“Short-termism is always going to exist,” Peel says. “But what we’re trying to do is to make sure that while we’re doing that we also look after the long-term health of the brand and know that behind those short-term deliveries, the brand is the one that ultimately delivers against them.”

Like many publicly-listed companies that have to deliver quarterly earnings to shareholders, the pressure to perform means the bulk of Adidas’s spend is going on short-term activations.

This is something Adidas is looking to redress, with the media function trying to “push the 60/40 rule” – the optimum ratio of long-term brand building versus short-term sales activation according to work by Peter Field and Les Binet – as a base across all its markets.

“We’re gradually beginning to invest much more in our brand,” Peel says. “As we’ve done that it’s correlated with our growth. I don’t think it’s necessarily been the cause of it; it’s representative of a new way of thinking within the organisation which is about brand desire and looking after the long-term health of the brand.”

Peel believes it is a combination of legacy infrastructure and siloed KPIs, meaning teams often aren’t focused on the same outcomes, which have made it difficult to find the right balance in the past.

Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.marketingweek.com