# Investing in your brand: why it pays when budgets are tight

Marketers say brand deserves the bigger budget, then fund performance. What the evidence says about investing in your brand, and how to show it is working.

[All articles](https://winkhq.com/blog/)

Insights 18 Oct 2026 6 min read

Investing in your brand pays because most of the people who will buy from you next year aren't shopping today. Brand spend decides who they think of when they are ready; performance spend only reaches the few who are ready now.

## Key takeaways

- Brand investment pays because most buyers are not in the market today, and the brands they remember later are the ones they choose.
- Binet and Field's 60:40 split is a starting point, and Binet says the right mix can range from 50:50 to 65:35.
- Cutting brand spend in a downturn puts market share at risk, and Kantar's case evidence shows lost share can be hard to win back.
- Take a baseline before you spend, then track awareness, consideration and preference against competitors every month, so you can show brand spend working before it shows up in sales.

## Why does investing in your brand pay?

A strong brand keeps selling, and keeps its price, long after the campaign that built it has ended.

Most marketers already agree. In [a study of 40 senior South African marketers](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/sa-leading-marketers-say-brand-and-performance-marketing-are-no-longer-rivals-286437a) by the Independent Agency Search & Selection Company (IAS), most said brand marketing deserves the larger share of investment. One called it “almost the foundation of the house”.

The pricing evidence backs them. Kantar BrandZ found that only [28% of South African brands](https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/most-valuable-south-african-brands-2026) are seen as worth paying more for, rising to 63% among the country’s most valuable brands. Of the top 30, 74% are seen as meaningfully different, and Kantar says those brands have grown twice as fast as the rest.

## Why does brand lose out when budgets are tight?

Brand spend pays back after the budget review, and performance spend pays back before it.

The same IAS study found that economic pressure and the demand for quick returns [keep pulling spend](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/sa-leading-marketers-say-brand-and-performance-marketing-are-no-longer-rivals-286437a) towards short-term performance activity, even among marketers who say brand deserves more.

In WARC’s [Voice of the Marketer survey](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/warc-red-flags-deflate-marketers-optimism-for-2026-629451a) of more than 1 000 marketers worldwide, only 19% of brand marketers expect higher budgets in 2026. Among those expecting cuts, 42% plan to invest in performance marketing, against 29% in brand. WARC also found 55% of marketers now call short-termism a major concern, up from 25% in 2022.

## Who does brand spend reach that performance can’t?

The 95% of your category who won’t buy for months or years, by one estimate.

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo of LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, citing research by John Dawes of Ehrenberg-Bass, wrote that [“95% of the buyers that you reach are out-of-market and won’t buy for months or even years”](https://www.marketingweek.com/peter-weinberg-jon-lombardo-95-5-rule). That research is about B2B, but we think the idea holds for any purchase people don’t make every day, from cars (see [how Chinese car brands won over South African buyers](https://winkhq.com/blog/chinese-car-brands-south-africa/)) to insurance.

Performance marketing reaches the 5%. Brand building reaches the other 95%, so they already know your name when they start looking. So a brand campaign judged on this month’s sales will look like it failed, even when it worked.

## What is the 60:40 rule?

It is Les Binet and Peter Field’s guideline for splitting a marketing budget: roughly 60% on brand building and 40% on sales activation.

It comes from their work for the IPA. In their summary, rational messaging has a [“big direct effect, but decays quickly”](https://ipa.co.uk/media/14463/long_and_short_of_it_presentation_final_030424.pdf), while emotional brand building has a smaller effect on sales that “decays slowly”. The way we read it, a budget that funds only the first kind buys sales that fade soon after the spend stops.

Binet himself calls it [“not an iron rule”](https://www.phdmedia.com/exclusive-interview-for-phd-les-binet-speaks-to-tomas-lilja-strategy-director/): “sometimes it’s 60/40 or perhaps 65/35 or 50/50”, depending on brand size, price and category.

> Treat 60:40 as the opening position in the budget conversation. Your own brand data should decide where it settles.

## Should you cut brand spend in a downturn?

The evidence says no. Brands that keep spending through a recession come out of it stronger, and brands that stop can lose share they never win back.

Peter Field reviewed around 50 IPA case studies from the 2008 to 2009 recession and found that the brands that held their share of voice [bounced back strongly when recovery came](https://ipa.co.uk/news/peter-field-s-seven-lessons-for-advertising-during-a-recession/).

Kantar adds that brands with a share of voice bigger than their market share tend to grow, and cites work by Biel and King: brands that raised ad spend by more than 20% gained [0.9 share points in recessions](https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/modern-marketing-dilemmas-how-should-marketers-stand-up-to-recession), against 0.5 in growth periods.

Kantar also describes a UK beverage brand that stopped investing in one region. Its market share there fell by 2 percentage points, and when spending resumed the next year, it [“did not recover the lost market share”](https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/modern-marketing-dilemmas-how-should-marketers-stand-up-to-recession).

The same piece notes that “the main effect of most media investments is to maintain market share rather than increase it”, so cutting the spend puts that share at risk.

## How do you show brand investment is working?

Use brand measures that move before sales do (awareness, consideration and preference against your rivals), collected the same way every month so the trend is hard to argue with.

Sales lag, so a finance team looking only at this quarter will favour performance. Brand measures also tell you what to fix: if awareness rises and sales don’t follow, they show [where buyers drop out](https://winkhq.com/blog/brand-awareness-up-sales-flat/).

## How do you make the case to your finance team?

Bring a baseline and a monthly trend, both measured against your competitors. These six steps build it.

1. **Take a baseline before you spend.** Measure before the campaign or budget change starts, or you have nothing to compare against.
2. **Track the measures between spend and sales.** Unaided awareness: how many category buyers name you without a prompt. Consideration: how many would think about buying from you next time. Preference: how many choose you over your closest rivals.
3. **Compare with competitors as well as with last month.** Buyers choose between you and the alternatives, so your awareness can rise while a rival’s rises faster. Show both lines.
4. **Report the trend as a three-month rolling average with its margin of error.** A single month moves inside its margin. The rolling average smooths that out, and the margin of error answers finance’s first question, whether a change is real. Say plainly when it is too early to call.
5. **Read each measure after a campaign against the months before it.** Mark campaign dates on the timeline so before and after sit on one chart. Consideration that rises after a campaign and stays up is the early sign the brand case rests on.
6. **Keep measuring the same way for at least a year.** A trend needs time, and changing method or supplier midway breaks it. One marketer in the IAS study, explaining why their team brought performance data in-house, [said](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/sa-leading-marketers-say-brand-and-performance-marketing-are-no-longer-rivals-286437a): “When we changed agencies, we lost years of insight.”

## Where does Wink fit, and where doesn’t it?

Wink, the brand tracking platform, surveys real category buyers every month and compares your brand with up to five competitors, in South Africa, the US, the UK and Australia. It does not attribute sales to channels.

A tracker starts with a 600-respondent baseline, then adds 200 new respondents a month. Results arrive as a three-month rolling average with the margin of error on every number, and Wink says when a change is too early to call. That covers steps 1 to 5, and the 12-month minimum term covers step 6.

To learn which channel or ad produced a sale, you need your own sales data and an attribution or marketing mix model. Wink also won’t give you a read next week: the first rolling headline lands in month four, so it suits a brand planning a year of investment.

Setup, translations and a pilot usually take a few weeks. If you want a trend in hand at next year’s budget meeting, start the baseline before this year’s campaigns begin. [Book a demo](https://winkhq.com/demo/) to walk through what a tracker would measure in your category, or read [how Wink works](https://winkhq.com/blog/meet-wink-brand-tracking-platform/) first.

## Common questions

### What is the 60:40 rule in marketing?

It is Les Binet and Peter Field's guideline of roughly 60% of spend on brand building and 40% on sales activation. Binet calls it "not an iron rule", and says the right split depends on the brand and category.

### Should you cut brand spend in a recession?

The IPA's evidence says no. In Peter Field's review of around 50 case studies from the 2008 to 2009 recession, brands that held their share of voice bounced back strongly when recovery came.

### How do you measure the return on brand investment?

Track leading brand measures, such as unaided awareness, consideration and preference against competitors, every month. They move before sales do, so they show whether spend is building the brand.

## Sources

1. 01 [SA leading marketers say brand and performance marketing are no longer rivals](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/sa-leading-marketers-say-brand-and-performance-marketing-are-no-longer-rivals-286437a) bizcommunity.com
2. 02 [Warc: Red flags deflate marketers optimism for 2026](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/warc-red-flags-deflate-marketers-optimism-for-2026-629451a) bizcommunity.com
3. 03 [The 95:5 rule is the new 60:40 rule](https://www.marketingweek.com/peter-weinberg-jon-lombardo-95-5-rule) marketingweek.com
4. 04 [The long and the short of it: 10 key principles of success](https://ipa.co.uk/media/14463/long_and_short_of_it_presentation_final_030424.pdf) ipa.co.uk
5. 05 [INTERVIEW: Les Binet on brand building: "60/40 is not an iron rule."](https://www.phdmedia.com/exclusive-interview-for-phd-les-binet-speaks-to-tomas-lilja-strategy-director/) phdmedia.com
6. 06 [Peter Field's seven lessons for advertising during a recession](https://ipa.co.uk/news/peter-field-s-seven-lessons-for-advertising-during-a-recession/) ipa.co.uk
7. 07 [Modern Marketing Dilemmas: How should marketers stand up to recession?](https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/modern-marketing-dilemmas-how-should-marketers-stand-up-to-recession) kantar.com
8. 08 [The definitive ranking of South Africa's most valuable brands is back](https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/brands/most-valuable-south-african-brands-2026) kantar.com

## Keep reading

- [How Chinese car brands won over South African buyers](https://winkhq.com/blog/chinese-car-brands-south-africa/)
- [South Africa's coffee race: what it takes to build a brand](https://winkhq.com/blog/south-africa-coffee-brands/)
- [Meet Wink, the brand tracking platform built in South Africa](https://winkhq.com/blog/meet-wink-brand-tracking-platform/)

## See Wink on your category

A 30 minute walkthrough of the tracker, using a real category.

[Book a demo](https://winkhq.com/demo/)

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