The Full Story is ThinkStory’s monthly newsletter that delivers the complete marketing breakdown that South African businesses need to make confident, informed decisions.
This month, we're exploring key insights that transform how businesses approach marketing:
Brand building drives long-term growth – Research shows the optimal 60/40 split between brand investment and performance marketing.
Lessons from LeaderEx Sandton – South Africa's largest business gathering revealed why the long and short of marketing must work together.
Training AI tools for authenticity – Transform generic AI output into content that sounds genuinely like your brand.
Sora 2 reshapes creative possibilities – OpenAI's latest tool democratises video creation for businesses of all sizes.
60%
of marketing spend should go to brand building, 40% to performance – according to the IPA's landmark research.
Why Brand Building Wins Long-Term
Performance marketing fills the pipeline today. But brand building is what keeps it full tomorrow.
The research is clear: According to the IPA's "The Long and the Short of It", brands that allocate 60% to brand building and 40% to performance marketing see significantly greater long-term growth¹. Emotional brand campaigns are twice as likely to drive large profit gains as rational, sales-driven ones².
The reality of short-term thinking: A shift towards short-term activation has led to a 10-point drop in campaign effectiveness since 2006, due to underinvestment in brand-building³. Brand-focused advertising contributes more to long-term sales growth, with effects enduring for years, whilst activation produces quick spikes that fade.
In South Africa's competitive market, being the brand people think of first is worth more than any single campaign win.
LeaderEx Sandton: Where Theory Meets Practice
Last month at LeaderEx 2025, South Africa's largest gathering of business leaders (9-12 September, Sandton), we attended a standout workshop on "It’s Both/And Not Either Or: The Long & The Short" hosted by Halo and Heidibeee & Co.
The insight: Most businesses fall into the trap of focusing exclusively on either immediate performance metrics or long-term brand building. The workshop demonstrated why integration matters: performance marketing delivers short-term results, whilst brand building creates sustained value.
Beyond formal sessions, real insights emerged in conversations with business owners. Many faced familiar challenges – unclear messaging, websites that don't convert, marketing efforts that fail to communicate true value. These conversations reinforced that clear communication and transparent partnerships address real market needs.
Whether discussing AI, marketing, finance, or leadership, common threads emerged across LeaderEx: clear communication, digital transformation, and authentic relationships drive success.
Training Your AI Tools: Better Output Starts With Better Instructions
Most businesses use AI tools straight out of the box. That's leaving value on the table.
Generic AI content versus authentic brand messaging comes down to training. Every tool (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity) has an instructions section where you teach the tool about your brand, voice, and values.
What to include: Brand voice guidelines (conversational, jargon-free, warm), forbidden words and phrases, target audience challenges, industry terminology, and examples of your best content.
AI trained on your brand produces content needing minimal editing, maintains consistency across platforms, and sounds authentic rather than artificially generic.
If you're interested in training your AI tool properly, contact us to discuss developing custom instructions that transform generic AI output into content that genuinely sounds like your business. The investment saves hours of editing time from day one.
Sora 2: The Creative Industry's Moment
OpenAI released Sora 2 on 30 September 2025⁴, marking what the research team calls "the GPT-1 moment for video generation" – a significant leap in creative capability.
The tool now generates realistic video clips with simultaneously generated audio (dialogue in multiple languages, sound effects, soundscapes) from text prompts. It handles complex physics, tells longer, coherent clips in one generation⁴.
We've worked with Sora 2 Pro on several projects now and its incredibly impressive. But it does require a significant amount of effort spent building quality story, scripts, storyboarding, structuring and prompting in order to get output that is good enough for professional use. If you're going to allocate resources to these sorts of platforms, work with a team who knows how to get the most of out them.”
What this means: Video production traditionally required cameras, crews, locations, and budgets. Sora 2 generates professional clips in minutes. Filmmakers mock up storyboards instantly. Marketers test advert concepts without production costs. Small South African businesses can now create content that previously required substantial investment.
That being said, AI only generates what you tell it to. It can't decide what story needs telling, understand South African cultural nuance, or know which emotional beats resonate with your audience. Strategy, cultural insight, and authentic storytelling remain deeply human skills.
Creative professionals who thrive will embrace these tools whilst doubling down on strategic thinking and cultural understanding that AI can't replicate.
What’s Next For Your Business?
We're in the final quarter of 2025 with unprecedented marketing tools and possibilities. The businesses that thrive aren't necessarily those with the biggest budgets; they're the ones willing to try new approaches and stay ahead whilst their competitors wait for certainty.
At ThinkStory, we believe every South African business has a unique story worth telling. Whether you're exploring how to balance brand building with performance marketing, integrating AI into your workflow, or planning your 2026 strategy, the right approach starts with the right conversation.
If you're ready to have that conversation, schedule a 15-minute call with our team to explore what's possible when playing it safe stops and building something that lasts begins.
References List
Les Binet & Peter Field, "The Long and the Short of It" (IPA, 2013)
Les Binet & Peter Field, "The Long and the Short of It" (IPA, 2013) - Emotional brand campaigns 2x profit gains
Peter Field, "The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness" (IPA, 2019)