5 Tips To Maximise Your Advertising Budget
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Mumbrella’s Retail Marketing Summit at The Crown in Sydney. I was definitely in the minority as an agency leader amongst a sea of in-house marketers, but I was interested to hear the peer-to-peer content, guidance, and discussion points. Not only are these insights thought-provoking from a personal point of view, but they’re also beneficial when it comes to AW’s current client relationships and new business opportunities. Aside from the beautiful venue and exquisite catering (I certainly didn’t need dinner that evening), one thing really stood out to me.
A theme that cropped up multiple times throughout the day, even in places I wasn’t expecting it to: the value of brand advertising.
- Joanna Robinson, CMO at the Iconic, talked about how a good brand should be both “memorable and measurable” and that companies should never stop storytelling. She warned of the danger of neglecting the top of the funnel (which, when well-nurtured, makes the bottom more efficient anyway), reminding us that campaigns at this level are very much measurable, not to mention crucial for “the sales of tomorrow.”
- Corrina Brazel, Head of Marketing at Wesfarmers Health, took us through how the “heart” needed to be injected back into the Priceline brand and spoke about how good storytelling helps humanise brands and better connects them with audiences.
- Jo Feeney, CMO at Michael Hill, spoke passionately about the re-branding journey she has been on with the company, stating that emotive advertising is better than rational advertising and that “people remember stories, not checklists.”
- Ruth Haffenden, former CMO at Boody, even referenced the importance of brand storytelling in her highly engaging presentation on how big brands can think like challenger brands, advising that the latter don’t get as hung up on where their content should go, focusing instead on “what’s the story worth telling and the idea worth repeating.”
Why, then, are so many brands continuing to shy away from brand advertising?
AW is a fully integrated agency, but with a celebrated brand strategist at its helm, brand strategy and creative have been at the heart of our offering since we first opened our doors in 2012. So we have a very keen and vested interest in this topic.
There is, of course, no singular reason, but almost all of them ladder back to money. Before the pandemic, the likes of SalesForce, social media, and e-commerce had all developed to a sufficient enough level to drive brands towards performance media. During the pandemic, this focus became supercharged as brands were desperate for immediate results to survive the unknown - an attitude that hasn’t fully gone away ever since. Hard, tangible, bottom-of-the-funnel metrics are craved by brand leaders to prove ROI, and while these numbers are vital, they don’t provide the full picture. Budget cuts are something that no agency has been immune from within the last decade or so. With a backdrop of economic uncertainty, continued consumer behaviour changes post-pandemic, and a generally quite dim view of the future (especially amongst younger audiences), brand confidence in spending has taken a huge hit. And there’s no escaping the fact that brand campaigns cost money.
The good news is, all is not lost! Good brand advertising can still be achieved in 2025 - and I cannot stress this enough - without costing the earth. Here are my top five tips on how to achieve this with your strategic/creative agency:
1. Brief them well.
Clearly articulate the problem you’re expecting the brief to solve, what your primary objective is, and if there are any mandatories they should know from the get-go. Provide your brand strategy (see point 4) or have them/your internal teams update it if needed. Give supporting details, but don’t inflict death by a thousand PDFs. Share what is pertinent to the brief, remembering that the more unnecessary documents shared, the more hours agencies will have to spend (and quote!) to read and make sense of them all.
2. Be transparent on what you have to spend and ask your agency how they’d propose this is split between strategy, creative, and production.
Ask for tangible outputs within each of these phases to help with internal comfort levels, and if needed, have this process completed against a gold/silver/bronze level of investment. Don’t assume that a small budget means a bad outcome - you’d be surprised how innovative and resourceful agencies can be when we have parameters to work within. Don’t devalue inputs by intentionally low-balling an already tight budget, and please, I implore you on behalf of all agencies everywhere, don’t not give a budget. It just means we’ll all spend a ton of unnecessary hours going back and forth on scopes of work, trying to figure out what you want and what is feasible.
3. If you have in-house production capability, awesome!
Rather than asking your agency to scope this part of the process, have them pull together a campaign playbook at the end of the creative phase to guide your internal teams on how to execute against the concept. The rising trend of in-house production shows no signs of stopping, so we’ve become a dab hand at these types of documents at AW.
4. Share or develop a sound brand strategy.
It’ll save you so much time and money in the long run, as it acts as an immovable justification point for everything from the creative output to internal decision-making. Be clear on your brand position and ensure it contains a point of differentiation. Agree on distinct values that encapsulate what you stand for, and craft personality traits and tone of voice principles that stem from them. List out your master CVPs, keeping each one single-minded and consumer-centric. Craft genuinely insightful personas, remembering that this doesn’t need to be a convoluted process. It’s just about having the experience and know-how to look beyond the data and demographics and work out what’s really driving people’s intent. This is crucial - you need to properly understand who you’re talking to and what they want from you. Hint: this is often not the same thing as they’ll tell you it is in research.
5. Choose the right agency.
One that respects your budget, is up to the challenge of your brief, and nimble enough to make it happen. One of the benefits of using a smaller agency like AW is that you get all the expertise and output quality with fewer people and processes, meaning more innovative solutions, shorter time frames, and lower costs than the bigger players.
