Should brand and performance marketing budgets be merged? As marketers face growing pressure to prove the impact of every dirham spent, the traditional divide between long-term brand building and short-term performance is being questioned. Campaign Middle East asked industry experts whether the two should share one budget, or remain separate but strategically connected.

The answers were all divided. Here’s what each one of them had to say.

Mohamed Shaheer
Founder & CEO, Captizone Media

NO

Brand and performance marketing use different creatives, target different audiences and serve different purposes, so their budgets should be allocated differently. Investing more in branding builds trust, recognition and long-term customer preference, which makes performance marketing more effective over time. Look at many of the top brands around us; we rarely see them relying heavily on direct performance campaigns because their brand itself creates demand. As brand strength grows, the line between brand and performance naturally starts to blur, eventually reaching a point where strict budget separation becomes less necessary.

Ana Elisa Seixas
Head of Marketing, Middle East, Africa and India, New Balance

YES

Yes, yes and yes. Hopefully it is clear where I stand on this one. It’s important to see marketing budgets the same way you look at a creative brief; it’s all about storytelling and taking the customer on a journey. It’s about seeing the budget allocation as a funnel allocation exercise – and you spread a bit of budget along the way. Too much in the upper funnel and you miss out on conversions and too much at the bottom and the customer easily gets saturated. So, you have to find that delicate balance between brand awareness/demand generation and conversion.  But it’s not just about budget; these conversations need to go hand in hand across the planning, execution and reporting phases too.

Trevor D’Souza
Investment Director, Radix MENA

NO

Brand and performance sit at opposite ends of the same funnel, and collapsing their budgets erodes both. Brand spend builds the mental availability and trust that lowers acquisition cost tomorrow; performance spend converts the demand that’s already been created today. Merge the two and short-term, easily attributed performance wins will always cannibalise the long-term brand investment, because performance shows an immediate ROI story while brand doesn’t. The smarter approach isn’t one budget; it’s two disciplined ones, planned together, measured differently and constantly feeding into each other. Separate funnels, shared strategy, that’s how sustainable growth compounds.

Dzila Dik
Senior Brand Marketing Manager, Kids & Masterbrand Marketing MEA, LEGO

NO

The moment budgets are merged, performance marketing takes over by default, because its results are immediate and easy to measure, while brand-building pays off slowly and is harder to prove in a single quarter. But that is precisely what erodes long-term brand health. Brand and performance marketing serve the same ultimate purpose, just at two different speeds. Brand builds mental availability that makes people receptive to buying in the first place; performance converts that receptivity into an immediate sale. They are not rivals fighting for the same budget; they work together as teammates, each doing a job the other can’t, and that’s why they need separate, protected budgets rather than one pooled fund. The bigger question is: what’s the right balance?

Dvija Pandya
Senior Account Manager, Adapts Media

NO

Brand and performance work differently, so they need separate budgets. Performance marketing is about quick wins: clicks, sales, leads you can measure right away. Brand marketing builds awareness and trust over time, and its results take longer to show. If you mix the two budgets, performance always looks like it’s winning because its results are easy to see fast, so brand spending quietly gets cut. But without brand awareness, performance simply doesn’t work: if people don’t know your brand, why would they trust it enough to buy? Keeping budgets separate protects both trust and long-term growth.

Mahmoud Alhamed
Head of Performance, Serviceplan Middle East

YES

Brand and performance should stop competing for budget because the customer journey is now interconnected. Brand builds awareness, trust, and future demand, while performance converts that demand into measurable results. As AI increasingly shapes how consumers discover and evaluate brands, brand equity is becoming a direct driver of performance, shaping AI recommendations, click-through rates and conversion rates. Marketers should align both under one growth strategy with shared objectives, even if budgets stay separate for planning and measurement. In the AI era, growth belongs to brands that build demand and convert it as one system, not two.

Firas Wahbeh
Chief Brand & Strategy Officer, BEEAH

NO

In my experience, brand and performance marketing operate on different timelines and serve different objectives, and collapsing their budgets risks starving long-term brand equity in favour of short-term, easily measurable performance wins. Performance channels offer immediate, attributable ROI, which tempts finance teams to redirect spend away from brand building whenever budgets tighten. But brand investment compounds over years, driving the awareness and trust that make performance campaigns efficient in the first place. Ring-fencing brand budgets protects against short-termism. The two disciplines should be integrated strategically and measured with complementary metrics, but keeping distinct budget lines ensures neither cannibalises the other under pressure.

Wassim Derbi
Head of Marketing and Brand Communication, Hyundai UAE and Genesis UAE

YES

Because both contribute to the same commercial objective: sustainable business growth. Rather than asking how much to allocate to each, the focus should be on how they work together across the customer journey. Brand creates demand, while performance captures it. Consumers are digitally connected, moving seamlessly between social media, e-commerce, physical retail and messaging platforms before making a purchase. Purchasing decisions are also influenced by trust, reputation and cultural relevance as much as price or promotions. Without consistent investment in brand equity, performance campaigns become increasingly expensive and less effective over time. That said, maintaining separate budget categories internally is still good governance. It provides stakeholders with transparency on where investments are being made and how different activities contribute to business objectives; however, these categories should not create strategic silos.

Every marketing investment – regardless of whether it is labelled as brand or performance – should ultimately be evaluated against tangible business outcomes. A unified planning and measurement approach enables marketers to optimise spending based on business goals and customer lifetime value, ensuring every dirham invested delivers measurable value to stakeholders while supporting both short-term growth and long-term brand strength.  Not to mention, campaigns should also never exist in isolation. Every campaign launch should be designed as part of a broader marketing strategy with clearly defined business objectives. Tactical activities may deliver short-term metrics, but without a strategic framework, they often fail to create lasting value. By aligning every campaign with the brand’s long-term vision, customer journey and commercial goals, marketers can ensure that individual initiatives contribute to measurable business outcomes rather than simply delivering isolated campaign results.

Tony Farah
General Manager, Clickon Group

YES

Brand and performance should no longer be treated as separate investments. They are two sides of the same growth strategy. Brand marketing creates awareness, trust and long-term preference. Performance marketing converts that demand into measurable business results. When budgets are split, teams often end up working towards different objectives instead of a shared business goal. The most effective marketers integrate both disciplines, using brand to strengthen performance and performance data to refine brand strategy. Together, they drive stronger customer acquisition, higher loyalty and more sustainable growth.

Kim Mascarenhas
Associate Vice President – Insights & Analytics, WPP Media MENA

YES

Consumers don’t think in ‘brand’ versus ‘performance’; they just buy. Their journey is fluid, and strategies should mirror that. Combining these budgets lets marketers optimise for the ultimate business goal – revenue and market share – in real time. And having agile, always-on tracking of both brand health and sales performance shows exactly where to shift support. WPP Media and Oxford University’s study, ‘How Humans Decide’, supports this. 86 per cent of consumers choose brands they’re already primed toward, so performance budgets fight for just the remaining 14 per cent. To stay relevant, marketers must merge budgets, ensuring today’s short-term tactics also build tomorrow’s long-term growth.

Mai Cheblak
Head of Corporate Marketing, Consumer Education and Awareness, Emirates NBD

YES

Brand and performance should no longer be viewed as separate investments. In today’s highly competitive environment, brand budgets must be strategically invested to communicate what truly differentiates an organisation. At Emirates NBD, initiatives such as financial wellbeing and United Against Fraud go beyond product marketing; they demonstrate the bank’s commitment to creating positive social impact and serving a broader purpose. These campaigns build trust, credibility, and emotional connection, making customers more likely to engage with the brand and respond to performance-driven campaigns. When brand purpose and performance work together, they reinforce one another, delivering stronger commercial results while building long-term customer loyalty and sustainable growth.