It is one of the most common questions in marketing, and one of the most poorly answered.
How much budget should go to brand?
The usual move is to reach for a rule of thumb, quote a ratio and move on. Those frameworks can be useful, but the better answer is more strategic than formulaic.
There is no single split that suits every business.
What matters is whether the budget reflects what the business is trying to achieve, how mature the brand is, how much awareness already exists, how competitive the market is, and whether current investment is skewed too heavily towards short-term harvest at the expense of future demand.
That is the real risk.
When businesses overfund short-term activation, it can feel efficient for a while. Results come through quickly. Reporting looks neat. Spend feels accountable. But if brand investment is continually deprioritised, the business can become too dependent on ever-harder, ever-more-expensive demand capture.
Brand investment exists to offset that risk. It helps build memory, salience, trust, and preference. It improves the odds that future customers will recognise and choose the brand more easily. It can also improve pricing confidence and reduce the pressure to compete purely through tactical conversion.
So the smarter question is not brand versus performance.
It is whether the budget is funding growth properly, now and later.
Key definitions
Distinctive brand assets: The specific visual and sensory elements that consumers associate with a brand without needing to see its name or logo. In FMCG and beverage, these typically include a signature colour, a distinctive shape, a recurring character or icon, a proprietary typeface or a specific structural packaging element.
Shelf standout: The ability of a product’s packaging to be noticed and correctly identified within the first one to three seconds of a shopper scanning a retail fixture. Achieved through colour contrast against the competitive set, distinctive structural or graphic assets and clear information hierarchy.
Visual Attention Software (VAS): AI-powered eye-tracking technology that predicts where consumers will look first on a pack, shelf or advertisement before physical consumer testing. The 3M Visual Attention Service predicts first-fixation patterns with up to 92% accuracy against human eye-tracking studies.
Mental availability: The ease with which a brand is recalled when a buyer enters the purchase category. In FMCG, built through consistent deployment of distinctive visual assets across all packaging and marketing touchpoints.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much budget should go to brand marketing?
There is no universal ratio, but most businesses need meaningful investment in both short-term demand capture and long-term demand creation.
What is the 60/40 rule?
It is a commonly cited effectiveness guideline suggesting many brands benefit from spending roughly 60% on long-term brand building and 40% on short-term activation, though the right split depends on context.
What is future demand?
Future demand refers to people who are not ready to buy now but may enter the category later. Brand investment helps make the business easier to recall and choose when that happens.
When should a business increase brand investment?
Usually when awareness is low, the brand is overly reliant on short-term performance activity, pricing pressure is rising or growth has started to plateau.
Should more of my budget go to brand or performance?
It depends on category, maturity and current awareness, but long-term growth usually needs both demand capture and demand creation. Over-investing in one at the expense of the other creates risk.
Soucres:
IPA / Binet & Field, The Long and the Short of It.
WARC, The Multiplier Effect Report. Nielsen, The full-funnel advantage.
Google and Kantar on brand equity and pricing power.