More reasons to stop punching ourselves.

“All we’re actually doing is cheering on either our left or right hand while we punch ourselves in the face.”

This was a line from a recent article I wrote about the tiresome ‘brand vs. performance’ debate. With the point being that we need to stop pitting the two as enemies, and instead recognise the need for both in building a strong brand.

Brand and retail/direct/performance have always worked hand in hand. Even long before the digital-era. Brand work creates fame, familiarity, and mental availability. It primes people to recall our brand when they’re ready to buy. And performance catches them when they are.

Tracksuit x Tik Tok For Business have just released a study on the effects of brand on performance on TikTok, and the findings are worth paying attention to. (I’ll drop a link at the end so you can have a read yourself.)

👉 ZERO significant correlation between CTR (click-through rate) being an indicator of brand health or awareness (People don’t go online to click on ads. Even if they see one they like, they don’t want to click on it. When are we going to finally accept this.)

👉 High awareness brands achieve 2.86x the conversation rate of low awareness brands. (People will sooner buy from brands they like than brands that just invade their space. Simple stuff.)

👉 A brand which is known by four out of ten people is 43% more efficient in driving performance outcomes on TikTok, than a brand known by three out of ten. (If you entertain people, rather than annoy them, they’re more likely to do business with you. Rocket science, baby.)

These results are really important, because the brand vs. performance debate often also gets tangled in the traditional vs. digital debate. With a lot of digital marketers only interested in tracking bottom funnel/last click/performance metrics, which discount the impact of brand on purchase decisions.

TikTok’s becoming a serious force in the marketing mix, and when they’re saying that investment in brand could triple your performance activity, it’s time to end the obsession on short-term metrics and reinvest in building long-term brands.

As I’ve said in the past, the conversation isn’t ‘Brand vs. Performance’, it’s ‘Entertain vs. Annoy’.

Check out the ‘The Awareness Advantage Report’ here. Worth having a flick through.