'We have over-optimized everything': The pendulum swings back to brand-building at ANA Masters of Marketing

A major beverage brand recently made a surprising discovery after looking back at three years of marketing strategy — its two most successful brand-building plays that led to sales uplift were its legacy ad campaign and handing out free drinks at events. 'The problem is that neither of those are easily measurable in the span of a business quarter,' Ben Harms, chief growth officer at Havas Play's Archrival, said at this week's ANA Masters of Marketing conference in Orlando. And therein lies the dilemma that many advertisers face: the pressures of quarterly reporting and accountability to the CFO impact how the brand is built. Short-term metrics make it easier to show 'proof' its ads are working, but historically the top brands have been developed through storytelling. In Orlando, many leaders believe the pendulum is swinging back towards brand marketing over performance. 'We have over-optimized everything,' Harms told The Current. 'Performance marketing took the soul out of storytelling … all of that is still really helpful, but it lost the plot [that] great brand-building is about emotional connectivity and really cutting through.' More brands are realizing they must rebuild their brand in a meaningful way after spending so much on performance, according to Harms: 'Otherwise [they] are just in the noise with everybody else.' Havas Media Networks' head of investment and activation, Holly Dunn, echoed this sentiment, adding '[Those brands] may have high conversion and sales for a window, but the repeatability of that is limited.' Brand-building is a top CMO priority McKinsey's state of marketing report found that brand-building was the top priority for CMOs in 2026. And a recent report from Havas that surveyed 87,500 people and over 2,400 brands found that 84% of brands are undifferentiated. The brands that do create an attachment to their audience are 240% more likely to grow. 'The challenge that I see from an investment perspective is that a lot of brands have optimized towards performance channels, which is great. Things like 1-to-1 targeting and driving signal,' Dunn told The Current. 'But it doesn't create that groundswell of massive reach that accumulates in a short period of time, like traditional television or CTV does. So I think brands are starting to swing back a little bit towards more traditional channels.' Most importantly, Dunn said the omnichannel collection of those channels working together delivers results over any one channel in particular. 'People are obsessed with finding the next thing that's just going to give them a bullet-proof case,' Harms said. 'We actually have a lot of great data. What we actually need isn't more data. What we need are marketers with conviction and belief.' For years, marketers have been trying to make those top-of-funnel, brand-building tactics easier to measure. TV and streaming players operationalizing outcomes has been one of 2026's biggest themes across advertising. 'Even for a brand like Coca-Cola, one of the most recognizable in the world, it can be tough to quantify how short-term media buys translate to its long-term brand,' David Fogarty, executive vice president of data excellence and privacy at the ANA, told The Current. The hope is that AI accelerates measurement practices to influence investment decisions in real time, if the platforms brands are advertising on are transparent with their data. In practice, though, that's not always the case. And fragmented data privacy laws state-to-state only complicate matters. 'What I learned at Meta [was] you can't grade your own homework,' Kantar's Chief Client Officer, Alvin Bowles — who spent almost a decade at Meta — told The Current. 'Telling somebody that an advertising platform or a message works is impossible if you don't have third-party validation.'