The Opportunity for Performance Creative with Brand Uplift Goals

In today’s digital landscape, where precision targeting and massive reach are at advertisers’ fingertips, a new hybrid approach to marketing has emerged, often called “performance branding” or “full-funnel marketing.” This approach blends the strengths of performance marketing, which focuses on data-driven optimisation and accountability, with brand marketing, which is rooted in strong creative and emotional resonance. For agencies and creative teams, this presents a unique opportunity: to specialise in performance creative that not only drives conversions but also enhances brand metrics.

Why the Opportunity Exists

Over the past few years, the cost of customer acquisition has risen significantly. Factors like audience saturation, increased competition in auction-based ad platforms, and market fragmentation have led to higher customer acquisition costs for performance-focused campaigns. In response, marketers are realising that a strong brand presence can amplify performance. If users trust and recognise a brand, they are more likely to click on its ads and convert. As one head of growth put it, “Customers buy on trust, if they see a brand wrapped around a performance ad, they will be more likely to purchase.” This convergence of performance and brand marketing means that creative agencies can no longer separate “brand ads” from “direct-response ads.” Instead, integrated strategies that serve both objectives, immediate conversion goals and long-term brand lift, are essential.

Some creative agencies have capitalised on this shift, carving out niches as "performance creative specialists." These agencies apply the rapid testing mentality of performance marketing to high-quality creative production. They create ads, banners, and social content that meet direct-response best practices without sacrificing the brand’s voice and design.

What These Agencies Do

Agencies that focus on performance creative typically:

• Work closely with media teams: They collaborate with media buying teams to ground creative decisions in data. By reviewing performance reports, these agencies identify emotional angles, visuals, and messages that resonate best with audiences, then refine the creative to optimise performance.

  
  

• Develop modular creative assets: These agencies produce a core piece of creative (like a brand video) and then create variations with different calls-to-action (CTAs), hooks, or formats. This allows for testing different approaches across performance campaigns while maintaining the brand’s identity.

  
  

• Embrace iterative creative processes: Agencies run multiple creative concepts and let the audience “vote with their clicks” to identify the best performers. This is similar to A/B testing but applied to things like narrative style, imagery, or taglines, ensuring that even low-cost variations maintain high-quality, on-brand standards.

  
  

• Measure both performance and brand outcomes: These agencies track conversion metrics but also include brand lift studies, awareness metrics, or sentiment analysis in their reporting. Success is measured not just in sales but also in increased brand recall and customer trust.

  
  

• Employ cross-disciplinary teams: These agencies often have creative directors, copywriters, and designers working alongside data analysts or media strategists. This ensures that creative decisions are informed by performance data, and performance strategies are aligned with the creative vision.

  
  

Why This Matters

The rise of performance creative highlights the importance of blending creativity with data-driven strategies. Mark Ritson, a respected marketing professor, stresses that marketing must “create and capture demand” by building both brand and driving sales. This philosophy is evident in the success of performance branding, which integrates creative storytelling with measurable performance outcomes. A recent study by VidMob found that incorporating brand elements, such as consistent colours, logos, and emotional storytelling, into performance ads can boost conversion efficiency by making the ads more engaging while remaining persuasive.

This integrated approach also benefits advertisers by linking traditionally separate metrics, such as attention (how long an ad is viewed) and conversion likelihood. These metrics now serve as common success indicators, reflecting both brand and performance success in a single ad campaign.

How Agencies Can Capitalise

To succeed in this space, agencies should:

• Offer performance testing as part of creative development: This involves producing multiple variations of a creative concept and using a small portion of the budget to test which variations perform best before rolling out the campaign at scale.

  
  

• Maintain brand guardianship: Even in performance-driven ads, it’s important to adhere to brand guidelines to ensure that brand equity is not compromised in the pursuit of conversions.

  
  

• Educate clients on new metrics: Agencies should introduce KPIs like Cost Per Brand Lift Point (CPLP) or Blended ROI, which account for the future value of the brand, as well as immediate performance results.

  
  

• Showcase case studies: Highlight successful campaigns that improved both performance metrics (e.g., lower CPA) and brand metrics (e.g., increased brand favourability). This proves the value of performance creative and reinforces its long-term benefits.

  
  

Conclusion

Agencies that can blend the art of creative storytelling with the science of performance marketing will set themselves apart in today’s competitive landscape. As the line between performance and brand marketing continues to blur, producing ads that achieve both immediate sales and long-term brand recognition will become the gold standard. Agencies, like Deviceful, that embrace performance creative are in a strong position to not only meet today’s marketing challenges but also lead the way in the future of integrated marketing strategies.