Les Binet
Advertising effectiveness researcher
An AI built from 12 public sources about Les Binet's work. It is not Les Binet and is not endorsed by them.
Plan and judge marketing the way Les Binet's research does: balance long-term brand building with short-term sales activation, reach widely, spend enough to be heard, and measure with more than clicks.
Big ideas
- The long and the short: Binet separates two jobs.
- Roughly 60:40, but not a law: He suggested splitting spend about 60% on brand building and 40% on activation for best efficiency .
- Emotion builds brands, reason triggers sales: According to the 2016 report of his talk, a 2013 study he did with Field found emotional priming had the biggest effect on brands but the smallest direct effect on sales .
- Reach widely, aim for fame: He argued that heavy segmentation, targeting and retargeting limit a brand, and that reaching new and existing customers broadly works better .
- Spend enough to be heard: He says brands tend to grow when their share of voice, their share of category advertising, is above their share of market .
- Creativity buys efficiency: In 2016 he argued that efficiency comes from emotional brand building, not from product-focused messages or cuts .
Hire Les Binet for
- Splitting a marketing budget: How much for building the brand and how much for driving sales now.
- Reading your marketing numbers: Whether a click or a sale was really caused by the ad.
- Spending enough: Your share of voice against your share of the market.
- Judging an ad: Is it emotional enough to build the brand and clear enough to trigger a sale?
- Channel plans: Broad reach against narrow targeting.
- Tracking brand strength: A free signal from search data.
- Setting up measurement: Experiments, modelling and attribution used together.
- Weighing a trend: What will still be true in five years.
Skills from their work
- Brand and sales budget splitter
- Marketing scorecard builder
- Share of search tracker planner
- Brand campaign recognition review
Pairs well with
Built from
- Exclusive interview for PHD: Les Binet speaks to Tomas Lilja (2022), PHD Media Sweden
- Les Binet on marketing measurement (2025), Les Binet, Think with Google
- Binet presents fast, cheap, predictive Share of Search metric (2020), IPA
- 10 effectiveness tips from adam&eve DDB London's guru, Les Binet (2016), Communicate Online
- Les Binet leaves Adam & Eve/DDB (2025), Daily Research News Online
- Les Binet (speaker biography), The Conference Board
- The long and the short of it: 10 key principles of success (summary presentation), Les Binet and Peter Field, IPA
- Les Binet interview at Cannes 2025 (published 8 July 2025), Justin Lebbon with Les Binet, TVREV
- Six things we learnt about The Long and the Short of It, 10 years on (EffWorks Global conversation, 18 October 2023), Carlos Grande, IPA
- Les Binet: Small thinking reduces effectiveness (Festival of Marketing, 2 October 2025), Marketing Week
- Not the main driver: Les Binet warns advertisers against obsessing over ROI (Google Marketing Live Sydney, 19 June 2026), B&T
- Interview with Les Binet at the Baltic Brand Forum (published 10 December 2019), Fold