How to balance long-term and short-term strategies

This article highlights some of the findings and recommendations from The Long and Short of It, a new IPA study authored by Les Binet and Peter Field that provides evidence-based recommendations for businesses on how best to approach investment in advertising, particularly the challenge of balancing short-term sales improvement with long-term brand success.

How to balance long-term and short-term strategies

Les Binet and Peter Field

One of the biggest challenges for marketers is balancing the need for short-term sales improvement with long-term brand success.

Our previous research has shown that campaigns that perform well when judged by longer-term metrics, such as profit and share growth, do not necessarily perform well at generating short-term direct responses (Binet & Field, 2007). And the converse is also true: campaigns that drove short-term direct response most strongly, tend to underperform on longer term metrics.

This issue has increased in importance in recent years...

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