Long and short have to be drawn as one system, or the chart itself invites a choice
PrincipleBrand Strategy
The design brief for the performance plateau was explicitly to stop long and short reading as a choice. Roach: the earlier ways of drawing it can look separate, like an either/or, and they wanted a system you deploy together. The industry shorthand for that position is bothism.
Source
The WARC Podcast - Four marketing frameworks you need to know (2026)
Tom Roach (VP, Jellyfish / Brandtech Group), interviewed by David Tiltman (WARC)
00:03:34-00:07:35, Tom Roach on The WARC Podcast, April 2026
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PrincipleThe performance plateau is Binet & Field translated for brands that only ever bought performancePrincipleFor a digital-first brand, performance spend is a floor, not a variableCaseThe most useful part of the performance plateau was identified by its readers, not its authorsWarningThe flat part of the growth curve is the most dangerous moment in a scale-up's lifeWarningThe brand-performance balance has shifted far less than the brand bubble believesWarningTeams named after funnel stages are structurally incentivised to stop the system workingPrincipleThe funnel survived because it made ad inventory easy to sell, not because it was ever accurateWarningThe funnel's real problem is the assumption that you can push people through stages in orderPrincipleBuild, Nudge and Connect - the funnel rewritten around how memory works rather than how inventory sellsPrincipleAwareness is not wrong, it is just far too thin a description of the top of the funnelPrinciplePerformance advertising mostly directs people to brands they have already chosenPrincipleCategory entry points are what replaces the message on a creative brief