Long term brand growth.

Warning, i'm about to get gushy over a graph.

This is my all-time favourite graph.

It is from a piece of research done by Les Binet and Peter Field, The Long and Short of it', who were exploring long term brand growth over a 12 month period.

The yellow line focuses on promotions, sales tactics and activations. If you look in isolation looks like they drive great returns.

However, the real gold comes when you overlay what happens when you are also focused on building a brand (red line). The data shows a different story.

Unlike with conversion initiatives, building a brand ensures that you are not starting time and time again from a flat base. Your promotional sales are incremental to the sales that you have organically achieved from being a recognised brand in the market.

Binet's and Field's work recommends an investment balance of 60:40

• 60% of time/effort and money in the top of funnel activities to build long term brand awareness and loyalty

• 40% in conversion- production, short term, sales-focused activation spikes.

70:30 for D2C brands to offset the lack of mental availability that comes via being physically visible in stores.

Enjoy!