness to clients.
“These are people who can pitch performance, but they need to learn how to pitch brand awareness,” Peterson said on the Digiday Podcast.