In this op-ed, Bench Media co-founder and COO Shai Luft questions why marketers are thinking more longer term in their investment decisions and whether that will ultimately harm brand growth outcomes.
There is a curious contradiction playing out in business right now.
Spend time speaking with marketers, CEOs and agency leaders and a consistent theme quickly emerges. Confidence is fragile, investment decisions are taking longer, and organisations are becoming increasingly cautious about committing resources to future growth. Economic uncertainty, ongoing cost-of-living pressures and geopolitical instability continue to dominate conversations in boardrooms across Australia, creating an environment in which caution feels not only understandable but responsible.
Yet at the very same time, financial markets appear to be telling a very different story.
Despite many of the same concerns dominating headlines, investors continue to back future growth. The Nasdaq has delivered strong gains over the past year, while the ASX 200 has reached record highs. Investors are clearly not ignoring today’s challenges, but they are making a conscious decision to look beyond them. Their investment decisions are being shaped less by current conditions and more by where they believe businesses, economies and consumers will be in the years ahead.
That contrast raises an important question. If investors are willing to look through uncertainty and invest in the future, why are so many organisations reducing investment in the very activities that help create it?
Over the past year, one of the most noticeable shifts in marketing has been the growing emphasis on certainty. Marketing leaders are under increasing pressure to demonstrate short-term returns, justify every dollar of spend and prove commercial outcomes within increasingly compressed timeframes.
In response, many organisations have shifted investment towards lower-funnel activity, prioritising channels and tactics that can generate immediate and measurable results while reducing investment in longer-term brand building initiatives.
This is not because marketers have suddenly forgotten the importance of brand building. Most marketers understand perfectly well that strong brands create competitive advantage, increase pricing power and generate future demand. The challenge is that marketers are rarely the only voices influencing investment decisions.
Periods of uncertainty naturally change the dynamics within organisations. As confidence falls, decision-making often shifts towards those whose primary responsibility is managing risk and protecting short-term financial performance. CFOs become more influential, boards focus more heavily on annual earnings, and executive teams become increasingly concerned with preserving margins and meeting short-term targets. In that environment, activities that deliver immediate and measurable outcomes inevitably receive greater support than investments whose returns may take years to fully materialise.
From a governance perspective, this makes complete sense. From a growth perspective, it may be creating a problem.
The irony is that the financial markets which ultimately determine enterprise value tend to reward precisely the opposite behaviour. Investors do not buy shares based solely on last quarter’s earnings. They buy shares based on future earnings potential. Share prices reflect expectations about what a company may become, not simply what it is today.
Perhaps the greatest irony in modern business is that external investors often have a longer-term view of a company’s prospects than the company itself.
Warren Buffett’s famous advice to be “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful” captures this principle perfectly. The quote is often viewed through the lens of investing, but at its heart it is really about understanding human behaviour. When uncertainty rises, people become more conservative. They seek reassurance in consensus and become reluctant to make decisions that may appear risky, even when those decisions have the potential to create significant long-term value.
The same dynamic is playing out across marketing.
As confidence declines, organisations are increasingly retreating towards activities that feel safer because they are easier to measure. The challenge is that ease of measurement and strategic value are not always the same thing. Capturing demand from consumers who are already in-market is important, but it is fundamentally different from creating demand among those who are not. One focuses on harvesting existing opportunities while the other focuses on creating future ones.
The danger arises when organisations become so focused on short-term efficiency that they begin sacrificing future growth. It is entirely possible to improve this quarter’s marketing metrics while simultaneously weakening next year’s market position. It is possible to reduce investment, improve short-term profitability and still create a long-term growth problem.
What makes the current environment particularly interesting is that so many organisations appear to be responding in exactly the same way. Across industries, brand investment is being scrutinised, awareness activity is being reduced and marketing strategies are becoming increasingly focused on immediate outcomes. Yet competitive advantage is rarely created by doing the same thing as everyone else.
In fact, if marketers managed investment portfolios the way many organisations currently manage brand budgets, they would likely buy at the top of the market and sell at the bottom.
Investment would increase when confidence is abundant and opportunities are most obvious, only to be reduced when uncertainty creates the greatest potential for future gains.
History suggests that the strongest brands are often built during periods when others are pulling back. When competitors reduce their visibility, your visibility becomes more valuable.
When others focus exclusively on short-term performance, long-term brand investment becomes more effective. When businesses become preoccupied with protecting the present, opportunities emerge for those willing to invest in the future.
None of this is an argument for reckless spending or blind optimism. Every marketing investment should be accountable, and every organisation should remain disciplined in how it allocates capital. However, there is a meaningful difference between improving efficiency and abandoning conviction. There is a difference between reducing waste and reducing ambition.
The brands that emerge strongest from periods of uncertainty are rarely the ones that disappear from view and wait for confidence to return. More often, they are the organisations that recognise uncertainty for what it really is: an opportunity to build future advantage while others are focused on defending today’s position.
Investors seem to understand this instinctively. The question is whether more businesses are prepared to apply the same thinking to marketing.
