Performance Marketing Won’t Build Your Legacy

Muhammad Al Nabhan
Jul 9
2 min read

In today’s marketing world, the funnel is tilted — and not in a good way.

Everyone’s chasing metrics:

📉 Lower CAC (customer acquisition costs.)

⚡️ Higher ROAS (Return on ads spend.)

📊 Better CPAs (Cost per Acquisition)

Sure, it feels good to see real-time results. But here’s the hard truth:

Performance campaigns can win you clicks. Brand building wins you markets.

🚨 What Happens When You Over-Optimize

Take Nike, one of the world’s most iconic brands. In recent years, they cut back on brand-building and doubled down on digital performance. The results?

U.S. consumer preference dropped by 6%
$1.3B in lost revenue (Q1 2025 YoY)
Excess inventory ballooned to $10B
Brand love? Fading.

Even former Nike execs admitted: “We shifted from brand-enhancing to sales-activating.” And it cost them.

Now? They’re reversing course — bringing back athlete storytelling and emotional narratives. Why? Because performance-only doesn’t perform forever.

✨ And Then There's Airbnb

In contrast, Airbnb did the opposite.

After COVID, they slashed performance marketing and doubled down on brand. They focused on:

Story-driven campaigns like “Made Possible by Hosts”
Product-focused storytelling (Rooms, Categories, Host Passport)
Cultural relevance (Barbie Dreamhouse, Icons campaign)

The payoff?

Direct traffic surged
Bookings rose without heavy ad spend
Q2 2023: $650M in profit and an 18% revenue increase
Performance spend down 44%, brand investment up 119%

CMO Hiroki Asai summed it up:

“Performance marketing made us lose control of our own narrative.”

They rebuilt trust and recall by treating advertising as education, not just conversion.

🔁 The Funnel Needs Balance

It’s not performance vs. brand — it’s performance powered by brand.

Think of it like this:

Top of Funnel	Bottom of Funnel
Brand stories	Performance ads
Memory	Action
Trust	Transactions

Great brands like Apple, Airbnb, and now Nike (again) know that if you don’t invest in the top, the bottom eventually dries up.

💬Summary

Clicks don’t equal customers
Short-term performance can cannibalize long-term equity
Brand-first companies outperform when the market shifts
The future belongs to brands that connect emotionally, consistently, and creatively

👋 If you’re looking to future-proof your brand — not just your next quarter — we should talk. Let’s build something that lasts. Reach out to info@garage366.com and lets have a chat.

Source: GoTrackSuit thedrum