Sorry, but I strongly disagree. As a company grows it may indeed find diminishing returns from scaling direct response channels that previously performed well.

However spending to build brand awareness is what helps you reduce costs long term. If your brand is synonymous with the category, you win. It gets you more direct, referral and organic traffic, gets the press writing about you, gets review sites comparing you, etc.

It is most definitely expensive, but can be critical to the long term success of a company once they reach a certain size.

This is also doubly important in commoditized markets since brand is really the only thing that distinguishes you.