Why so many CMOs get trapped in the quarter – and what to do about it

Most CMOs are stuck in the quarter. Not because they don’t understand the importance of the long term. Quite the opposite. It’s because the systems they work in keep pulling them back to the short term. Because what’s measurable in the short term automatically carries more weight. Because activation is easier to defend than brand building. Because a lead this month is more visible than a brand association you’ll only feel in the numbers a year or two from now.

In many companies, marketing is therefore organised around what you might call value extraction: how do we use our budget to pull more revenue out of today’s market? How do we convert existing demand more efficiently? How do we get more from the bottom of the funnel? That work matters. But it’s not the same as value creation.

Value creation is investing in something that doesn’t just pay off today but comes back stronger tomorrow. It’s building recognition, trust, preference and mental availability. In short: brand equity. And that takes time.

Sustainable growth rarely comes from one campaign, one promotion or one quarter of strong numbers. It usually comes from an accumulation of choices that reinforce one other. From communication that not only activates but also builds. From a brand that, over time, becomes easier to choose, quicker to recognise and less dependent on fighting for attention.

That’s why so many organisations end up in an uncomfortable squeeze. They know brand building matters, but the pressure of the quarter makes it hard to invest consistently, even though that’s where the real difference is often made. Research from System1 and Effie shows that consistent, well-branded communication over time delivers far stronger returns than disconnected, purely tactical campaigns. [1]

Many of your future customers aren’t actively looking today. The broader lesson behind the 95/5 rule is simple: most people, at any given moment, are not in buying mode. Advertising doesn’t work only by making people buy now, but by building memory structures that are activated later, when they do enter the market. [2]

To me, that is the essence of brand building. Not forcing people to buy today but making sure your brand has a head start when the moment does come.

This is exactly where the role of an agency becomes more relevant than simply making campaigns. When a CMO is trapped in the reality of the quarter, what they rarely need is yet another party that can quickly produce something. What they do need is a strategic partner who helps organise that short-term pressure within a bigger communication story. That’s how we look at it at Cartel Agency.

Not by wishing away the quarterly reality. It’s there, whether we like it or not. Targets, budgets, commercial moments, retail pressure and management expectations all set the pace. It’s unrealistic to expect a CMO to always operate from a calm, long-term horizon.

But we can make sure the quarter is not disconnected from the future. That every short-term action contributes to a bigger story instead of constantly pulling away from it. That’s how communication becomes more than an answer to today’s pressure. It becomes a lever for sustainable growth tomorrow.

That’s why we often start from a multi-year compass. Not as a theoretical exercise, but as a guiding framework. Ideally, we begin with a goal that goes beyond ‘more awareness’ or ‘a strong campaign’. Something that also matters in the boardroom.

We then translate that ambition into a small set of strategic communication pillars. What should communication strengthen over time? Mental availability? Brand meaning? Recognition? Relevance in specific buying situations? From there, we build annual plans. And only then quarterly plans.

It sounds simple, but the difference is huge. Because once quarterly choices are driven by one bigger brand story, one consistent creative logic and one clear set of priorities, efforts start to compound. Communication stops being a series of disconnected peaks and becomes a system that activates in the short term while building in the long term.

It also helps you make better decisions. Which initiatives truly contribute to the bigger goal? Which actions may be useful short term, but build nothing? Which campaigns strengthen the brand, and which only extract temporary demand from the market? That clarity is often as valuable as the campaign itself.

We also try to make that bridge measurable. Not by reducing brand building to a single dashboard, but by putting short-term and long-term signals side by side. If brand awareness, recognition or associations rise, you should expect to see movement over time in things like branded search, organic traffic, conversion and cost of acquisition. Not immediately. Not in a straight line. But as a pattern. That’s how you take brand building out of the realm of belief and make it relevant again under the pressure CMOs face today.

For us, Wibra is strong proof that this works in practice. We’ve been working together for five years now, and won a silver Effie together in 2024. [3]

‘Da’s Wauw van Wibra’ was never conceived as a one-off campaign, but as a brand platform that could grow and gain meaning over time. One of the key objectives was to increase Wibra’s low brand consideration. In 2024, it rose from 16% to 24% – a 50% increase. At the same time, revenue grew by 20.2%, while both prices and items per customer remained stable. So, that growth didn’t come from price increases or bigger baskets, but from more people choosing Wibra. In 2025, Wibra continued to grow, both in brand and revenue.

That’s the power of long-term value creation. The same platform is still being developed today through new waves and executions. Communication doesn’t have to start from scratch every time; it can build on what’s already been loaded into memory. That’s how you avoid fragmented campaigns and instead create a brand that grows sustainably, quarter after quarter.

You don’t lose the future because of one bad quarter. You lose it by optimising quarter after quarter for what’s visible today, while ignoring what will matter tomorrow. That’s slow damage. Hard to spot in the spreadsheet. Easy to explain in the boardroom. And eventually fatal for growth at scale.

That’s why, at Cartel Agency, we don’t work in one-off campaigns, but in a communication structure in which short term and long term reinforce each other instead of pulling in opposite directions. Wishing the quarter away is pointless. The real work is putting it in service of something bigger than itself.

[1]: https://system1group.com/the-creative-dividend

[2]: https://johndawes.info/the-955-rule/

[3]: https://cartel.agency/en/cases/wibra/wibras-surprising-comeback