Brand and Performance Are Interconnected.
Performance marketing has always been about control via optimizing KPI’s throughout the acquisition funnel. But in 2025, marketers are feeling the edges of that model. Channels are saturated. Costs are volatile. Campaigns that once scaled cleanly now stall or decay.
When results slow, most teams default to retooling the usual variables: creatives, audiences, offers. And in many cases, that still works… until it doesn’t. When the short-term fixes stop delivering, the limiting factor often isn’t the media or the mechanics. It’s the brand. Or more specifically, how the brand is showing up inside the creative.
Performance Teams Can’t Afford to Ignore Brand
The best-performing marketers in 2025 won’t treat brand and performance as separate disciplines. They’ll recognize that a brand with clear positioning and memory in-market makes acquisition more efficient. They’ll prioritize creative that not only converts but also reinforces brand value and differentiates the product in a crowded landscape.
They won’t chase awareness for its own sake. They won’t chase conversions without context.
They’ll build brands that perform. And television will be one of the most effective ways to do it.
Strong Creative Builds Brands. Strong Brands Drive Response.
Many DTC brands have launched on television without widespread awareness and scaled quickly. Not because they were already known, but because their creative built the brand while driving response. Success on TV doesn’t require fame, but it does demand clarity. The creative must make the brand feel relevant, credible, and easy to remember, often in under 30 seconds.
In this context, creative has to do more than look polished. It needs to introduce the brand, deliver the offer, create urgency, and reinforce trust. That’s a heavy lift but it’s the kind of creative TV is built for. The format provides enough time and attention to move beyond a transactional message and into something that builds memory and positioning while still pushing for response.
Television is often underestimated by DTC marketers. It’s dismissed as too broad or too focused on brand to fit a performance model. In practice, though, many of the most effective performance brands have turned to TV early, not as a capstone, but as a catalyst. These brands didn’t wait for name recognition. They used clear, response-driven creative to build it while acquiring customers at scale.
Strong creative can deliver results, especially when the message is rooted in a clear and considered brand rather than just a well-optimized product.
When Response Slows, Brand Clarity Is the Unlock
When ROAS declines and media optimizations start yielding diminishing returns, it’s a signal worth paying attention to. It doesn’t always mean the channel is tapped. More often, it means the campaign is running into brand friction.
That friction might show up as weak post-click behavior, falling engagement, or less efficient retargeting. The common thread is confusion. The audience either doesn’t understand what makes the product different or doesn’t trust the message enough to act. Even a well-placed spot will underperform if the brand promise isn’t landing.
Fixing that doesn’t require a rebrand. It requires performance creative that makes the brand instantly understandable and relevant to the viewer. The spot needs to deliver the “what” and “why now” while reinforcing the “who.” That’s what reduces friction and what lifts performance across the board.
This is the part of performance most teams under-leverage. When the creative fully reflects the brand’s positioning and value, it becomes easier to scale efficiently. Not just on TV, but everywhere that brand memory plays a role in driving conversions.
Television Works When Brand and Performance Align
Television is not a luxury buy. It’s a scale channel that’s misunderstood. For brands with a strong product, a clear offer, and creative that reflects their value, TV becomes a high-leverage acquisition tool. It introduces the brand at speed and scale, builds recognition across high-intent audiences, and drives measurable response.
When the strategy is right, the spot becomes the brand moment. The call-to-action becomes the first conversion. The lift compounds. Performance improves not because of reach alone, but because the message resonates and the brand begins to work upstream.
This is how smart performance teams are thinking about brand in 2025. Not as a side initiative. Not as a tradeoff. But as a system-level improvement to everything from ROAS to retention.
For DTC Brands Focused on Growth, Television Is Underrated
Television works best when you think about it as an awareness and response driver. That’s what unlocks scale without sacrificing efficiency.
If you’re looking to push past the next performance plateau, the answer isn’t always incremental adjustments to dayparting, creative rotation, GRP concentration or spot placement. It might be clarifying the brand. It might be television. And it’s probably both.
