In the outcomes era of advertising, marketers optimize media buys to drive performance, yet overemphasis on immediate returns and efficiency can stagnate growth. Elevating a metric from indicator to goal divorces it from true objectives and creates feedback loops that undermine success. A skincare brand that pursued a 6:1 ROAS by targeting loyal customers experienced audience fatigue, missed cross-sell opportunities, innovation stagnation, and market-share erosion. Customer acquisition plateaued within 18 months and overall revenue growth faltered. A holistic approach to judging success preserves long-term growth, encourages broader audience targeting, product promotion, and sustainable innovation.
Firstly, the campaign led to audience fatigue, over-saturating their most engaged customers while ignoring potential new ones. It also resulted in product tunnel vision, whereby the brand stopped promoting its full product range, so missed cross-sell opportunities. Similarly, innovation stagnation meant that new product launches struggled because the algorithm only promoted proven winners. Lastly, it also led to market share erosion, with competitors capturing new customers that the brand had ignored.
It brings to mind Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." This law, originally applied to monetary policy, is relevant in the world of modern marketing, where the pressure for measurable results often transforms useful diagnostic tools into a detriment to true success.
What does this actually mean? When we elevate a metric from its intended role (as an indicator) to the ultimate arbiter of success, we obscure the true goal we're trying to measure. The metric becomes divorced from its original purpose, creating a feedback loop that harms the very thing you're trying to improve.
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