I’m liking what Aakers has to say more and more… he is right on:
The astonishing fact is that most marketing results in no change in sales or profit if you disregard short-term blips. Nearly all marketing budgets are designed to affect brand preference in established categories and subcategories with established competitors. The great majority of these, on average, have no long term sales impact….
…. The implication is that firms should spend less, probably far less, on brand preference competition and more, probably far more, on brand relevance competition, winning by creating new categories or subcategories. That means that more investment is needed on big innovation i.e. those that are substantial or transformational, and less on little or incremental innovation.