The Patience Deficit

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Today’s marketers have a big problem. It’s not AI coming for our jobs. It’s not a budget shortage or an attribution reckoning. It’s an inability to wait. In a world demanding we do more with less and driven by instant results, the most valuable marketing skill is increasingly overlooked: Patience.

Patience is the foundation of great marketing. It allows ideas to flourish, brands to mature, and strategies to deliver on their full potential. But stressed marketers, under relentless pressure to perform, often focus on short-term wins at the expense of long-term growth. Non-marketing leaders — whose decisions usually drive budgets and expectations — tend to have no tolerance whatsoever when you tell them you think a strategy needs a little more time to fully pan out.

So we find ourselves stuck in cycle of short-termism, eroding the effectiveness of marketing and stifling the potential of brands.

What is Driving the Patience Deficit?

Les Binet and Peter Field, in their groundbreaking research The Long and the Short of It, showed that most marketing efforts deliver optimal returns only after two to three years. Despite this, many campaigns are judged by their first few weeks or months, leading to premature adjustments or outright abandonment.

Data is partially to blame. When marketers and finance teams started getting more data they started pouring more money into whatever efforts were showing strong and immediate returns. Before retail store scanners were implemented universally in the 80s, marketers would have to wait months to get sales numbers and matching those numbers up to promotions was time consuming and unreliable.

Scanners changed everything. According to various sources, from 1978 to 2001 trade promotion spending increased from 33% to 61% of firms’ marketing budgets. In the same time period, advertising spending fell from 40% to 24% of marketing expenditures during this period.

The shift has only exacerbated since the proliferation of digital and social data.

Is the C-Suite Smarter Than a Preschooler?

The famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment explains the psychological principle at the heart of the patience deficit. Kids were offered a choice: one marshmallow now, or two marshmallows if they waited for a short time (about 15 minutes).

The researches left the room. Leaving the child alone with one marshmallow sitting on a table.

Many children at the marshmallow right away.

But the ones who waited tended to have better outcomes later in life. They had higher SAT scores, did better in school, and even had healthier body weights as adults.

An ability to control their desire for instant gratification and be rewarded for their patience is a lesson many marketers and most of the c-suite hasn’t learned. Since our ability to measure everything and watch revenue go up or down quarter-to-quarter, our patience has worn paper thin.

The Role of Patience in Marketing Success

Long & Short

The tension between long-term brand building and short-term activation is at the heart of the patience deficit. Brand-building campaigns — those that increase awareness, mental availability, and emotional affinity — are designed to deliver cumulative returns over time that pay off later (2 marshmallows). By contrast, short-term tactics like sales promotions or performance marketing drive immediate spikes in metrics like conversions or click-through rates, and the revenue from these activities is collected immediately and easily tracked and attributed.

The long and short games are both absolutely essential. They are not in competition, they are a symbiotic, or more specifically, a mutualistic relationship.

The problem is that short-term wins can easily cannibalize long-term gains. Deep discounts, for example, may boost sales today but erode brand equity tomorrow. Brands that prioritize immediate results risk losing relevance in the long run.

Kantar’s BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands consistently shows that strong brands—those that invest in long-term strategies—outperform weaker brands in financial performance. These companies understand that the value of a brand is built slowly, like compounding interest.

Patience as a Competitive Advantage

Patience isn’t just a virtue in marketing; it’s a competitive advantage. In a world where most businesses are stuck in short-term cycles, brands that commit to long-term thinking can stand out.

Consider Patagonia’s "Don’t Buy This Jacket" campaign. This counterintuitive messaging wasn’t designed to drive immediate sales but to deepen the brand’s commitment to sustainability. Over time, it reinforced customer loyalty and boosted the brand’s mental availability.

The Implications of the Patience Deficit

For Marketers

The pressure to deliver immediate results has created a culture of burnout and creative stagnation. Marketers are stuck in cycles of constant optimization, where the success of a campaign is reduced to metrics like ROAS, sales, or CTR. These metrics, while useful in the short term, are poor proxies for long-term success.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s research on "mental and physical availability" underscores the importance of building memory structures in consumers’ minds. This process, which drives brand growth, requires consistent investment over years—not weeks.

For Non-Marketing Leaders

Non-marketing leaders often exacerbate the patience deficit. Without a clear understanding of how marketing works, they demand immediate ROI, cutting budgets for initiatives that don’t deliver instant gratification. This short-sightedness undermines marketing’s strategic potential.

Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G, addressed this issue by championing a balance between short-term precision marketing and long-term brand-building efforts. By focusing on fewer, better ads, P&G reestablished the importance of patience in its marketing strategy.

How to Cultivate Patience in Marketing

Educate and Advocate

Marketers need to educate their stakeholders on the value of long-term strategies. Presenting evidence-based frameworks, like Binet and Field’s "60/40 Rule," can help bridge the gap. This rule recommends allocating 60% of budgets to brand-building and 40% to sales activation, ensuring a balance between long and short-term goals.

Balance Metrics

Track both immediate KPIs (like conversions) and long-term indicators (like brand health measured through awareness, salience, and/or NPS). This dual approach provides a more holistic view of success and makes it easier to justify patience-driven strategies.

Shift Mindsets

Marketing is often the only department within an organization with an ROI mandate. No one questions the return on investment of the finance department. Encourage leadership to think of marketing investments more like R&D. Just like a pharmaceutical company investing years into developing a single drug, brands must nurture their identity and relationships over time.

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