Effectiveness in Context: A Manual for Brandbuilding

When a recession hits, marketing panics and moves money from brand into performance advertising. Les Binet and Peter Field, authors of The Long and the Short of It and Effectiveness in Context, think that's a mistake. In this interview from summer 2020 they explain what they do and don't mean by their 60:40 rule. Les works at DDB, the agency behind years of Volkswagen and John Lewis advertising, and Peter advises companies whose growth has stalled.

You'll learn why every piece of communication has both short- and long-term effects, and why an ad that tries to do both at once does neither well. Les and Peter explain why, according to the IPA Databank, reach drives most of a campaign's effectiveness and targeting very little, why they see one-to-one personalisation as a dead end, and why effectiveness and efficiency pull in opposite directions in marketing. They describe the inflection point at which an e-commerce company or start-up has to start building a brand, and why a recession is a good time to invest in one.