Making "The Short of It" Appear Longer

A few weeks ago, I visited the OMR Festival in Hamburg - it is the largest Marketing Conference in Europe and it truly was a spectacle. 70.000 people. Shiny stages. Food trucks. Music acts. Hollywood keynote speakers. It's an impressive event. But, beyond the impressive numbers and the flashy entertainment, most speakers and panels sadly stayed at a very superficial or tactical level. And, to be honest, it is a representation of the status quo of marketing in the startup/digital world. It's highly tactical, mostly self-taught, addicted to flashy trends and only few bring a "real" marketing education/backgrounds. On the other hand of the spectrum, you have more "traditional" marketers that went through excellent marketing schools at companies like Unilever, P&G or L'Oreal. While strategically strong, this kind of marketer is often detached from efficiency metrics and executions (instead managing several agencies). It's not that one is better than the other. They are different perspectives from people working in different environments with different requirements. However, I see a lot of value for both groups to learn from each other. In order to enable them to learn from each other, we need to provide research, knowledge articles and frameworks that take both perspectives into account.

The problem is, that whenever I look at my LinkedIn Feed, it is full of undifferentiated discussions about concepts like the Sales Funnel, the Flywheel, The Long and The Short of It, or Physical and Mental Availability that do not take into account the nature or growth stage of a business. We cannot neglect that the realities and requirements are clearly different depending on whether you are a multinational FMCG / CPG company, a SaaS B2B firm or an app-based venture-backed hyper-growth venture. Authors as well as readers, need to take a more nuanced, differentiated perspective, and stop blindly repeating headlines of online publications.

Let's have a look at the most influential voices that shape our conversations (and often conceal their industry bias with excellent and convincing writing). If you ask me about the person in marketing that I am most inspired by, I would tell you without a doubt it's Mark Ritson. He is a refreshing character on a mission to provide marketers with the foundational knowledge that most are sadly missing. He also has worked nearly exclusively with multinational brands like LVMH and Unilever. If you don't know him, you should check him out. On a scale from startup to multinational, there are of course many other important voices such as GaryVee, Scott Galloway, Byron Sharp, Les Binet & Peter Field. They are all excellent. But most of them represent the perspective of The Fortune 500 companies - and that's something you need to keep in mind when reading their articles. Usually, they have build their personal brand around one key story that they repeat almost like a broken record (nothing wrong with it - that's actually excellent and consistent personal brand building):

• Mark Ritson: Respect the basics aka "The holy trinity of STP (segmentation-targeting-positioning)"
• Byron Sharp: "Sophisticated mass marketing, mental and physical availability"
• Les Binet & Peter Field: "The Long and The Short of It"
• GaryVee: "Content, Content, Content"

Why startups struggle with "The Long and The Short of It".

One of the topics above that has fascinated me over the last years in particular is "The Long and The Short of It" by Peter Field and Les Binet. It's one of the few topics that most experts actually agree upon. (And for every marketeer that still has not heard of it: (1) What have you been doing the last years? (2) You can read up on it here. Below I borrowed an overview on both concepts with full credit to MarketingWeek.)

I read everything that I could find on the topic. Tried to challenge it from many angles. But it makes sense. It's also not a gut-feeling based paper written by a marketing freelance with 3-5 years experience. There is extensive data to back it up the findings. It convinced me and I need to admit that I am an advocate. But the longer I tried to push for it in the digital companies I worked for, the more I realized that it cannot be applied in my world. For some time I could not clearly articulate why - and to be honest, it frustrated the s*** out of me. But recently it hit me:

One of the core findings of the concept is that about 60% of a company's budget should be invested in long-form, long-running, more traditional media, mass-targeted and more emotional storytelling marketing efforts to build your brand. The remaining 40% should be focused on shorter, more frequent campaigns targeted at specific segments for immediate activation that are often executed more digitally for better short-term measurement. While this approach works perfectly for large scale companies, it is based on assumptions that usually do not apply to VC-backed ventures.

1) Long-running, intra-year campaigns: The impact of brand campaigns (as described in The Long and The Short of It) builds up constantly and unfolds most measurably over 12-36 months. "The Long of It" brings the baseline to a higher level through increased spontaneous/ToM awareness, ad recall, salience and mental availability. However, due to the long-term nature of these initiatives, there is an underlying assumption that a company needs to be able to wait several months for the impact of 60% of its investments to "kick in" fully. The truth is that in my world, money is expected to work harder - and more importantly - faster. It's a luxury of the large companies and underlines that upcoming brands need to work twice as hard to achieve long-term success. (Sad fun fact: The strongest driver of marketing effectiveness is the size of a brand).

Beyond the pure financial pressure, multi-year campaigns also require the company to have perfect, multi-year clarity on its trajectory, roadmap and positioning, which is rarely the case in high growth startup environments.

2) Always on, sophisticated mass-market campaigns: The theory also defines "The Long of It" as always on, mass-market campaigns. If we translate that to a company with a large addressable market, in a country like Germany, on a typical mass-market media channel like TV, this would require an annual media budget easily north of 10-15m Euro (net). Multiplying this by the number of markets the company is active in (e.g. 5 countries), would require you to invest 50-75m Euros. Oh, and before we forget... this only represents 60% of your budget. You can take much more conservative numbers and you will still not meet the reality of most VC-backed startup companies.

While the data may be strong and true, the reality of VC-backed companies looks different. It is no suitable approach for companies that need to provide fast and efficient short-term growth on a monthly basis.

Two birds with one stone.

In a recent article on "The Long and The Short" in MarketingWeek, Mark Ritson discusses whether one creative execution can integrate both plays - the more emotional, long-term brand building elements, as well as the more rational, short-term activation messages. It's a good article and if you are interested in his view you should definitely read it. But again, it is biased by Mark's extensive experience with large FMCG companies as well as french luxury brands from Champagne (and yes, I am a bit jealous 🍾). Taking my, also clearly biased perspective on the topic, it is the wrong question to ask for VC-backed companies. In order to make the theoretic concept relevant and applicable for the startup space the question needs to be adapted. Instead, we should start by asking ourselves how to make "The Short of It" appear longer.

How to play The Long if you are small.

Let's start with the big one - the most fundamental point that goes contrary to the entire philosophy of The Long and The Short of It. Do not split budgets or organisations into brand and performance. It's a too simplistic view of the world. It does not fit the reality of startups.

Let's also agree that each creative asset, no matter whether you run a video ad on Meta or book a website takeover with an online publication - they all build brand equity. Yes, some channels are more effective in getting the audiences' attention, others are better for extensive storytelling, while others effectively drive conversions. Nevertheless, they all (with varying degrees of effectiveness) also create brand equity through building and shaping brand awareness and/or brand perceptions.

If you are still not convinced, let's take a simple example: A company invests 90% of it's budget on digital channels and optimises it for short-term ROI. The remaining 10% are invested in more traditional media with "brand objectives". Which one of the two do you think will have the more pronounced effect on brand awareness? What do you think would happen if you turn off the 90% ROI focused initiatives. You get my point.

What to focus on in startup brand marketing.

So, should VC backed companies even be concerned about brand awareness then? Yes and no. Let me explain: At the basis of each marketing strategy, there should be clarity on funnel metrics (incl. brand awareness) and brand perceptions. Brand awareness can be a great directional ("in which direction are we moving") and comparative metric ("How are we doing against competition") and should be measured at least on a quarterly or bi-annual basis. However, the reality is, that as long as you need to deliver strong numbers on a monthly or quarterly basis, brand awareness is likely to remain an indirect objective.

Latest by now every traditional, well educated marketer will have a good degree of stomach ache about what I wrote. Good. Keep reading. Brand objectives at VC backed companies should look different than those of large FMCG companies - but that doesn't mean that there are none. Quite the opposite: Brand objectives are essential to keep consistency across marketing efforts and effectively build brand despite not being able to invest in classic brand building focused media and creative executions. There are three areas they should be focused on instead:

1. (Audio-visual) distinctiveness: Brand managers need to ensure that each asset is strongly codified in line with the audio-visual brand codes that you have developed in your brand book. Aim to develop so unique and distinctive brand codes, that even though people do not see the logo or brand name, they are able to associate the asset with your brand only (e.g. think of the Telekom pink, the McDonalds M) . Of course, that also means brand managers need to work closely with "performance marketing" or "growth marketing" teams, effectively breaking silos in organizations.
2. Brand perceptions: Brand managers also need to actively manage how a brand is being perceived. In order to do so, they first need to establish clarity on brand positioning, the desired brand attributes and measure how the brand performs on the selected dimensions. (Note: Brand attributes can be both positive and negative!!)
3. Brand Buzz (aka Earned Media): The third focus area of brand objectives is often neglected in the more traditional school of thought, but it's an essential pillar of VC backed high growth companies. If you don't have the flexibility and freedom to actively invest in long-term, pure brand plays, you need to become creative and make your money and resources work harder for you. One way to do so, is what we call "making your brand culturally relevant". It's aims at making people talk about your brand, driving (free) reach. How do you do that? You need to stand out. Do something that's worth talking about. Something that the media picks up. Something that influencers talk about. Something that people share with their friends through social and WhatsApp. You need to aim for significant and frequent coverage in order to compensate for not investing a major part of your budget in "The Long of It". (And don't forget to ensure that the assets used are codified and stories alined with your brand positioning)

All models are wrong. But some are useful.

The Long and The Short of It certainly has a lot of value. The study has helped many marketing leaders as a data backed argument for more long-term oriented investments, counter-balancing the addictive nature of "shortermism" that came with the rise of digital advertising platforms. As a theoretic model I do not doubt its validity. It is also the right thing to do for companies with large budgets. But beyond that we need to take a more differentiate view - especially when it comes to VC backed companies that are facing a different reality. A reality that has different priorities. It is time for brand managers at startups to understand their true role and live up to it. The role is essential for success. Unfortunately, often neither management nor brand managers set expectations and objectives right - frequently leading to frustration and short tenures.

Practical tips to make it even longer.

Besides the brand objectives mentioned above, there are a few more things that you can do, starting tomorrow. As a brand manager you need to become obsessed with the consumer. You need to know your segments. That means you need to spend a significant part of your job on interviewing customers, exploring motivations, drivers, needs and concerns as well as quantitatively validating those findings. Being armed with real insights, you can take subjectivity out of marketing, and craft messages that are truly customer-centric. Start by building your product positioning frameworks (i.e. what are you positioning, towards which segment, what are the alternatives you are positioning against, what are the consumer benefits of your solution relevant to the segment, and what are the proof points to back up your claims).

Also, many digital platforms (e.g. Meta) have the ability to cover the entire funnel. Work closely with your performance/growth marketing teams to develop assets that speak to the different stages of the consumer journey. Focus on messaging that is higher up the benefit ladder for audiences with less intent. Focus on more rational USPs and proof points for audiences that are high in intent and close to conversion.

Last, but not least, recognise the value of strong and creative copywriting. It is more of an art than a science, but it has the ability to make people stop, think and remember you (#BrandSalience).

Thanks for taking the time to read until the end - I hope it brought some value. Let me know your thoughts and feel free to share with whomever this might be relevant for.