After a decade dominated by performance marketing's promise of measurable returns, the pendulum is swinging back toward brand building—not as a replacement for data-driven approaches, but as their essential complement.

The Performance Marketing Pendulum

The ascendance of performance marketing was perfectly logical. As digital channels proliferated, marketers gained unprecedented abilities to target specific audiences, track results, and optimize in real-time. Why invest in awareness campaigns with fuzzy attribution when you could generate quantifiable leads and conversions?

This thinking created a generation of marketers raised on metrics like CPA, ROAS, and real-time conversion data. CEOs and CFOs, understandably enamored with marketing that could demonstrate clear ROI, shifted budgets accordingly. The result was a remarkable emphasis on short-term performance at the expense of long-term brand building.

While performance marketing excels at converting existing demand, it does little to create that demand in the first place. The algorithms that optimize for clicks and conversions can't build the emotional connections that make people want to engage with a brand to begin with.

Why Brand Marketing Has Returned to Prominence

Several factors explain the renewed appreciation for brand marketing. First is the recognition that performance marketing faces diminishing returns as channels mature and competition intensifies. When everyone has access to the same targeting capabilities and optimization tools, tactical advantages become harder to sustain.

Second, privacy changes have complicated the data collection that powers performance marketing. From GDPR to Apple's App Tracking Transparency to Google's planned deprecation of third-party cookies, the data landscape is becoming more restricted, making precise attribution increasingly difficult.

Third, marketers have recognized the limitations of focusing exclusively on customers already in the purchase funnel. Brand marketing creates mental availability that ensures a company is considered when purchase occasions arise—often long before any performance marketing touchpoints occur.

Finally, there's growing evidence that brand building drives performance marketing effectiveness. Campaigns targeting consumers familiar with a brand consistently outperform those targeting similar consumers without brand awareness. The eminent marketing scholar Byron Sharp has documented how mental and physical availability work together to drive growth—one cannot succeed without the other.

Finding the Balance: Who's Getting It Right

The most sophisticated marketers aren't choosing between brand and performance but integrating both in cohesive strategies. Several notable examples demonstrate this balanced approach:

Airbnb's Return to Brand Building

After years of focusing on performance marketing, Airbnb made a deliberate shift back toward brand investment. In 2019, CEO Brian Chesky acknowledged that the company had become too dependent on performance marketing and needed to rebalance.

Airbnb's "Made Possible by Hosts" campaign exemplifies this renewed brand focus, showcasing emotional stories of unique stays and connections rather than merely promoting inventory. Concurrently, the company maintains robust performance marketing to convert this interest into bookings.

The results speak volumes: Airbnb has reported that its brand marketing has helped reduce dependence on paid search while maintaining growth. As Chesky noted, "Our brand marketing is working. It's driving top-of-funnel awareness."

Mastercard's Multi-Decade Brand Investment

Few companies demonstrate the value of consistent brand investment better than Mastercard. Its "Priceless" campaign, launched in 1997, has evolved through countless executions while maintaining its core emotional premise about experiences that transcend monetary value.

Importantly, Mastercard hasn't chosen brand over performance. Their marketing ecosystem includes everything from Super Bowl commercials to highly targeted digital offers. What distinguishes their approach is how these elements work together—the brand creates the emotional connection, while performance channels activate it at relevant moments.

Mastercard's Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Raja Rajamannar has emphasized this integration, noting that the company's digital performance improves when supported by brand investment.

P&G's Return to Reach

After experimenting with hyper-targeted digital approaches, consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble made a notable pivot back toward broader reach and brand building. Former Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard publicly discussed how the company had over-rotated toward targeting and needed to rebalance.

P&G recognized that excessive targeting was fragmenting their campaigns, reducing effectiveness, and ultimately limiting growth. Their renewed approach maintains digital precision where appropriate but restores broader brand messaging that reaches potential buyers who aren't yet in the market.

The company now aims for what Pritchard has called "mass reach with precision" rather than the either/or approach that characterized many marketing strategies in the 2010s.

Building a Modern Brand + Performance Framework

The examples above highlight several principles for marketers seeking to integrate brand and performance approaches:

1. Balance Investment Across Time Horizons

The most effective marketers allocate resources to both immediate activation and long-term brand building. While the ideal ratio varies by category and business objectives, research from Les Binet and Peter Field suggests a rough 60/40 split between brand and activation spending for most businesses.

This balance recognizes that performance marketing excels at converting existing demand, while brand building creates future demand and enhances the effectiveness of activation efforts. Neither succeeds fully without the other.

2. Ensure Measurement Frameworks Capture Both Dimensions

The challenge of integrating brand and performance often lies in measurement—when only short-term metrics receive attention, long-term brand investments appear less valuable than they truly are.

Progressive marketers are implementing dual measurement frameworks: one capturing immediate performance metrics and another tracking brand health indicators that predict future success. These might include brand awareness, consideration, preference, willingness to pay a premium, and other metrics that signal long-term pricing power and growth potential.

3. Maintain Creative Consistency Across Brand and Performance Activities

When brand and performance campaigns operate in silos, they often develop distinct creative approaches that confuse consumers and dilute impact. The most effective marketers maintain consistent creative platforms that flex appropriately for different channels and objectives.

This doesn't mean that every touchpoint looks identical—a television brand spot naturally differs from a retargeting display ad—but rather that they share core visual and tonal elements that reinforce rather than fragment the brand.

4. Sequence Brand and Performance Efforts Strategically

There's growing recognition that brand and performance activities work best when properly sequenced. Brand-building creates mental availability and emotional predisposition toward a company, making subsequent performance marketing more effective.

This doesn't require rigid separation—the touchpoints often overlap—but it does suggest that entering new markets or launching new products typically benefits from initial brand emphasis before shifting toward performance optimization.

The Way Forward: Integration, Not Oscillation

Marketing history reveals a tendency toward pendulum swings—from the creative revolution of the 1960s to the scientific marketing of the 1970s, from the brand power of the 1990s to the digital performance focus of the 2010s. Each swing represents an overreaction that eventually necessitates a correction.

The current resurgence of brand marketing doesn't portend another complete reversal but rather suggests the emergence of a more integrated perspective. The most sophisticated marketers recognize that brand and performance aren't opposing approaches but complementary forces that work better together than apart.

The companies succeeding in this integration share a common trait: they've moved beyond the false dichotomy of brand versus performance to build marketing ecosystems where long-term brand building and short-term activation reinforce each other. They measure both dimensions, allocate resources across time horizons, and maintain creative consistency while adapting to channel requirements.

For marketing organizations still caught in the pendulum's arc, the key isn't to abandon performance marketing's valuable precision but to complement it with the enduring power of brand.

Creating that customer requires both the emotional connection of brand marketing and the conversion focus of performance approaches. The resurgence of brand isn't a rejection of performance but a recognition that sustainable growth demands both.

The Renaissance of Brand Marketing

The renaissance of brand marketing doesn't mean returning to the intuition-driven approaches of previous eras. Today's brand building benefits from the same data-informed rigor that has characterized performance marketing. The difference lies in the objectives and time horizons, not the analytical foundation.

Successful marketers are now applying performance marketing's experimental mindset to brand initiatives—testing different emotional territories, measuring shifts in perception, and optimizing brand campaigns based on leading indicators of future success. They're bringing science to the art of brand building without losing the emotional core that gives brands their power.

This evolution represents marketing's maturation rather than a regression. We're moving beyond the false choice between building brands and driving performance to recognize that each strengthens the other. The most valuable brands of the next decade will be built by marketers who master this integration, creating emotional connections at scale while converting interest to action with precision.

Join us at ACE to learn how to build and execute integrated brand and performance strategies. Our Advanced Marketing Strategy course provides frameworks and tools for balancing short and long-term marketing objectives. Boom.