Mobile Gaming
Mind the Gap: What The Multiplier Effect Means for Marketers Today
Real campaigns. Real attention. Real results.
WARC’s recent paper, The Multiplier Effect, brings sharp focus to what many marketers have suspected for years: that this over-reliance on short-term performance marketing has created an imbalance – one that’s eroding effectiveness, diminishing returns, and ultimately compromising brand growth.
The Performance Doom Loop
At the heart of this is what’s now known as the Performance Doom Loop:
- Brands chase quick wins through performance media.
- They optimize for conversions and cut brand-building investment.
- Mental availability declines and growth stagnates.
- So they double down again on performance, expecting different results.
- And the loop repeats.
The data is staggering. Brands that over-invest in performance marketing see revenue declines of 20–50%, while those that rebalance investment across both brand and performance increase total revenue by a median of 90%.
Yet many brands remain trapped in short-termism, prioritising return on ad spend over true effectiveness. Why? Because performance marketing delivers immediate, measurable results. But here’s the catch: only 5–15% of consumers are in-market at any given time. If you only speak to today’s buyers, you’re missing the 85% who aren’t ready yet, but will be.
The Real Multiplier
This is where The Multiplier Effect delivers its most powerful insight:
The brands that win are those that reach everyone – light buyers, heavy buyers, and future buyers – with memorable, resonant, emotional brand building, while also capturing current demand with relevant and useful performance creative.
And here’s the nuance many marketers miss:
This isn’t about brand vs. performance. It’s about making your media work double duty. The most effective marketers aren’t choosing between the long or the short — they’re planning for both, creatively and commercially.
By balancing your strategy across long-term brand building and short-term performance, you unlock what WARC calls the multiplier effect – the exponential gains that come from media synergy. This is the key to sustainable growth in today’s cluttered, fragmented landscape.
So, what now?
We need to rethink how we define effectiveness.
We need to stop optimising for what works today at the cost of what builds tomorrow.
And we need to remember: advertising isn’t just a sales tool. It’s a growth engine.
When we fuel it correctly – across brand and performance – we see results that compound, not just convert.
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