---
title: Brand vs Performance Marketing · The 60/40 Question | RGM®
url: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/frameworks/brand-vs-performance-marketing/
updated: 2026-06-10
source_html: https://realgrowthmatters.com/learn/frameworks/brand-vs-performance-marketing/
---

**Attribution.** The brand-vs-performance debate has been researched extensively by Les Binet and Peter Field, working with the UK's IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising). Their analysis of the IPA Effectiveness Awards database is the most-cited empirical work on this balance. This article reviews their findings and modern adaptations.

## What the research actually says

Les Binet and Peter Field analyzed decades of IPA Effectiveness Awards submissions to identify what separated highly-effective marketing programs from less-effective ones. The headline finding from their 2013 study *The Long and the Short of It*: campaigns that combined long-term brand-building with short-term activation outperformed campaigns that did either alone.

Their suggested benchmark was roughly 60% brand investment and 40% activation investment for most categories, with variance by industry and stage. Lower brand investment than that tends to produce diminishing returns from activation over time.

## Why the imbalance happens

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Performance marketing produces immediate, attributable results. A paid search campaign run today produces conversions today, traceable to today's spend. Brand investment produces compounding effects measured in months and years, with attribution that's difficult and indirect.

Faced with quarterly performance reviews, marketing leaders rationally optimize toward what's measurable. The result: persistent under-investment in brand, accompanied by complaints that paid CPAs keep rising. The two things are connected.

## Why brand investment makes performance work better

Brand-aware buyers convert at higher rates than cold prospects when they encounter performance ads. The same paid search ad shown to a brand-aware audience produces more revenue per dollar than the same ad shown to an unfamiliar audience.

Studies suggest brand-touched users in B2B convert at 2.4x the rate of unfamiliar audiences. For DTC, the multiplier varies but is consistently above 1. This means brand investment isn't separate from performance; it's a multiplier on performance.

**The diminishing returns trap.** A company that pulls back on brand to fund more performance sees performance CPAs drift up over time. The diagnosis usually attributes this to ad platform inflation or audience saturation. The actual cause is often brand decay — the audience that performance ads target is less primed to convert because brand awareness has eroded.

## How the 60/40 changes by stage

Binet and Field's 60/40 is a starting heuristic, not a universal rule. The right balance shifts by company stage:

- **Pre-PMF.** Brand investment is wasted because there's no proven product to brand. Lean to nearly all performance/activation.
- **Early scale ($1M–$10M).** Performance still dominates, but brand begins to make sense as the company gains a recognizable identity.
- **Growth stage ($10M–$100M).** 60/40 brand/activation becomes the right reference point. Brand is now a multiplier on performance.
- **Mature ($100M+).** Some categories shift further toward brand (consumer luxury, financial services) because performance audiences have been thoroughly mined.

## Measuring brand

The honest challenge with brand investment is measurement. Useful brand metrics include:

- Branded search volume (proxy for brand awareness, easy to measure).
- Direct traffic share (brand-aware visitors).
- Brand recall surveys (paid or via panel providers like YouGov).
- Brand-touched conversion rate vs cold-traffic conversion rate.
- Brand lift studies on specific campaigns.
- Share of search (your brand's search volume as a % of category search volume — strong predictor of market share).

### Related on RGM

- [Marketing beyond growth](/learn/frameworks/marketing-beyond-growth/) — brand as a distinct marketing domain.
- [See-Think-Do-Care](/learn/frameworks/see-think-do-care-framework/) — See and Think are brand-stage.
- [Jobs · Think Different rollout](/learn/essential-watching/jobs-think-different-rollout/) — brand-as-investment, articulated.

Sources & further reading

1. Binet, L. & Field, P. (2013). *The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies*. IPA.
2. Binet, L. & Field, P. (2017). *Media in Focus: Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era*. IPA.
3. Binet, L. & Field, P. (2018). *Effectiveness in Context*. IPA.
4. Ehrenberg-Bass Institute research on brand growth and physical/mental availability.
5. Byron Sharp, *How Brands Grow* (2010). Oxford University Press.
6. Les Binet and Peter Field WARC publications.
7. RGM operator notes — brand-performance allocation engagements 2023–2026.