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Mixed media modeling, "brand-formance" and the data that drives it all
Enterprise: Data-Driven Marketing, Market Your Business, Marketer's Alchemy
3 Minutes
3 Minutes
It’s a question marketing teams have wrestled with since their inception: which matters more—brand or performance? According to today’s guest from the Marketer’s Alchemy podcast, the debate is outdated. In her words, “The debate on brand versus performance is outdated and it’s a false choice.” At her company, as she explains, the two don’t compete. Instead, they fuel each other, and data is what makes the partnership work.
About the guest: Jennifer Warren, VP of Global Brand Marketing & Creative at Indeed |
Jennifer Warren is the Vice President of Global Brand Marketing and Creative at Indeed, where she leads the company’s brand strategy, creative development, and global marketing efforts. With a career spanning both agency and in-house leadership roles, she is passionate about blending data with storytelling to create campaigns that not only perform but also build long-term brand equity. At Indeed, Jennifer champions the integration of brand and performance marketing, leveraging insights from millions of users to shape meaningful and effective customer experiences.
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What’s inside this episode
In this conversation, Jennifer emphasizes the importance of uniting brand and performance marketing through data. She shares how Indeed’s access to rich user insights, including the discovery that nearly a third of job seekers search without specifying a role, drives both product innovation and campaign strategy.
The role of data in brand-performance marketing
Indeed sits on an enormous dataset—350 million unique visitors a month—which gives Jennifer’s team insights into both job seekers and employers. For example, they discovered that nearly 30 percent of job seekers leave the “what” box blank when searching and only fill in “where.” That single behavior revealed an unmet need and drove new product experiences that help users discover opportunities they may not have considered.
At the campaign level, data informs nearly every decision: from brand consideration metrics and share-of-search to performance indicators like “apply starts.” Jennifer notes that no meeting begins without first looking at the data, which ensures the brand and performance teams are always aligned on outcomes.
Experiments that prove the point
One way Indeed demonstrates the value of brand equity is through experiments. In markets where performance tactics like SEM weren’t moving the needle, layering in brand campaigns provided a lift, reducing cost per acquisition and boosting long-term consideration. This kind of testing helps establish what Jennifer calls “brand-formance,” a recognition that creative storytelling and targeted performance marketing reinforce each other.
When it comes to brand, I've had to work hard to demonstrate that brand and performance work together, and the value in building the brand—it’s just as important as performance marketing, even if it's a lot harder to measure.
— Jennifer Warren
VP of Global Brand Marketing & Creative, Indeed
AI as a personalization partner
Like many companies, Indeed is also experimenting with AI to personalize at scale. In one campaign, Jennifer’s team created 400 digital display assets across industry segments like healthcare, supply chain, and finance. AI helped serve the right creative to the right audience at the right time, producing a 126-percent increase in job applications compared to traditional methods. The lesson: AI works best when paired with strong creative and strategy, not as a replacement.
Other topics explored in this episode include:
- Building internal confidence: Experiments and media mix modeling build confidence that brand investment drives measurable business results.
- Listening to the market: AI and social listening provide real-time insights, but success still depends on keeping the "human" element visible in creative.
- Clarity beats cleverness: Audiences want to understand benefits more than slogans.
Listen to Marketer’s Alchemy on your favorite podcast platform like Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Audible, and rewatch past episodes over on our YouTube channel.
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