“I've run a lot of marketing models that converge to the conclusion that advertising or media or let's say communications is at best 10% of the sales generated by a large scale brand. … So by focusing just on 10% of your potential, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.”
The Marketing Millennials · October 2026
Patilinet, who works on marketing measurement at PepsiCo, on why the return on ad spend is the wrong thing to fixate on. In big companies, he says, sales owns distribution and finance owns pricing, which leaves the marketing department running communications, a small slice of what actually moves sales.
Transcript
…implement the insights into the organization. So I'm proposing a framework to look at measuring marketing, not advertising, that goes beyond the ROI of Facebook, for example. Offering solutions that I've tested over the years and I've used. That could provide a more data-informed decision for you.
…like the example where like one of those levers have been like overlooked by a brand or what happens if they overlook one of those levers and just focus on that one metric that everybody talks about? I was like, what is my return on meta spend? What is my return on Google spend? And that's it.
…that is expected from a difference in price, I think companies might be surprised. Now, I don't want to point out any organizations or any brands here, but most pricing decisions in last years were probably taken without looking necessarily at price elasticity and influenced by external factors, of course. But that's what I'm trying to raise the awareness that those things cannot be forgotten. I've run a lot of marketing models that converge to the conclusion that advertising or media or let's say communications is at best 10% of the sales generated by a large scale brand. And that there are other factors that influence the other 90% distribution, pricing, all those elements together with baseline. So by focusing just on 10% of your potential, you're just shooting yourself in the foot.
Yeah, and I think, I mean, what your argument too, which is right, is like, I feel like those other levers are marketing levers in per se, like price is part of the offer. Like when you're a marketer, price is an offer, where it's getting distributed and shown is part of like where is a marketing…
No, no, but you could. You could influence those because your portfolio is not static. I mean, you always launch new innovations. You always launch smaller brands to capture tailwinds in the category. And you could have a differentiated distribution model in which you focus on certain retailers.…
Yeah. And so, how should marketers, like based on the concepts of your book or what you're trying to do, like, how can marketers be more like set this up internally? Like, what is the first one or two moves they need to do today, like to start making sure they have the right reporting, have the…
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