‘What can be measured gets done’: How can marketers reframe persistent short-termism?

As economic headwinds persist and budgets continue to be stretched, many marketers are doubling down on short-term tactics. Yet, while belief in long-term brand building remains strong, marketers are struggling to win the boardroom’s backing.  

Almost two-thirds (63.1%) of marketers responding to Marketing Week’s 2025 Language of Effectiveness survey, in partnership with Kantar and Google, say their business has increased their investment in short-term marketing activity in the last year, with an expectation of returns within six months.  

Meanwhile, just over a tenth (11.1%) claim to be able to comprehensively demonstrate the effect of brand marketing and its overall business contribution.  

These tensions are explored in the latest episode of The Marketing Week Podcast. Charlotte Rogers, deputy managing editor and head of insight, discussed the impact of marketing’s culture of short-termism with senior reporter Niamh Carroll, former Boots CMO and Marketing Week Marketer of the Year 2023, Pete Markey, and marketing director for gift experiences at Moonpig Group, Rhea Fox.  

Listen here for the full episode and read some of their key takeaways below.  

‘Seductive’ simplicity

Fox describes the surge in performance tactics as the result of both “chronic” and “acute” problems for marketers.  

“We all know what gets measured gets done, but to some extent, what can be measured gets done,” she says. “Agile culture has cast a long shadow. It has been very seductive to CEOs that you can do stuff, you can measure it, you can go to market quickly and cheaply with digital media.”  

However, she cautions, this isn’t really the case today. “Some of those views, possibly from less marketing aware or digitally savvy CEOs, have persisted long past their natural usefulness because, as we all know, performance media is no longer cheap nor risk free,” she explains.  

“But still there’s been some lasting legacy belief in that. And it’s a very seductive message, isn’t it?” adds Fox, who notes that for CEOs the mindset has been, “I can measure it all, I can track it all.”  Only tenth of marketers ‘very successful’ at demonstrating brand impact

The lasting perception of performance marketing as brand’s less-expensive, more effective sibling ties into the financial pressures brands are facing.  

“Consumer confidence is bad, demand is bad. Hardly anyone’s having a great time trading. And the natural tendency when businesses are in that cycle, and most of us are with tough trade in one way or another, is to think about efficiency,” says Fox.

“And, let’s be frank, your performance marketing budget is often going to be your single biggest line item in a digital business. So, it’s natural to want to squeeze more efficiency out of that and for it to really draw the eye of CEOs and CFOs.”  

Markey echoes this, adding the proliferation of digital channels has led to brands prioritising the short-term.  

“It’s definitely becoming more pronounced in businesses. Also, there are a lot more channels now that you can measure in a performance landscape, a lot more you can do,” he says, adding how the “explosion” of platforms like TikTok in the last few years is just one example of how marketers have more to measure.  ‘Eroding trust’: Marketers debate the role for ‘AI-enhanced’ creative

AI is also playing its role. “AI has really aided that because you can measure, you can test, you can segment, you can largely do so many of the marketers’ dream tasks within that infrastructure. And it does give you immediate benefits of being able to prove a return, which therefore keeps the business very happy,” he says.  

Reflecting on his time at Boots – Markey left earlier this year – he notes the role of in-housing marketing functions in building performance marketing’s importance within the business.  

Boots in-housed its performance marketing while Markey was CMO. “The ability to own and control that yourselves and reduce agency overhead and change your ecosystem is also a really important part of that. It gives you more control, therefore you do more with it, therefore it becomes more under the spotlight,” he explains.  

“Certainly, at Boots when we did the insourcing, that then became a lot more under the spotlight because we went, ‘We can do this thing ourselves and better’. And we smashed the business case,” he adds, but doing this “highlighted” the role of performance media.  

For fast-moving sectors like retail and beauty, the pressure is high as businesses tackle emerging platforms and channels. TikTok Shop is now the second biggest retailer in the UK for beauty, notes Markey. “And therefore, you’ve suddenly got this uncompetitive landscape, particularly online. And the fastest way to compete and trade your way through that is clearly through performance channels,” he says.  

But doing this doesn’t “deal with the long-term systemic challenges in your brand”, he says. What it does provide, however, is “something to fight with and respond with”.  

Framing marketing

Despite widespread support for long-term brand building, many marketers struggle to make the business case. Just 17% of marketers say their company invests sufficiently in brand, while more than half (52.9%) say their campaigns are too focused on sales and performance.  

“It’s to do with the pressure of budget cycles,” says Markey, who believes marketers “get stuck” when performance is performing and businesses know it works, so there’s “less appetite to test and experiment”.  

His advice to marketers? “The only way to win the argument is to do it campaign by campaign,” says Markey.‘Relentless pursuit of the truth’: Why are marketers dissatisfied with metrics?

“If you haven’t built a case beforehand, if you haven’t invested in your brand, or it’s all been stripped away, you’re having to reprove and resell that case. And it is perhaps a harder case to sell. I think some businesses don’t have the historic data to prove it or don’t get that from their agency. So, your business case is hard,” he explains.  

Coming out of the pandemic, Markey wanted to “relaunch” the Boots brand. To tackle it, he “got an evidence case together to prove it and layered it within the budget”.  

“It paid off and worked,” he says, emphasising marketers should tackle it in bite-sized chunks rather than asking for a huge investment in brand marketing from the get-go. 

This approach led to increased belief in the business for the next campaign. “The business got confident and said, ‘well, actually, we’d like to give you some more money. Do you want to do that again at Christmas?’ And off we went in the budget.”  

When Markey left Boots earlier this year, the budget was 25% higher than when he started in 2020 because it could prove the case, he says.  

Fox, too, believes that building the business case for brand marketing needs to be rooted in language that will resonate.  ‘Objective view’: Do brands need a dedicated marketing effectiveness team?

“This is about framing everything we do,” she says. “So, there’s always a direct, very visual commitment in everything you’re doing from a big brand point of view to selling. We’re all here to sell things, and I’ve always said to my marketers, if you’re not excited about selling things, you’re in the wrong job.” 

For Fox, part of the solution is terminology that fits the leadership.  

For example, “there are certain words and phrases that are real hot button words, and brand investment is one of them,” she says, “especially if you are not a great believer in marketing, or conversely, a massive believer in pure performance”.  

Speaking to these people in businesses, she reframes the language.  

“I talk about demand generation and demand harvesting, for example, rather than mid funnel and lower funnel,” she explains as one example. “Demand harvesting is mopping up what’s there in the lower funnel. So there’s a clear choice there between whether you’re building for the future and reaching less accessible targets.” 

Markey agrees, adding: “The alignment with finance and the alignment of commercial levers is more important than ever in these sorts of conversations.”  

Ahead of the next episode in Marketing Week’s regular series, find The Marketing Week Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Acast.