More Storytelling, Same Budget? Marketers’ ‘Do More with Less’ Conundrum Continues

Marketers continue to face a familiar conundrum: Do more with less.

Calls from the C-suite have reached a fever pitch over the past year or so, in which marketers are being asked to spin more brand storytelling magic, but without the extra cash to back it up. Those calls have yet to subside all while budgets remain stagnant at best.

In response, some brands, like restaurant chain Sweetgreen and financial services company Northwestern Mutual, are moving budgets as opposed to growing them with an eye toward earned media opportunities and other cost-efficient ways that capture shopper attention without the extra spend. (Neither Sweetgreen nor Northwestern Mutual offered specific budget figures.)

“Marketing functions are all either flat in terms of budget or a little bit reduced. Any CMO should be looking at a budget cut or a flat budget as a positive challenge,” said Lynn Teo, CMO at Northwestern Mutual.

In early September, the financial institution launched a podcast called “A Better Way to Money,” a content marketing play, according to Teo, that shows up as part of its latest marketing campaign and refreshed brand identity for the company.

It’s a similar story for Nathaniel Ru, co-founder and chief brand officer of Sweetgreen. Brand marketing has always been a core function of the restaurant’s strategy, but has become a bigger priority as of late as the company looks to grow and scale. The company is “moving budgets around versus spending more,” Ru said.

Perhaps this speaks to the changing role of marketers, namely CMOs, who are increasingly tasked with balancing performance and storytelling to build and maintain a modern brand. In other words, it’s a matter of bridging the gap between short-term goals, or performance, and long-term goals, like brand building. But without the extra dollars, agency execs say brands need to re-imagine what performance metrics and KPIs look like.

“Brands are now hungry for storytelling, but they’ve gotten used to this re-forecasting exercise where they’re spending the bulk of their media dollars on really ROI-driving pieces of media,” said Jenn Wong, president of MullenLowe West, part of the global MullenLowe agency network.

It could be considered a big ask, especially in the digital age where feedback is instant and return on ad spend is more closely monitored. Brands have to loosen the reins, and be more willing to explore brand marketing channels that aren’t strictly tied to the performance metrics marketers have been holding onto for the last five or six years, she added.

“Every company is going to have different metrics for success. And not all of them actually always translates to sales, which makes it even trickier,” she said.

That said, the ultimate goal seems to be the optimization of media spending rather than bigger budgets, at least until the phrase “economic headwinds” leaves marketers’ lexicon. Or in other words, make do with what marketers have, thinking more creatively about how to tell the brand story well enough to make new customers aware and bring others back into the fold without additional marketing budgets.

“The brands that people really resonate with today are the ones that have a pretty strong point of view. It doesn’t have to be political or it doesn’t have to be serious,” Ru said, adding that the initiatives also don’t have to come with bigger budgets. “It’s just [brands] bring you into [their] world.”

This story was originally published in Digiday.