Performance Marketing vs Brand Marketing: Ambi Parameswaran

Marketers are caught between a rock and a hard place. How much to devote to Performance Marketing (PM) and how much to spend on Brand Marketing (BM). The bigger question is ‘Will the twain ever meet?’

Digital media was the go-to mode for PM. You could monitor the clicks, the site visits, the orders placed etc. You can endlessly run experiments to improve the outcomes. In contrast BM was the domain of the old forms of advertising, the traditional media. Brands have tried to infuse branding into their digital campaigns but they don’t seem to mix, except for the occasional breakthrough campaign that goes viral (remember Subservient Chicken from Burger King). The sheer nature of digital media ends up acting against the basic principles of BM, audience engagement, story-telling, emotional involvement etc.

Brands that are focused on targeting a specific type of consumers who can be enticed by an offer find the allure of PM + Digital to be unbeatable. What about all the others who may not be selling on the net? How do they use digital media? In every boardroom the question is ‘Why are we still spending so much on traditional forms of advertising? Why are we not spending all our money on highly targeted digital campaigns? The simple truth is that building brands by using only digital media does not pan out. No wonder advertisers, not just in India but even in developed markets, are wondering if they should redeploy their advertising dollars differently.

In the Harvard Business Review article (29 April, 2022), the headline is screaming out ‘Why marketers are returning to traditional advertising?’. B2C product and B2C service companies are planning to increase their spends on traditional advertising media. Why? Well simply because traditional forms of advertising seem to work better for Brand Building. Not only that, the article points out that traditional advertising acts as an ‘air cover’ for digital campaigns, improving the effectiveness of PM campaigns.

The other reason is that digital media is today oversaturated with advertising and the digital clutter is not helping in the delivery of the ad message. I suppose the biggest and the most important reason why traditional advertising is coming back is because of the trust factor. Consumers tend to trust the ads they see on print and television a lot more than what flashes when they are scrolling through social media feeds.

I suppose the preponderance of fake messages and fake posts is not helping the cause of digital media. That said, if you are a brand marketer you may not want to give traditional advertising a burial any time soon.

Ambi Parameswaran

Guest Author Founder, Brand-building.com