Prof Byron Sharp’s bid to bring marketers back to the fundamentals of advertising - brand building and growth

Professor Byron Sharp delivered a broadside last week at the Mi3-LinkedIn B2B Next Summit in a bid to bring marketers back to the fundamentals of advertising, brand building and growth. 

Marketers adhering to Les Binet and Peter Field’s formula around brand to performance budget ratios are basing investment decisions on questionable data, according to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute marketing science supremo.

He also said advertisers piling into attention metrics risk being “suckered” and implied that multiple iterations of ads – dynamic creative or otherwise – can weaken memory structures and hinder growth prospects. Going for a full house takedown, Sharp suggested proponents of cross-channel network effects are peddling a “myth” before lauding Professor Mark Ritson… for admitting he was wrong about the nuances of “sophisticated targeting”.