WPP's How Humans Decide: What the Report Means for the 95/5 Rule and Long–Short Marketing

In today’s marketing environment, brand strategists must balance the urgent demands of performance marketing with the enduring benefits of brand building. Three influential frameworks – WPP’s How Humans Decide (2025), John Dawes’ 95:5 Rule (2021), and Binet & Field’s The Long and the Short of It (2013) – converge on a critical insight: most purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by long-term brand memories and biases rather than spur-of-the-moment persuasion.

WPP’s research finds that 84% of purchases are effectively decided before consumers even begin shopping, thanks to pre-existing brand bias. John Dawes similarly argues that up to 95% of potential buyers are not in-market at any given time, meaning advertising’s primary role is to build brand mental availability for future purchases. Les Binet and Peter Field add evidence that balancing long-term brand-building with short-term sales activation (approximately a 60:40 ratio) delivers optimal marketing effectiveness.

All three frameworks emphasise the power of long-term brand exposure: building mental availability, brand familiarity, and “brand priming” bias that make a brand the natural choice when a purchase occasion arises. They also warn of the risks of over-focusing on the small segment of consumers who are actively in-market at any time. Short-term campaigns and performance tactics can deliver quick wins, but without sustained brand investment, those gains plateau and long-term growth suffers.

In short, the frameworks collectively advocate for a strategic balance: continuously nurture the broad base of future buyers through brand marketing while smartly activating sales among the few ready-to-buy now.

This report compares the core concepts of the three frameworks, identifies where their findings align or diverge, and distills actionable insights. Key findings and strategic recommendations are provided to help brand marketers effectively balance performance and brand spend for sustainable growth.

Most Buyers Are Influenced Before They Enter the Market

According to WPP’s How Humans Decide study, 84% of purchases are made by consumers choosing brands they were already biased toward before the active shopping process. This aligns with Dawes’ 95:5 Rule, which observes that the vast majority of consumers (on the order of 95%) are not actively shopping at any given moment – thus, most advertising “hits people who aren’t going to buy anytime soon”. Both points highlight that buying decisions largely result from long-term brand priming and memories, not just real-time persuasion.

Dawes emphasises that because ~95% of the audience is out-of-market now, advertising works mainly by building and refreshing memory links to the brand for future use. Only a small fraction (5% or so at a given time) is actively in-market. WPP’s data similarly shows that on average only ~16% of category purchases come from shoppers with no prior brand bias (i.e. truly undecided at the point of purchase). Both frameworks conclude that there is a practical ceiling on how many buyers you can convert in the short term, since most consumers are simply not ready to buy at that moment.

Long-Term Brand Building is Essential for Growth

All three sources underscore that sustained brand-building is non-negotiable. WPP concludes that “brand-building communication is not optional — it is the essential groundwork that determines whether a brand is even in contention when a purchase decision arises”. Dawes likewise argues that focusing solely on in-market targeting means you “will never build the widespread mental availability needed to become (or remain!) a big brand”. In practice, this means continuous advertising to prime future buyers, ensuring the brand comes to mind when needs arise.

Binet & Field’s analysis of marketing effectiveness finds that short-term sales activation and long-term brand building work differently and both are needed. Crucially, a series of short-term, sales-focused campaigns “will not succeed as strongly over the longer term as a single brand-building campaign designed to achieve year-on-year improvement to business success.”. Their data suggests the optimal balance is roughly 60% of budget on brand-building and 40% on short-term activation for most categories. This mix maximises both immediate sales and long-run profitability.

Short-Term Wins vs. Long-Term Brand Health

The frameworks converge in highlighting a tension: chasing short-term sales uplifts (through promotions, retargeting, search ads, etc.) can yield quick volume, but those effects decay quickly without brand reinforcement. Long-term brand building, on the other hand, strengthens pricing power, loyalty, and baseline sales over time. WPP’s finding that performance marketing mostly converts already-biased buyers (84% of whom would likely buy their favoured brand anyway) suggests that lower-funnel tactics work best when the groundwork of brand bias is in place. In other words, short-term activation is more effective as a conversion tool for primed customers, rather than a persuasion tool for the unprimed – a nuance that validates the need for prior brand influence.

Convergence on Mental Availability & Brand Memory

A common theme is the importance of mental availability (brand memory links, familiarity, priming). Dawes describes advertising’s job as building memory structures so that buyers recall the brand when they eventually enter the market. WPP’s concept of “brand priming” is essentially the same idea: consumers’ everyday exposure to brand messaging accumulates into a bias that heavily predetermines choice (84% of the time) once they do shop. Binet & Field also implicitly champion building brand “fame” and salience over time to drive long-term growth (even though their report focuses on budget balance, the underlying mechanism of brand building is to create durable mental brand associations).

Category and Audience Nuances

WPP’s research introduces the concept of “audience receptivity” – consumers vary in how open they are to marketing influence, and this varies by category and context. This adds nuance: while long-term brand priming is universally important, the ease of influencing a purchase in the short term can differ. For example, in categories like toothpaste or soft drinks, WPP still found ~80–90% of buyers are brand-biased, whereas in even the most “considered” purchases (e.g. luxury goods) around 79% were primed. Dawes’ 95:5 rule was initially articulated with B2B services in mind (where purchase cycles are long), but the principle extends to many consumer markets with infrequent purchase cycles. Binet & Field acknowledge that the 60:40 brand vs activation ratio can vary by category, often tracking how purchases in that category occur (categories with faster purchase cycles or greater promotional responsiveness might adjust the ratio). Despite these nuances, the core strategy remains consistent: ensure broad, continuous reach to build brand memory, and balance it with tactics that capture in-market demand when it spikes.

John Dawes’ 95:5 Rule centres on a simple yet profound statistic: the vast majority of your potential customers aren’t looking to buy right now. He cites evidence that “up to 95% of people or firms are not in the market for many goods and services at any one time”. This means most advertising exposures are reaching people who won’t make a purchase in the near term. Rather than being a discouragement, this insight clarifies how advertising actually works: not by instantly triggering a purchase, but by shaping brand memories and associations that will influence future choices. Dawes explains that advertising primarily “works by building and refreshing memory links to the brand” which will activate once the buyer eventually does enter the market.

Critically, Dawes argues that to grow a brand, marketers must reach beyond the 5% who are ready to buy now and influence the 95% who aren’t. By consistently advertising to this out-of-market majority, brands create familiarity and mental availability so that when these people do have a need, “your brand is one they are familiar with” and mentally associate with the category or need. He warns against over-reliance on precision targeting of in-market consumers, noting that if you only target immediate prospects, “you will never build the widespread mental availability needed to become (or remain!) a big brand”. In short, broad-reach, memory-focused advertising is a long-term investment that pays off when the 95% eventually rotate into the 5%.

Implication of Dawes’ rule: Marketers should set realistic expectations for campaigns and budget allocation. Since only a small slice of the audience is buying in any given quarter or year, there is a natural ceiling on short-term sales uplift. For example, if roughly 10% of category buyers are in-market this quarter, a campaign can only capture some fraction of that 10% – it “can’t bring buyers to you who simply aren’t in the market” at the time. Therefore, brands must “spend with a view to the long-term” – ensuring they don’t exhaust the budget on one short burst and then go silent. Maintaining share of voice over time is crucial to reaching those other buyers whenever they enter the market. Overall, Dawes’ framework underscores mental availability as the key currency: brands win by owning a space in consumers’ minds well before the moment of purchase. This sets the stage for the findings from WPP and Binet & Field, which echo and complement this perspective.

WPP’s 2025 report How Humans Decide provides empirical heft to the notion of brand memory’s power, using a massive database of 1.2 million consumer journeys. The headline finding is striking: on average 84% of purchases are effectively decided by “brand priming” – the biases and impressions accumulated in consumers’ minds long before they actively shop. In WPP’s framework, the purchase journey is split into two stages: – Priming stage: the everyday life period when people are not actively looking to buy but are continually exposed to brands (through advertising, usage, word-of-mouth, etc.). These exposures shape perceptions and create an unconscious bias (brand priming) that predisposes the consumer to favor certain brands once a need arises. – Active stage: the relatively brief window when a need or trigger occurs and the consumer actively considers options and makes a purchase.

WPP’s analysis reveals that by the time consumers reach the active stage, most have already narrowed their consideration to one or a few brands, typically the ones they’ve been primed to prefer. They note shoppers “will typically consider fewer than three brands; and will end up choosing the brand they’re most biased towards”. This confirms that buyers do not enter the lower-funnel with a blank slate – in fact, 84% of purchases involve choosing the brand that was already top-of-mind. Even in categories with lots of research and comparison (say, automotive or financial services), the majority of buyers still come in with a strong bias (the primed percentage “never falls below 70%” even in the lowest cases). In habitual, low-risk categories (soft drinks, fast food, etc.), priming bias is upwards of 85–90%.

The implication is profound: “buyers do not come to a brand fresh in the lower funnel”, so any marketing at the point of purchase (search ads, price promotions, etc.) is largely “converting these buyers from the 84%, rather than acquiring new ones from the 16%.” In other words, the majority of your conversions from performance marketing are likely people your brand had already won over earlier through branding efforts. WPP explicitly states, “Brand-building communication is therefore not optional — it is the essential groundwork that determines whether a brand is even in contention when a purchase decision arises.” This aligns perfectly with Dawes’ perspective: long-term brand priming is what fills the funnel, and the active-stage marketing mostly just confirms or facilitates the choice of an already-preferred brand.

Beyond priming, WPP adds layers of nuance with “audience receptivity” and “touchpoint influence.” They found that consumers vary in how receptive they are to marketing – some people or contexts allow marketing to exert more influence than others. For instance, someone casually scrolling social media might be less receptive than someone reading reviews after a trigger. They also note that media channels have unequal power in influencing decisions – meaning reach alone isn’t enough; the context and creative matter in actually shifting perceptions. While these insights go deeper into how to influence, the overarching theme remains that the heavy lifting of influence happens in the priming stage. WPP’s data-driven framework thus reinforces the 95:5 concept with hard numbers and stresses that long-term brand bias (built through priming exposures) is the dominant force in consumer choice.

Les Binet and Peter Field approach the question from a marketing effectiveness angle, examining hundreds of campaigns in the IPA dataset to understand short-term vs long-term effects. Their seminal report, The Long and the Short of It, identifies a “tension between the need to achieve strong short-term sales results and the need to drive continuous long-term brand improvement.” They argue that an overemphasis on immediate results – which is tempting in the era of real-time digital metrics – can undermine long-term brand health and profitability.

Core concept: Long-term brand building and short-term activation are distinct but complementary marketing activities. Importantly, they are not interchangeable, and success in one timeframe does not automatically translate to the other. Key distinctions Binet & Field make include: – Different Mechanisms: “Long-term effects are not simply an accumulation of short-term effects.” Long-term brand growth works through gradual build-up of brand equity, trust, and reduced price sensitivity, whereas short-term uplifts often come from tactical promotions, discounts, or timely calls-to-action. While a great brand campaign will usually produce some immediate uptick, a series of short-term tactics cannot compound to the same deep impact as sustained brand advertising. – Diminishing Returns of Short-term Only: They find that a succession of short-term sales-focused campaigns (e.g., frequent price promotions or sales activations) “will not succeed as strongly over the longer term as a single brand-building campaign” aimed at year-on-year growth. In essence, constantly pushing for immediate sales can yield quick volume, but it doesn’t build the brand’s ability to generate sales at full price or in the future. – Balance is Best: Analyzing performance across campaigns, Binet & Field famously concluded that the optimal split of marketing expenditure is around 60% on brand-building (long-term) and 40% on activation (short-term) on average. This 60:40 rule is not rigid for every context, but it’s a guiding principle – it reflects typical category dynamics where long-term brand spend ensures broad awareness and preference, and activation spend harvests that demand. The goal is to achieve neither wholly one nor the other, but a synergy – for example, a memorable brand campaign that also has elements of call-to-action (a “brand response” campaign) can serve both aims.

Binet & Field’s work also highlights long-term metrics vs short-term metrics. They caution that heavy reliance on short-term KPIs like clicks, immediate sales lift, or quarterly targets can lead marketers to optimize in ways that hurt long-term brand equity (for instance, over-discounting trains consumers to wait for sales, eroding margin and brand perception). One striking warning: “the use of short-term metrics will damage the long-term profitability of brands”, and marketing was “sleepwalking towards a precipice” if it didn’t re-balance toward long-term thinking. This impassioned viewpoint strongly complements Dawes’ and WPP’s data: it’s essentially saying do not let the 5% (or 16%) of in-market buyers monopolise your strategy at the expense of the 95% (or 84%) who will drive your growth tomorrow.

In summary, Binet & Field give us a strategic blueprint: invest most in brand-building to generate future demand, invest sufficiently in activation to convert existing demand. Their research validates that brands which maintain this balance outperform those that skew too heavily either way. If you only do brand with no activation, you may build hype that doesn’t translate into sales. If you only do activation with no brand, you eventually run out of people to convert or you compete on price/promotions, hitting a growth ceiling. The 60:40 guideline provides a practical starting point for allocating budgets in a way that aligns with the truths highlighted by Dawes and WPP – that brand memory and bias drive the bulk of sales, but one must still capture the opportunities when people are ready to buy.

For brand strategists and marketers trying to balance performance and brand spend, these three frameworks offer a coherent set of guidelines:

The convergence of WPP’s How Humans Decide, Dawes’ 95:5 Rule, and Binet & Field’s The Long and the Short of It delivers a clear message to marketers: Brands grow by winning the battle for mental availability before the battle for purchase. In practical terms, this means the bulk of marketing effort must go into priming consumers through brand-led communications so that your brand is the intuitive choice when needs arise. Short-term sales activations play a vital but secondary role – they monetise the demand that brand-building creates and ensure no sales opportunity is left on the table.

By recognising that 84% (or more) of consumer choice is decided by existing brand biases and that up to 95% of your audience won’t buy at any given moment, strategists can avoid the pitfall of funnel-vision – obsessing over immediate conversions at the expense of filling the funnel. Instead, the winning formula is a balanced strategy: continuous brand investment to drive long-term growth, coupled with smart activation to drive short-term results. The evidence shows this balance not only yields stronger sales and market share over time, but also protects profitability and brand equity (by reducing over-reliance on discounts and chasing last-minute customers).

In essence, effective marketing is both the long and the short of it. A brand needs to be meaningful and memorable in consumers’ minds (long term), and easy to buy when the moment is right (short term). By applying the insights of these three frameworks, brand marketers can better allocate resources, plan campaigns, and set expectations – ensuring they are building a brand that prospers not just this quarter, but for years to come.

1. WPP Media & Saïd Business School. How Humans Decide (2025) – Key findings on brand priming and consumer purchase bias.
2. John Dawes. The 95:5 Rule (2021) – Analysis of out-of-market buyers and advertising’s role in building memory links.
3. Les Binet & Peter Field. The Long and the Short of It (2013) – IPA data on balancing long-term brand building with short-term activation.