TL;DR

Les Binet and Peter Field's analysis of IPA effectiveness data, published as The Long and the Short of It (IPA, 2013), found that the most effective campaigns typically split investment about 60:40 between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation. Their later work shows the balance shifts with context: a 2019 analysis for LinkedIn's B2B Institute pointed to roughly 46:54 for B2B, and some categories warrant far more brand. Treat 60:40 as a starting hypothesis rather than a law, and measure the two jobs in different ways.

Who Binet and Field are, and what they found

Les Binet and Peter Field are effectiveness researchers best known for their work with the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA). Their report The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing Strategies, published by the IPA in 2013, updated their earlier Marketing in the Era of Accountability. It drew on the IPA Databank: according to Alex Murrell's summary, 996 campaigns entered into the IPA Effectiveness Awards between 1980 and 2010.

The central insight is that advertising produces two different kinds of effect on two different timescales:

  • Sales activation works on people already in the market. It is targeted, usually rational, and produces a quick response that fades almost as quickly.
  • Brand building works on everyone who might buy in future. It reaches broadly, tends to be emotional, and its effects build up over time, making future sales easier to win.

Both matter, but they are not interchangeable. In the data, emotional campaigns produced more brand and business effects than rational ones and were almost twice as likely to deliver top-box profit growth over the longer term. Brands whose share of voice exceeded their share of market tended to grow. Across these cases, the optimum split between brand building and activation came out at around 60:40.

The ratio has proved stable. Writing on the IPA blog in 2023, Alison Hoad noted that the authors' follow-up, Effectiveness in Context (2018), put the figure at 62:38, close to the original.

Brand–activation balance

the share of marketing investment devoted to long-term, broad-reach brand building versus short-term, targeted activity designed to convert existing demand.

60:40 is a starting point, not a rule

The most common misreading of Binet and Field is to treat 60:40 as a universal formula. Their own later work says otherwise. Presenting Effectiveness in Context in 2018, they showed that the optimal brand share reached as high as 80% in some contexts, while the recommended activation share never went above 56%, as System1 reported. The risks are also asymmetric: moving everything into brand cost around 20% of effectiveness, whereas moving everything into activation cost more than half and was harder to reverse.

Several context factors move the dial:

  • How easy activation is. In categories where buyers research heavily online and conversion is easy, the evidence favours shifting money towards brand. Binet put it simply in a 2018 interview with Contagious:

"…when activation is easy you can afford to do less of it." — Les Binet, Contagious interview

  • Sector. In the same interview, Field said the need to invest in brand was much greater in financial services than in other sectors, while retail could get more from activation.
  • B2B. In their 2019 work for LinkedIn's B2B Institute, Binet and Field found that B2B brands grew best with about 46% of budget on brand and 54% on activation, a near-even balance (LinkedIn, 2019).

Speaking at IPA EffWorks in 2023, both authors stressed that their principles are a guide to thinking rather than a checklist, and that what works changes with the social context.

Why it matters for SMEs

For many small and mid-sized companies, the default media mix is almost all activation: search ads, retargeting, marketplace promotions and discount codes. These channels report results within days, so they win budget arguments. Hoad's 2023 piece records Field's concern about a rising tide of short-term activity in the IPA data, accompanied by a fall in very large business effects. The IPA's own description of the original report warns that treating very short-term online metrics as the primary measure of performance carries real risks for long-term success.

In our work with European SMEs we often see the consequence: cost per acquisition creeps up year after year because the business is harvesting demand it is no longer creating.

A practical playbook

  1. Audit the last 12 months. Label every euro of spend as brand building (broad reach, aimed at future buyers) or activation (targeted, aimed at an immediate response). Most teams are surprised by the result.
  2. Set a starting ratio for your context. Use 60:40 for consumer brands and around 46:54 for B2B. If your category is easy to activate online, lean further towards brand.
  3. Target the two jobs differently. The B2B Institute work recommends parallel targeting: brand activity reaches the whole market, activation focuses on likely buyers now.
  4. Brief different creative. Use emotional, distinctive work for brand building and clear, rational offers for activation.
  5. Aim for fame, not just awareness. Binet and Field associate fame, built through bold positions and consistent brand codes, with larger business effects.
  6. Check share of voice against share of market. If your voice in the category is consistently below your market share, expect pressure on growth.
  7. Measure on two clocks. Judge activation weekly on sales and leads; judge brand quarterly on indicators such as unprompted awareness, branded search and new-customer volume.
  8. Give brand time. In the IPA data, business effects rose steadily with campaign length, so commit for longer than a single quarter.

Limits and criticism

The 60:40 guideline has critics. Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has called it misleading, arguing that it rests on awards submissions rather than a representative sample of campaigns. As he told Mi3 in 2022, "it sounds good to have a formula". His own advice is to reach everybody and stay always on.

There is a practical limit too: the IPA cases are largely bigger brands with meaningful media budgets. For a small company, the absolute amount available for brand building may be modest. In that case it is usually better to concentrate brand spend in fewer channels or regions where it can be noticed, rather than spreading it thinly.

Key takeaways
  • Brand building and activation do different jobs on different timescales; you need both.
  • 60:40 is the average optimum in the IPA data, not a fixed law; B2B was closer to 46:54 in the 2019 analysis.
  • Easy-to-activate categories and financial services tend to need relatively more brand investment.
  • Over-investing in activation is the costlier mistake and the harder one to undo.
  • Measure brand and activation separately, and give brand work enough time to show results.

FAQ

Is 60:40 the right split for my company?
It is a sensible starting hypothesis for consumer brands, not a prescription. Binet and Field's later work found the optimum varied by context, from around 46:54 for B2B up to about 80% brand in some situations. Adjust based on your category, how easy online conversion is, and your current share of voice.
Does brand building only work for large companies?
The principle applies at any size, but small budgets need focus. Concentrating brand activity in one region, audience or channel where you can achieve noticeable reach is usually more effective than spreading a small budget everywhere.
How do I know whether brand spend is working?
Do not judge it on next week's sales. Track slower indicators, such as unprompted awareness, branded search volume, the share of sales from new customers and your ability to hold prices, over quarters rather than weeks.

Sources

Is your budget all short-term?

If most of your spend is chasing demand that already exists, talk to JRK about building a brand–activation balance that fits your category and budget.

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