Brand Building and Sales Activation Need Each Other

Marketing discussions have a strange habit of becoming arguments between extremes.

Brand versus performance. Long term versus short term. Creativity versus conversion. Awareness versus sales.

I increasingly think the argument itself is the problem.

Businesses need customers today and customers tomorrow. Short-term activation matters because organisations need revenue, registrations, ticket sales, bookings, enquiries and members. But if all your marketing does is chase people who are already close to buying, eventually you become dependent on permanently shouting louder, spending more or discounting harder.

Brand building creates the future demand that makes activation easier. I experienced this quite clearly at Aberystwyth Town. An email telling someone that tickets are now available is an activation. It has a direct action attached to it and can produce an immediate result.

The sticker album was very different. Its value extended into PR, nostalgia, player recognition, conversations between supporters, national media coverage and the broader identity of the club.

It still sold something, but its biggest value was not necessarily the immediate transaction.

Similarly, consistent storytelling around players, history, community and the wider club may not produce a sale that afternoon. It can nevertheless increase familiarity and affection, making a future ticket, shirt or sponsorship proposition more likely to succeed.

I think digital marketing has encouraged us to undervalue this because activation is easier to measure. If somebody clicks an advert and purchases, we can see the journey. If somebody sees a piece of content six months before eventually becoming a customer, the connection becomes much harder to prove.

That does not make the effect imaginary. Les Binet and Peter Field's work has helped formalise this distinction for marketers, but the principle feels intuitive when you see it in practice. Brands cannot live solely on tomorrow's promise of awareness, but neither can they spend forever harvesting demand without creating more of it.

This matters particularly for smaller organisations because limited budgets can make immediate returns feel irresistible. If I only have £1,000, why would I spend part of it making people feel something rather than driving clicks?

Because today's click comes from somewhere. Someone needs to know you exist. They need some reason to notice you. Ideally, they have already developed an association with your brand before the sales message arrives.

My preference is therefore not to ask whether something is a brand campaign or a performance campaign and decide which side I support. I want to know whether the overall marketing mix contains enough of both.

Build memory.

Create demand.

Then make it incredibly easy for people to act when the time comes.