Inside The Decision Room: why marketing feels more expensive every year

Why does it feel like we’re spending more every year and getting less back?


It’s the question behind most budget conversations this year, and it rarely gets a straight answer. On 21 October, we worked through it with a room of senior marketers.

 

Who was in the room?


The Decision Room is a programme for leaders looking for fresh perspectives and honest conversations. Session one brought together CMOs and senior marketers across different categories. Alongside them was our Strategy Director, Emma Lambourne, our Marketing Science Director, Abbie Whitehead, and our guest speaker Lena Roland, Content Director at WARC Strategy. 

The morning ran under the Chatham House Rule. What follows are the themes; the specifics stayed in the room.

 

What leaders are seeing


We began by asking what leaders are actually seeing in their businesses right now. Across different categories, the same things kept coming up:

  • Costs climbing while demand softens. 

  • Search happening everywhere, not just in a search bar. 

  • Spend pulled towards whatever is easiest to prove. 

  • Brand building getting harder to defend.

  • More options than ever, but less control.


Most of these problems are symptoms of the same thing: demand is moving, and budgets, measurement, and expectations haven't moved with it. That’s where the feeling of spending more for less comes from. A growing share of the budget is still chasing demand where it used to be captured and not where it is formed.

 

Where demand is going


Lena’s session on WARC’s report, Marketing in a K-shaped economy, gave that shift a shape.

Spending is splitting towards the premium end and the budget end, and the middle is thinning out. For those whose plans are built around the average customer, this changes where demand holds up and what value means beyond the price tag. 

She shared what the report recommends, along with one of this year’s standout campaigns doing exactly that. The full picture is in the report.

 

From symptoms to decisions


The second half of the morning, we went back to the symptoms and asked: how do you understand the root cause and what would you actually do about it?

The answers stayed in the room, but the questions that shaped them are worth asking of any plan:

  • Are you putting spend where demand is formed, or where it used to be?

  • What’s the one constraint that, once defined, and overcome would change how to win?

  • If you started at the end, what would you agree upfront about how success gets judged?

  • What is putting off these decisions costing you right now? 


Pull up a chair


The Decision Room continues in February 2027 in London. It’s for senior marketing leaders who want to pressure-test a live decision with peers who understand the pressure.

Places are limited. Register your interest.

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