Introducing “Thoughts and Things” - Not quite tweets, not quite lengthy articles, but rather, bite-sized marketing perspectives. Hopefully, it becomes a frequent visitor to your inbox. Let's dive in!
There's always a camp in marketing, a side you feel pressured to pick - are you in the brand camp? Or the performance camp? Is your company obsessed about numbers? Or being part of cultural moments?
You might want to pick a side, but your CEO likely wants it all. They want to make a dent in culture, while increasing usage and users every quarter.
How do you reconcile the two? Some companies (Instacart, Airbnb) are making their intentions clear. In 2020, Airbnb famously announced that it was slashing spend on advertising, and relying more on broad marketing campaigns and public relations to build its brand. They claimed they were still generating 95% of the same online traffic as the previous year. This might not be the cleanest comparison since Airbnb spent years building an impressive SEO moat, with millions of backlinks (source). A recent report shows Airbnb bookings are down as much as 48% year over year in certain cities so I’m curious to se if they’re still at the 95% number.
Instacart, on the other hand, changed its org structure to unify efforts. Brand and Performance teams had previously reported to separate leaders, but that seems to have changed under its new leadership.
Having clear swim lanes (top-of, mid, lower funnel) for performance and brand can be more damaging than helpful. Tom Roach puts it aptly in his essay:
The language of ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ funnel can also reinforce the value-destroying division between ‘brand’ and ‘performance’.
Some people seem to think the upper funnel is the only place where brand-building can happen, or worse, the only place where ‘creativity’ is allowed. Which can lead to people assuming that these two things are luxuries, optional extras that you only need to deploy if you’ve got the money.
Similarly, people think that ‘performance’ only happens at the bottom, when all good marketing communication should be seen as driving performance.
The obvious answer to solve this dilemma is similar to Instacart’s approach— use both to your advantage, and combine orgs so they can work as one marketing machine. However, the reality is that this is rarely the case - resources are limited, and your leader and company culture usually determine if you are a brand-first or a performance-first org.
Choosing a side is a company culture decision as much as it’s a business one. We don’t see Apple or Nike talk publicly about the sides they choose (but it’s abundantly clear, and it’s working for them).
And finally, if you’re a new employee and you’re wondering what your company culture is, think about what they reward (or what's celebrated more internally) - metrics or moments?
Until next time,
Shrikala
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