Ruth Hamlin on the modern marketer's dilemma.

Today’s marketing mix has changed dramatically, particularly when it comes to television. We’ve seen the rise of streaming platforms, plus the changes in how we’re watching TV. From pocket-sized iPhones to laptops in bed, we’re now dealing with different formats and attention spans.

Let’s face it: TV is still comparatively expensive, and we’re always hearing it has less reach than it used to, despite us all consuming more on-screen entertainment than ever. So, which screen can we get the best bang for buck on?

Here at Squirrel, we held off for years on investing heavily in a national brand-building campaign. In 2024, it was finally time to take the plunge as part of our overall business strategy. Planning the media, I had a lot of questions and concerns. It’s been a beat since I’ve done one of these and I wanted to get it right (thank you for your patience and support, the team at Together).

Does video on demand (VOD) count as TV? Technically no, but why not? If you’re targeting high-income people, aren’t they consuming VOD on their smart TV rather than watching on their laptops? Research shows that TV (not VOD) is essential for efficient brand building, but how can something impact you if you don’t see it? Who even watches “traditional” live TV regularly? Not me. What’s so good about TV vs VOD, if it’s being consumed mainly on the big screen as well?

No one would argue the value of an effective TV ad for brand, and the emotional impact that clever creative can have. But feelings and how they affect brand growth have always been tricky to measure, and even harder to demonstrate to non-marketers (looking at you, Board members).

Brand awareness: context is everything

Thanks to brand tracking platform Tracksuit, Squirrel now has brand awareness benchmarks that can be measured pre and post-campaign, as well as essential context through tracking competitors too. Over the last year, Squirrel grew brand awareness by 2% – which can feel a bit like treading water. But when we look at our competitors, they’ve all trended downwards – some have lost up to 8% awareness over the same period (which, it must be pointed out, was arguably the bleakest housing market on record). Maintaining our position starts to look reasonable, or maybe even good. Context is everything.

How our brand campaign affected business results

One thing that hasn’t changed in decades is the distinct difference between brand and performance marketing. Both are necessary – James Hurman’s 2024 Future Demand in Action, as well as Tracksuit and TikTok’s The Awareness Advantage Report, demonstrate how brand impacts performance efficiency. We’ve seen this in action at Squirrel.

We did a performance marketing campaign in January 2025 to acquire more saving and investing customers. The campaign was an identical offer to last January’s campaign. This time we spent 73% less on media, but gained more customers and achieved a 50% decrease in customer acquisition cost. I firmly believe this is due to laying the foundations of trust and awareness with our brand campaign, which went live four months prior.

Our brand campaign, ‘Wake up to the Squirrel effect’, is live nationally, having started in September with VOD and in the New Year on linear TV, as well as outdoor and digital display. For the TV ads, we created bespoke alternative versions specifically for the screens they were being consumed on. We considered how to grab people’s attention while scrolling, engage them when we’re interrupting their shows, and the level of attention we’re likely to be working with on each channel.

Having previously only done digital and social in the South Island, it’s been interesting to see the significant uplift in brand awareness in the last six months since we went live with TV and outdoor nationally. On top of this, we’ve seen organic traffic growth of 85% year on year.

So thankfully we can demonstrate to the Board and shareholders that the money we’ve invested in our brand campaign has been well spent, and the new budgets for FY26 are secure.

Phew!