Brand Building Channels’ Saturation – Diminishing Returns, Not Diminishing Importance !!

One of the most common reactions after looking at MMM saturation curves is this:

“Oh look, We have hit saturation on this channel. Let’s dial this down.”

This may be the right call but there always exceptions. One of the major exception include – Brand Building Channels.

📌 Saturation ≠ Stop Signal

In MMM, saturation curves are meant to show diminishing marginal returns, not zero returns.

At the saturation point or zone:
Incremental ROI is lower, but absolute contribution is often still high.

Cutting spend here is like shutting off your most consistent volume driver just because it’s not “efficient enough” at the margin.

📌 Brand Building Channels Operate on Memory

Channels like TV, Video and large-scale Digital are not just conversion engines. They are memory builders.

– They reinforce mental availability
– Sustain brand salience
– Feed future conversions across channels

If you dial down spend aggressively, the memory structure starts eroding. Your base weakens over time and future efficiency across channels drops.

In one QSR brand we noticed that a 20 % spends decrease in Brand building channels caused a drop in brand equity by 1.5 percentage points in a span of a year.

📌 Saturation is Often the “Defensive Zone” not the “Death Zone”

One thinking that I want to share, especially for brand building channels, is that perhaps we can think of saturation not as waste but as defense.

Operating at saturation levels often means:

– You are maintaining share of voice
– You are preventing competitor encroachment
– You are stabilizing your demand baseline

📌 “Where to Grow” Not Just “Where to Cut”

Saturation curves should not be looked at as a “let’s see where we can cut spends” analysis. Saturation curves showcases where you can scale or grow too.

Two heuristics could be :

Low spend, high slope -> Opportunity to scale
High spend, flat slope -> Maintain / sustain, not abandon

📌 The Real Risk: Misinterpreting Efficiency

If you optimize purely on marginal ROI:

– You will systematically underinvest in brand
– Overinvest in short-term performance channels
– Gradually erode your base (brand equity)

📌 Bottomline:

When it comes saturation curves of brand building channels, one should not have a knee jerk reaction and cut spends aggresively.
Because once memory fades, rebuilding it is far more expensive than maintaining it.

Sometimes the saturation point / zone is not a ‘Death Zone’ but just a ‘Sustain’ zone.