The short term versus long term argument rumbles on. 2021 is the year where marketers should chase a smart balance of the two for the best outcomes.

David Ogilvy famously said, “If it doesn’t sell, it isn’t creative.” But in this age of short-termism, advertising doesn’t have to be highly creative to sell as long as your data-targeting is accurate.

Les Binet argues that trying to activate in the short term and invest in the long term simultaneously can tend towards doing both things badly. The surface implication is that a binary choice must be made. So, when deep dive data offers a shorthand to successful brand activations, surely few marketers are immune to the temptation of a quick hit.

But what came before deep dive data? Advertising went on guts, creativity and taste, leading and reflecting culture. Ads often used humour and storytelling to land a message that appealed to the system 1 brain - the artistic, instinctual part that enjoys unpredictability and creativity.

The storytelling deficit

In recent years, data has brought substance to the hunch or feeling: logic in irrefutable black and white. But instead of complementing creativity, the numbers have often supplanted the ‘creative hunch’. As Orlando Wood, author of Lemon argues, we’re now in a storytelling deficit, replaced by instructive and mechanistic advertising that is timely and relevant, but lacks entertaining or surprising features that can hold attention.

Back to Les Binet and that apparent binary choice between short and long term strategies (or logic versus guts). Here’s the thing: it’s a myth of modern day marketing that you have to choose. Plan effectively in the long term then activate efficiently along that timeline.

Southpaw Strategy Director Niki Macartney uses the analogy of needing both a short-term sugar hit and a baseline of carbs to keep a brand in good health.

Similarly, Mark Ritson terms it ‘bothism’. He explains: “If you know anything about marketing you will know that there is an enormous need for Bothism in our discipline right now. We are riven by so many contradictory and combative points of view, most of which would prove more powerful if wrangled into combination rather than opposition.”

The irony is that Binet and Field’s work never pitted one against the other. It was always ‘long and short’, with the emphasis on the ‘and’. But that point seems to have been lost in the thrill of argument.

Updated Field research shows equilibrium is beginning to emerge but achieving balance in 2021 might be trickier than we think.