As startups grow, so must their advertising and measurement sophistication

Stephen Whiteside

As startups gain scale, they need to evolve their advertising strategies to reflect established best practices about building and sustaining major brands.

Many innovators in Silicon Valley display a reflexive opposition to advertising.

“Some famous people in tech have had the view that marketing is almost cheating,” Les Binet, Head of Effectiveness at agency adam&eveDDB, explained at SXSW 2023, a conference held in Austin, Texas.

“There are probably many people here in Austin who have that mantra that: ‘If you’re an innovator, if you’re creative, if you’ve got disruptive technology, then you don’t really need marketing.’”

Such an attitude is perhaps best embodied by a quote from Jeff Bezos, founder of e-commerce platform Amazon, who, in 2009, said: “Advertising is the price...

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