Arcadia, owner of high street fashion brands like Topshop, is re-evaluating its marketing approach, after it found its focus on short-term performance ads was not as successful as it had thought.

Following an assessment of its activities earlier this year, it determined that retargeting was not driving the revenue it had been led to believe it would, group head of digital marketing Sabino Petruccelli told this week's Mediatel Future of TV Advertising Global event in London.

Consequently, it has slashed its spending on display retargeting over the past six months, by as much as 80%, Digiday reported – and it is aiming for a more equal balance between performance marketing and brand building, which had become heavily weighted (80:20) towards the former.

“Retail measures itself on last week and last year: if you think you can drive something more to tomorrow, you will do it continuously,” Petruccelli said.

“The reason I think we need to get to nearer 50/50 for digital performance and brand is to drive overall sales across both [physical] retail and digital by raising our brand awareness and consideration more broadly,” he added.

It’s a conclusion that more and more brands are coming to – adidas and Old Navy have acknowledged as much in recent weeks – and it’s an area that many CMOs regard as a major concern.

A global survey undertaken for WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit found that respondents see short-termism as the number one industry issue (cited by 45%, ahead of things like viewability and measurement and budget changes).

There’s a widespread feeling that that brands have over-invested in performance marketing. And, importantly, 40% predict increased brand investments in 2020 (versus 32% who see higher performance budgets).


This was also a major talking point at a meeting of the CMO Growth Council in Cannes last summer, when a group of very senior marketers, gathered together by the Association of National Advertisers and Cannes Lions (WARC’s sister company), discussed where marketing is headed. (Read more here: How the world's top CMOs are reshaping the future of marketing).

As well as rebalancing its spending, Arcadia is also developing a multi-mix modelling framework in order to have a holistic view of the group’s marketing performance.

Sourced from Digiday; additional content by WARC staff