[libertine]

Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. Just because you can measure directly results it doesn't mean the goal is to get a direct conversion - specially from a platform like youtube where people are actively consuming content - not buying stuff.

The idea of compound investment into brand building doesn't seem to exist.

I don't know if these guys thought that decades of TV advertising campaigns were made by clueless people, with no education, with no market research, benchmarks, that dumped millions to build reach and frequency to try to fill a small spot in the mind of consumers.

[Silhouette]

Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building.

I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale.

Brand-building is fine if you're Coke or BMW or McDonald's. You have millions to spend, you can saturate channels, and then people might actually think of you in preference to your competition when they're in the market for a drink or a car or a burger.

On the other hand, if you're a bootstrapped startup and worrying about affording this week's ramen, ttul's "tiny budget and short time horizon" is probably all you've got. To a first approximation, the only thing that matters for online ads in this environment is how many people you can get to take some immediate useful action, even if it's just volunteering an email address that you can use to follow up, or sharing your site with someone else they know who might be interested.

Of course, in the longer term, brand awareness is valuable as well. But branding isn't worth squat if your business won't be around long enough for someone to remember it later.

[libertine]

I agree that the work of marketers differs from scale, but it doesn't justify bad decisions.

I don't agree that brand-building is fine just for major brands, where they fight for small % of a saturated, well defined, market share.

Like you said, it's all about scale, and actions of a bootstrapped startup should adjust to it - not to be spending thousands on Youtube campaigns (picking up this post example). If you want some immediate useful action you should focus on media and placements where you have a higher percentage of people that a near to take immediate useful actions - maybe a video platform to consume video content is not the best choice to start with.

Brand building can be as simple as the way you address your customers, how your company looks, how the buying/service experience is, etc - things that change the perception of something random and generic, yet foundational to any brand.

McDonald's was the place to get tasty food without having to wait sitting down for it.

[icebraining]

you should focus on media and placements where you have a higher percentage of people that a near to take immediate useful actions - maybe a video platform to consume video content is not the best choice to start with.

Where would that be for a candy subscription service? I mean, people looking to buy candy probably just want one packet right now, not ten spread somewhere over the next few months.

[wolco]

In a startup brand awareness p is extremely important perhap more so than coke. They spend millions of dollars because they are trying to reach billions.

The most useful thing I noticed some startups do is get involved in their niche community and spent money building brand awareness for a targeted group.

[danmaz74]

Branding isn't just about spending a lot on ads. I found lots of actionable suggestions even for a small startups in a book called "Killer brands" by Frank Lane.

[ttul]

This week’s ramen won’t come unless the ads you ran six months ago generated some form of brand recognition...

[Silhouette]

That's going to be tough if our hypothetical business has only been running for three months, though, isn't it? Everyone has to start somewhere, and all I'm saying is that in those early days, the need for immediate results will naturally dominate longer-term brand-building -- unless you're already heavily funded and don't have the same priorities, of course.

[DisruptiveDave]

I'd venture to say it's not the marketers acting on their own in many cases. Shit runs down hill. VCs want fast returns, CEOs want their investors to be happy about their CAC, marketers want to prove their value in this system. And EVERYBODY is obsessed with analytics, often as a poorly constructed crutch. You try pitching brand building in that environment.

[libertine]

But I understand that, so maybe it's a matter of choice.

What kind of brand you want, and set it right away from the beginning because it will define your media channel/production investment.

I think that brands who had strong branding advertising are still well positioned in people's minds, and it's indeed an investment that should be made with a massive ROI.

Now, it's a long term game. Doesn't suit the status quo like you well said.

[e_b]

The long term brand plan must be set by the CEO and in the example provided by the parent, the CEO only cares about keeping investors happy in the short term, alas no spend without immediately identifiable ROI.

[e_b]

Exactly this.

[gk1]

What marketers are you talking about? Who are "these guys"?

I work with marketers and I am one myself, and the concept of brand-building is as familiar as loops are to software developers.

No doubt you've encountered misguided individuals, but please don't generalize from specifics.

[libertine]

Anyone with a Google Adwords Certificate is a marketer these days.

> No doubt you've encountered misguided individuals, but please don't generalize from specifics.

When the community gives visibility to bad examples, specifics gain other dimension. So instead of blaming me for generalization, maybe understand the context.

I'm a marketer as well.

[dahdum]

Brand building investment exists today, but like all other channels unless you can prove the return you're just gambling. It's certainly not the best place to start if performance marketing is a viable channel.

[libertine]

I know such investments still exist - specially in well established brands where a more "classical" marketing approach is still used.

But small companies don't even know how to measure such returns, or can't afford to measure their return beyond sales and analytics data. That's why it will always be a gamble for them, specially like you said, it's not the best place to start.

[vidarh]

It's not just that they can't afford to measure their return, but that often you can't afford to spend money on marketing that doesn't have a direct return.

When I started consulting, I spent some money on marketing, but my big constraint was that if a given channel didn't at least break even on direct conversions, there was only so much money and time I could afford to spend on that channel for conversions down the road by increasing my brand: It's not just total lifetime returns from the advertising that matters, but how the timing of those returns affect cash flow.

If the time it takes to break even is too long, you might be bankrupt first, even if the potential lifetime return is fantastic.

Sometimes it costs a lot to not have the time and budgets to take a longer term view.

[tinymollusk]

I have no question that people who have built brands believe that it was successful. We can even look at "big brands" like Coke -- they sell sugar water + a brand -- surely that must be real.

My nuanced take is that a brand "exists" in the sense that we are able to understand it, what it represents, etc. What we do not know is if that's the best way to spend resources. All the money that went into Intel Inside -- what if they spent it on something else? No marketer can know that; the question as a marketer: "is this the best thing I can do with my resources?" Nothing about "building a brand" provides objective feedback or testable predictions about the usage of that dollar.

Suggesting that TV advertising can't be a scam because so many people have put so much effort into it is another fallacy. Old school TV advertising was done by people whose jobs dependent on the revenue stream -- even if branding were completely ineffective; if they got paid, I wouldn't consider that irrational.

Brands happen. They can have value, but we can only try to prove that value after the fact.

Direct response, on the other hand, tends to be less full of b.s.

https://conversionxl.com/blog/cro-vs-branding/