See / Think / Do / Care

Before you move money between brand and performance, judge each one on its own job.

See / Think / Do / Care splits the buyer's journey into four layers, each with a different job. Each job needs its own creative, its own media rules and its own measure.

• See

  Brand
  Be remembered before they need you
  WhoCategory buyers who aren't shopping now
  CreativeDistinctive assets, emotion, Category Entry Points; brand shown early
  MediaBroad reach to new buyers, consistently; reach objectives only
  MeasureReach to new buyers, audience penetration, recall

• Think

  In-market
  Get on the shortlist
  WhoPeople weighing up their options
  CreativeProof, comparison, reassurance
  MediaIn-market audiences excluding past site visitors; category search, social, video, reviews
  MeasureShare of Search, net-new users

• Do

  Performance
  Make it easy to say yes
  WhoPeople ready to buy
  CreativeThe offer, clarity, one next step, still carrying the brand theme
  MediaPaid search on product terms, retargeting (capped), conversion campaigns
  MeasureConversions and cost per outcome, with a counter-metric

• Care

  Customer
  Make them glad they did
  WhoPeople who already chose you
  CreativeOnboarding, service moments, reasons to stay
  MediaMostly owned: email, app, messaging, CRM journeys
  MeasureRetention, repeat purchase, customer lifetime value

The layers are named by media tier: See = Brand, Think = In-market, Do = Performance, Care = Customer. They describe the same journey as the eOS stages (Brand / Performance / Sales / Customer), named the way media is bought.

If See and Think are empty, Do keeps getting more expensive.

See creates demand, Think shapes the choice, Do captures it. The common mistake is believing Think and Do create demand, and no amount of Do optimisation fixes that.

Around 95% of category buyers aren't buying right now (95:5), so See reaches them before they need you. Share of Search sits in Think. It shows See work turning into active interest, so Brand activity is still expected to lift it over time.

Keep each layer to its job

A See campaign allowed to optimise to leads finds people who were buying anyway, and See quietly turns into Do. We never put in-market audiences on awareness campaigns, and we keep converters and existing customers out of acquisition media. Governance makes this checkable.

One distinctive theme runs across every layer. Good brand work can do a performance job too, but performance work can't do a brand job. Performance creative should be price + distinctive theme, not price + product alone.

Care is the layer most often left empty

Every lost customer has to be replaced through Do, so an empty Care layer is a leaking bucket. Happy customers also feed See through referrals and word of mouth. At minimum, exclude existing customers from acquisition media.

Diagnose by layer

We map what runs in each layer (creative, media, how it's measured, budget), then look for three things.

1. An empty layer
2. A layer judged on another layer's measure, such as See on CPA
3. One ad asked to do every job

What the layers can't do

Buyers don't move neatly through four layers. The layers give media, briefs and tests a structure to work to, and each client needs its own version of the table.

Where we use it