Here for a good time, not a long time

Insights from industry leaders on creating lasting growth in an era of short-term thinking.

Through a series of interviews with industry leaders, this set of thought leadership articles from the CMA’s Brand Council explores the internal challenges and pressures that marketers face when trying to create the optimal balance between creating fast results and lasting impact.

Creating the optimal balance between ‘buy now’ sales activation focused work and longer-term brand impact has been widely discussed in the past decade since the publication of Field and Binet’s “The Long and the Short of it.”

In truth, campaigns don’t have to be one or the other. But when setting objectives and managing expectations with internal stakeholders, marketing leaders are often forced to signal their priorities.

Long-term business success relies on creating that optimal balance of sales activation and brand building.

But, have marketers been able to successfully create this balance in their communications strategy? Our research suggests that there are many potential barriers standing in the way.

Our world is increasingly focused on the short term. Long-term horizons are someone else’s problem. A CMO focused on creating the optimal balance between short-term sales activation and long-term brand building that will create the conditions for greater full funnel impact in the future is put in a challenging situation.

To wit, CMO tenure is getting shorter – and for consumer focused brands, average tenure barely surpasses three years.

In an environment where immediate results are required or you are shown the door, how do you successfully do the job you were hired to do? Not surprisingly, most marketing leaders are making the choice to focus more on sales activation, sacrificing longer term goals.

“70 per cent of marketers plan to increase performance marketing spend this year at the expense of brand building.” – 2024 Annual Marketing Report, Nielsen

Marketers are under constant pressure to show the fruits of their labour. But this job requires patience. Impact isn’t always immediate. In some categories, delayed impact is especially pronounced.

So how does a marketer navigate such choppy waters?

We set out to understand how marketers today are managing this tension. What push back are they experiencing from their peers in the C-suite? Why is an optimal balance so hard to create and sell in? Is this problem exacerbated in our market vs. globally? How can you create the conditions for real, long-term success?

We can’t promise a silver bullet to this challenge. But, in this series of interviews and insights from other Canadian marketing leaders, we can promise that you are not alone.

This series includes three more blogs from the CMA’s Brand Council:

‘Balancing the short- and long-term: A strategic approach to marketing’ - Peter Rodriguez in conversation with Kristina Koprivica, VP Corporate Marketing & Strategy, Kruger Products.

‘Inside Toronto Public Library’s strategy for building brand trust’ - Sasha Zaprudska in conversation with Linda Hazzan, Director of Communications, Programming and Customer Engagement at Toronto Public Library.

‘Brand building in the era of instant gratification’ - Marketing leaders give their advice to balance the rush of sales now, with the fulfilment of brand building for the future. By Cameron Stark.

Content curation and authorship:
Antoine Levasseur-Rivard
Peter Rodriguez
Cameron Stark
Sasha Zaprudska