Falling in Love with Brands Again

Peter Field on Branding’s Past, Present, and Future (2022)

Introduction

Brands have been treated as optional accessories rather than strategic business assets for years. Peter Field, one of marketing’s most respected thought leaders, argues that businesses have fallen out of love with brands and are paying the price. In his 2022 Brands Lecture, Field presents compelling research on why brand effectiveness has declined since the mid-2000s, how digital performance marketing has taken over, and why long-term brand building must be revived to drive sustainable growth.

33 Insights from Peter Field:

1. Love Lost: How Brands Fell from Grace

The romance between businesses and brands has grown cold over the past 15 years. Many companies, driven by short-term sales objectives, have deprioritized brand-building in favor of quick wins through performance marketing and digital targeting.

2. The Downfall: A Decline in Effectiveness

According to the IPA Databank, marketing effectiveness has steadily declined since 2008. The once-powerful blend of strategic creativity and media excellence has become obsessed with measurable, immediate returns.

3. Short-Term Seduction: Why Businesses Strayed

Many businesses have been seduced by short-term performance marketing, believing that it must work if they can measure it. Unfortunately, this focus on immediate gains has led to brand erosion and declining profitability.

4. The Long and the Short of It: Binet & Field’s Classic Warning

Field reiterates his seminal research with Les Binet, warning against over-reliance on short-term marketing. Their famous 60/40 rule—60% of the budget for brand-building and 40% for sales activation—is widely ignored, leading to weaker brands and unstable growth.

5. Digital’s Dark Side: The Performance Trap

Digital platforms have made performance marketing more addictive than ever. Businesses pour money into short-term clicks and conversions, forgetting that strong brands drive sustainable growth beyond a single transaction.

6. The Great Devaluation: Brand vs. Engineering Mindset

One of the biggest brand threats is the engineering mindset taking over marketing. Some executives see branding as an “emotional drizzle” rather than a core business function. This devaluation has led to weaker brand strategies and more short-termism.

7. Mental Availability: The Key to Long-Term Success

Field echoes Byron Sharp’s work on mental availability, emphasizing that a brand must come to mind quickly in buying situations. Without consistent brand-building, mental availability fades, making marketing efforts more expensive and less effective.

8. Love is Fickle: The Importance of Distinctiveness

In a crowded market, distinctiveness is more potent than differentiation. Consumers don’t spend hours analyzing brand differences—they recognize, recall, and choose what feels familiar.

9. Trust Issues: Why Brands Are Losing Credibility

Field’s data shows that trust in brands has declined, partly due to the rise of disruptive advertising formats, fake news, and misleading marketing claims. Without trust, brands lose pricing power and customer loyalty.

10. Profit, Pricing, and Penetration: The Three Metrics That Matter

Field identifies three key drivers of sustainable brand growth:

• Profitability (higher margins and sustainable returns)

• Pricing Power (ability to charge a premium)

• Penetration (expanding the customer base)
  Neglecting brand-building harms all three.

11. Fame Sells: The Power of Talkability

Brands that become famous generate higher returns than those that rely solely on rational persuasion. Fame fuels word-of-mouth, organic reach, and long-term equity.

12. Surprise and Delight: The Formula for Brand Fame

According to Unruly’s advertising response data, brands that evoke surprise, amazement, and humor are more likely to become iconic and memorable.

13. Fluent Devices: Why Brand Characters Win

Strong brands reuse distinctive assets—like the Geico Gecko or Compare the Market’s Meerkats—to build lasting recognition. Brands that maintain consistent messaging outperform those that constantly reinvent themselves.

14. Right-Brain Advertising: How Creativity Drives Growth

Orlando Wood’s research shows that emotionally engaging, storytelling-based advertising outperforms functional, data-driven ads. Yet, modern digital advertising is too rational, too short, and too forgettable.

15. The ROI Trap: Chasing the Wrong Metrics

Many companies optimize for ROI rather than brand growth. However, ROI favors short-term tactics, often at the expense of long-term profitability.

16. Adidas’ Confession: The Cost of Ignoring Brand

Field highlights Adidas’ mistake—overinvesting in performance marketing (77% of budget) at the expense of brand-building (23%). The result? Stagnating brand growth and increased marketing inefficiency.

17. Airbnb’s Surprise: Organic Traffic Without Ads

After pausing performance marketing, Airbnb discovered that 95% of its traffic returned naturally—proving that brand equity drives sustained consumer engagement, even without constant ad spend.

18. The Start-Up Myth: When Performance Alone Fails

Start-ups often over-rely on performance marketing to drive early growth. However, once competitors enter the market, rising acquisition costs force them to invest in brand-building.

19. Gousto’s Growth: A Brand-Led Rebound

Meal-kit company Gousto saw stagnation after years of performance-heavy spending. A shift to brand advertising plus performance (60/40 split) led to a 9-point market share gain.

20. Triple Jeopardy: The Three Branding Mistakes

Field outlines three significant mistakes in modern branding:

1. Over-reliance on short-term digital tactics

2. Poor attention metrics on digital ads

3. Creativity’s decline in favor of performance thinking

21. Attention Matters: Not All Digital Ads Are Seen

Research by Dr. Karen Nelson-Field shows that 85% of digital ads fail to hold attention for even 2.5 seconds, making them ineffective for brand-building.

22. Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Ads: The Creativity Decline

Ads today have become more transactional and less emotional. Field argues marketers must return to storytelling, humor, and character-driven advertising.

23. The Fall of Share of Voice: Why Old Models No Longer Work

The traditional Share of Voice (SOV) model, which predicts market share growth, has weakened due to the rise of walled-garden digital platforms.

24. The Purpose Debate: Can Purpose Build Brands?

Field acknowledges that brand purpose can be powerful—when authentic. However, forced social messaging can backfire if it doesn’t align with the brand’s core values.

25. Emotional Advertising: 5x More Effective Than Rational Ads

Emotional campaigns outperform rational, fact-based advertising by 5x in driving brand recall and long-term growth.

26. Data-Driven Targeting: A Branding Killer?

Personalized, one-to-one marketing often leads to fragmented brand identities, weakening brand perception.

27-33. Field’s Final Fixes for Brands

27. Consistency beats novelty

28. Humor isn’t dead—use it

29. Invest in broad-reach advertising

30. TV and traditional media still matter

31. Stop chasing short-term wins

32. Brand building takes time—commit to it

33. Love your brand, or lose it

Conclusion: Reignite the Romance with Your Brand

Field’s 2022 lecture is a wake-up call for businesses to fall back in love with branding. The research is clear—brand building drives sustainable success. It’s time for marketers to rebalance their strategies and ensure brands remain strong, loved, and profitable for the long haul.