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The researchers analysed five years worth of System1 data for 56 brands across the UK and US, testing over 4000 TV and digital ads with more than 600,000 respondents. Using the System1 database they took each brand’s average star ratings (a creativity score derived from the platform’s ad-testing) as a measure of creative success, and partnered with YouGov and the IPA to match creative performance data with brand and business outcomes.
Each brand was tested on 13 measures of creative consistency (positioning, distinctive assets, etc) and given a creative consistency score (CCS). The CCS was used to segment the brands into one of three groups: most consistent, somewhat consistent and least consistent.
Not only were the most consistent brands more likely to produce better ads (3.3 stars on average vs 2.8 and 2.6 for somewhat and least consistent brands, respectively), but those in the top 20% for consistency generated more very large brand effects and very large business effects than those in the bottom 20%, including reporting twice as many incidences of profit gain.
In support of previous research from System1, the study challenged the idea that ads become less effective over time because audiences get sick of them (wearout).
And the researchers looked beyond the ads themselves for evidence of consistency. They found brands that stuck with the same agency generally had higher creativity scores than those that worked with two or more partners. Sticking with the same creative agency was linked with a superior annual fluency rating change (a measure of brand recognisability).
Unexpectedly, the data showed that the value of creative consistency generally increases over time, too. For the most consistent brands, growth rate in star rating was 0.2 per annum over a five year period. For somewhat consistent brands it was 0.1 per annum, while star ratings showed no growth among the least consistent brands. Because the least consistent brands also had the lowest average star ratings to begin with, it indicates that consistency isn’t effective at improving the performance of bad creative.
There were limits to the benefits of consistency, however. The results showed creative consistency couldn’t help brands defend market share or arrest decline, nor could it revitalise existing markets. Largely, consistency proved to be an amplifier of good creativity as opposed to a weapon in its own right.
The researchers concluded that consistent brands produce more effective advertising because of five key factors: Consistency makes brands more cognitively easy to recognise, easier to encode to memory, more familiar, more likely to survive and for allowing brands to focus resources more efficiently.
