Performance vs Meaning

Why a strong brand is a strategic asset, while performance is just a tactical tool
 
In recent years, many have lived under the illusion that sustainable growth can be “bought” through performance marketing. Undoubtedly, algorithms have simplified the funnel, pushed companies toward OKR-focused quick wins, and created a feeling of growth and control. But the market has become tougher – and it has exposed the weaknesses of this approach.
 
Today, acquisition costs have grown by 60–70% over the last five years (Google & Statista), competitors are almost identical in their offers, attention is getting more expensive, and performance now gives only a short-term boost at increasingly risky levels of spend. The moment you switch the budget off, sales drop.
 
This is not an investment; it’s a dependency. And a waste of money if you are not meaningfully different from other players in the market. Marketing in performance mode has stopped creating an asset and is simply maintaining turnover.

Performance is now an arena where the best auction, not the best product, wins
 
Digital platforms have amplified what used to be obvious mainly to e-commerce specialists: performance works only as long as you pay. The algorithm does not build long-term demand; it only reallocates existing flow in the moment. It optimizes for cheap clicks, not for value. It brings you a mass of users with no loyalty and no intention to return.
 
Most importantly, this model does not create capitalisation. On your P&L, it shows up as an expense. From a strategic perspective, it sits on the risk side. The more saturated the market becomes, the faster performance turns into “burning cash just to keep things as they are” rather than a tool for growth.

Brand builds loyalty and reduces dependency on budget
 
IPA studies (Binet & Field) confirm that campaigns investing in brands deliver long-term profit growth four times higher than short-term, activation-only tactics.
 
McKinsey notes: brands with strong emotional appeal have 2–4 times more users who proactively and for free (!) promote “their” brand (the “organic advocacy” metric).
 
Kantar research shows: strong brands have higher price resilience — with 35–70% stronger ability to retain perceived value and customer loyalty without eroding themselves through discounts. Frequent discounts train consumers to wait for sales and to see the brand as a “cheap” product. A resilient brand can use discounts, but selectively and in very limited doses, reinforcing its attractiveness rather than devaluing it.
 
The key conclusion here: the brand creates long-term value even when marketing is silent.
 
It works in the external environment just as it works in the consumer’s mind. It is an asset that can grow whether the ad account is on or off. That is capitalisation, not expense.

The market has proven: without meaning, performance degrades and stops scaling
 
The most visible failures of recent years are attempts to “flood” meaning-less brands with traffic. When a product has no internal logic of behaviour – in other words, no brand strategy anchored in emotion, values and cultural image – performance starts to work worse and worse.
 
Nielsen, in a recent study, highlights an important fact: 80% of advertising campaigns have no significant effect on sales if the brand does not have clear differentiation.
 
So performance, as a marketing tool, can only accelerate what already exists. Including your costs.

Why are the brands growing that offer more than just price advantages?
 
The modern consumer chooses not only a solution, but also a sense of belonging. Over the last 5–10 years we’ve seen the rise of brands that help people at the level of emotional self-perception, build community, create a cultural code, and speak to the consumer not as “a company with a product” but as a stance, an idea, a lifestyle.
 
The rise of value-driven brands such as Liquid Death, Gymshark, Oatly, Ganni, Glossier proves this: these are not product projects, they are emotional and psychological phenomena. They give people not just functionality, but identification, social expression, a sense of “rightness”, a stable emotional bond. This is something you cannot buy in contextual advertising and cannot copy through performance.

The essence of mature marketing: tools don’t replace strategy, they work within it
 
Brand + distribution create a push & pull effect for sales. Performance adds speed.
 
An effective strategic chain looks like this:
 
• Brand – creates desire. Shapes emotional meaning and long-term preference. 
• Product – delivers on the promise. A good product builds trust and makes the consumer buy again, creating loyalty. 
• Distribution – ensures availability. Gives the brand physical and digital scale. 
• Performance – accelerates existing demand, but does not create it from scratch.

Conclusion: meaning is the new (and very old) currency of competition
 
With rising advertising costs, increasingly similar products and declining efficiency of the performance-only model, what business needs is not just budget optimisation, but a shift to a meaning-led strategy.
 
Branding reduces acquisition costs in the long run by building awareness and trust. Branding grows a paying core audience, increases its loyalty and, accordingly, your margin – precisely thanks to this loyal audience (you don’t need to invest in recruiting them again, plus they recruit others themselves).
 
Branding protects you from being copied; otherwise cheap alternatives will eat you alive on marketplaces. Brand is an asset: by investing in it, you invest in the overall growth of the value of all your assets and increase capitalisation, turning marketing from an expense into an investment.
 
The market is evolving towards higher competition, which means those who survive are the ones who can create meaning and emotional foundation – not just clicks and CTR.
 
Algorithms are getting more expensive. Meaning is getting more valuable.