Do Less

There’s no shortage – in fact, there seems to be a near endless supply – of advice for things you need to start doing to help your brands grow.

This is not a new phenomenon. In the advertising arena, amateur opinions abound and frequently go unchallenged (not intending that to be derogatory; just acknowledging that perspectives from nonprofessional marketers have an outsized effect on this industry).

What is new is a world in which this advice is increasingly based on evidenced-backed guidance that can stand up to scrutiny. You know the list by this point*: Invest above your market share, use compelling high-emotion creative, favor broad-reaching and high-attention media environments with bespoke creative executions, engineer a cheat code for greater upside, and advertise perpetually to reach category buyers when they come into market.

Simple.

But what gets lost in the noise is that even if all the advice is coalescing around the same things, these are all still things you have to do more of. And in a world of finite resources and multiple decision-makers, following the principles to the letter is not always guaranteed.

It’s important to understand what you can do less of to make room for these proven principles. The problem is that all the folks hawking advice stand to gain from doing more. No one wants to offer up what can easily be cut (for understandable, self-preserving reasons).

I’ll be brave. Here’s my not-without-controversy list of sacrificial lambs to consider cutting to make room for doing better:

Display Advertising

This one at least better not be controversial. Low attention, low impact, increasingly squirrelly measurement, inefficient supply chain, and unstable data governance – in nearly every case, it’s not worth as much effort as goes into it. Automated all-placement platforms like Google’s Performance Max/Demand Gen and Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping haven’t risen fully to this level of suspicion just yet but aren’t fully clear either.

Complex CRM Systems

Driving repeat purchase is valuable for sustaining current market share (even if it’s a suspect avenue for driving growth). CRM systems today are at best introducing new products or uses to existing customers, and at worst simply pushing deals and discounts – which have questionable value in the big picture since they most often only pull demand forward rather than create new sales. Except for a small handful of categories (nonprofits, in particular), save the investment in technology, integration costs, agency time and resources, and discounting for better opportunities.

Personas and (Most, but Maybe Not All Forms of) Segmentation

Within-category user segmentation does not hold up to scrutiny in the long term. Even in the short term, the applications for creative development and media planning & buying are suspect – there will inevitably be a translation or proxy necessary to put it into meaningful use. And at that point, increased data costs or low-quality data will minimize the real impact. With the emergence and maturation of machine-learning-based targeting methods (to say nothing of the market-based asset theory’s evisceration of segmentation in principle), render this money that can easily be reinvested elsewhere.

Customer Journey Maps

These matter for product development, not for advertising. Save the money.

Multi-Touch Attribution Systems

Attribution systems have always had gaps in the data, and walled gardens’ restricting of data flow made those gaps larger. Cookie loss and deprecation exponentially increase those gaps to the point that multi-touch attribution is no longer even directionally insightful. Reinvest in media mix modeling, consistent/proper brand health tracking, and other diagnostic models.

Concept Testing for Creative Platforms

Test for future insights, not for the “paper shield” (shoutout to Elizabeth Paul, CSO at The Martin Agency) that it’s worth investing in. Stick with System1, EQ Max, or similar emotional resonance and fluency testing platforms – quick, insightful, affordable.

Chasing the Feed in Organic Social

This one may be slightly more controversial. A not insignificant part of my career has been spent championing the value that can be created by bringing better brand ideas into social media. There is still underutilized value to be found here, but it cannot be realized through chasing the feed. Trying to insert a brand into the moments of the day, chasing viral reactions, is unsustainable at best. And chasing hype through organic social should be done after all the proven drivers of attention are sufficiently supported, not as a shortcut. Reinvest in making your own moments through participating in communities your brand matters to (or can matter more to).

Competitive Analysis

Don’t worry about it. When they do something that matters, you’ll know. Make plans big enough to force your competitors to react to what you’re doing.

That all may not add up to enough savings to do everything the principles of effectiveness say you must do to help your brand grow. But it will be good hygiene for your scopes of work to make room for “even a little better.”

*If none of that made sense, check out WARC’s podcasts, Sweathead, James Hurman, Uncensored CMO, and the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) – or follow any of the generous-with-their-thinking luminaries that I’ll spare from tagging: Byron Sharp, Jenni Romaniuk, Les Binet, Peter Field, Rob Brittain, Orlando Wood, Karen Nelson-Field, Grace Kite, the R’s (Roach and Ritson), and many more.