Tiltman: less can be more if you avoid the efficiency trap
- Jun 25
- 2 min read
Marketers facing shrinking budgets but expanding complexity were urged to challenge the “more with less” dilemma during a packed session at the WARC-co-curated Creative Impact stream.
Monday’s discussion, entitled How To Thrive In The Age Of ‘More With Less’, brought together insights from WARC’s latest thinking and a new study from CreativeX examining how brands allocate marketing spend across platforms.
David Tiltman, senior vice-president and chief content officer at WARC, and Tariq Hassan, CEO of Light21; argued that the central tension was clear: marketers are being asked to do more across more channels, but with fewer resources and a growing pressure to justify every short-term outcome.
As a result, they are stuck in an efficiency trap that is systematically undermining the effectiveness of their investment. Tiltman argued, however, that constrained conditions should not automatically lead to reduced ambition.
As an illustration, he pointed to evidence that constant creative turnover can undermine long-term brand impact. He argued that letting ideas build momentum over time rather than being replaced too quickly could prove to be more cost-effective and also deliver compounded business performance.
The imbalance between short-term performance activity and long-term brand building was a major theme of the session, with the speakers highlighting new data showing that a significant proportion of digital advertising spend is concentrated in low-budget, high-volume executions, often optimised for algorithms rather than creative impact.
Tiltman summed it up by saying marketers are “praying to the gods of virality.”
Tiltman and Hassan broadened the conversation beyond advertising, arguing that cost-cutting and efficiency drives are also contributing to a widening gap between brand promises and real-world delivery — a development that has given birth to the phrase ‘enshittification’.
Hassan argued that lessons derived from the marketing function could be applied successfully to aspects of customer experience.
Hassan drew on his time working as CMO at Petco, which he repositioned as a pet health and wellness company. The company sent out signals to its audience of its planned pivot — for example removing ‘shock’ collars and food with additives from its shelves.
The introduction of the health and wellness platform across the business eventually triggered a transformation in performance, he said. The crucial takeaway, he said, is to have a stable and coherent plan.
“You can have a boring strategy. The excitement comes from how you execute that strategy.”
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