‘The brand line always gets cut first,’ a client once said to me. It’s a statement that many of us know to be true and one that forms the centre of Martin Weigel’s piece.

His argument adds critical, ideological fuel to a debate that we in Australia are losing. The last Effies saw only two submissions awarded for long-term brand building success.

The fact that Weigel frames short-termism as a choice, not a legal or necessary obligation, is crucial. We – in the agency world – risk being seen as hand wringing over the death of our model and/or the long-form advertising format. But the greater risk is that we don’t defend the commercial truth of how we approach healthy brand building. Closer to home, Mark Ritson has screamed the virtuous cycle that emerges when you avoid the tyranny of ‘or’.

And that’s the pain of all this.

The corporation will indeed feed more richly if it pursues both strategies. But often is unable to see beyond the glare of short-term success.

A dual approach requires patience and time, true. While not imperative, a brand will likely deploy up to several communication platforms to make work. Considering how they flow and work together is time that needs to be afforded. It is the very definition of time well spent.

Post-Cannes, clickbait headlines declared the death of creativity because long-term effectiveness was apparently in decline.

I’d argue that the case for creativity has never been stronger. Instead it’s a prevailing commercial culture that is killing its paradoxical gift. A gift we can reprise if we dare to push back. And revert to the core agency skill of – as Bill Bernbach called it – ‘properly practiced creativity’. A business practice that results in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.

Priming. And reminding. 

The long. And the short. 

As Martin concludes, so shall I, ‘Disproportionate and sustained advantage awaits.’