Was the Shift to Digital Just a One-Way Slide Down the Funnel?

Last year, I mentored ten media professionals at Campaign APAC's MediaWorks event. Smart, ambitious individuals from Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Singapore, Indonesia and Korea.

Not a single one had ever worked on a brand campaign. The Standard Chartered brief at that event was their first.  They loved it.

Why had their 5-6 year careers given them no opportunity to work on a Brand campaign?  How did we get here?  I have a theory….

Over the past 15 years, the industry shifted the majority of spend into digital channels. With that shift came teams, tools and incentives built around these channels.  With that came an inevitable shift to campaign objectives that favour these channels:

Go Digital. Go Straight to the Bottom of the Funnel. Do Not Collect $200.

We didn't consciously choose Performance over Brand. We chose channels that were structurally optimised for performance - and our objectives followed. The tail started wagging the dog.

Search captures intent that already exists. Social optimises for instant reactions in scrolling feeds. Programmatic chases behavioural signals and short-term conversions. None of these create the conditions brand building relies on: sustained attention, emotional resonance, cultural reach.

And once that's where the budgets lived, that's where the careers were built. The ten planners I met in Bangkok weren't exceptions. They were the logical output of the system.

Don't let channel choices dictate your objectives. Choose the channels that make your objectives possible.

#MediaStrategy #BrandBuilding #AdvertisingEffectiveness #MediaPlanning