Growth

Myth:Small brands can win by being unusually loyal.

Evidence:Double jeopardy: smaller brands have both fewer buyers and slightly lower loyalty — an empirical law observed across categories and decades.

Myth:Performance marketing should get the majority of budget.

Evidence:Across hundreds of IPA case studies, roughly 60% brand / 40% activation maximises long-term profit growth in consumer categories.

Myth:TV's ROI estimates justify current spend levels.

Evidence:Estimating elasticities and ROI across 288 brands, Shapiro, Hitsch & Tuchman find ad elasticities far smaller than the published literature suggests, negative ROI at the margin for more than 80% of brands, and positive overall ROI for only about a third.

Myth:If ads don't move this week's sales, they didn't work.

Evidence:Across 751 short-term and 402 long-term elasticities from 56 studies (1960-2008), the average short-term advertising elasticity is 0.12 - but the mean long-term elasticity is 0.24, double the short-term, through carryover.

Myth:Targeting and media buying determine campaign outcomes.

Evidence:Creative quality accounts for roughly half of advertising-driven sales variance — a larger share than any single media variable.