One of the more enduring marketing truisms – now proved to be a myth – is that advertising creative wears out, becoming stale to the point of being ineffective.
The assumption made by marketers – and obviously championed by agencies – is that at some point consumers get sick of seeing/hearing their advertising messages, and just stop responding to them. Hence the need to ‘freshen up the campaign’, and swap out old creative for new (even if your product, message, and audience remains unchanged).
There’s often no science behind the decision making, just a gut feel that the target audience has seen/heard your ad too many times.
And the imagined timeframe for this supposed saturation point can often be quite short – a year, a few months, or even less.
It turns out we (including ‘me’) have been getting it all wrong, for a long time.
For starters, we tend to overestimate the extent to which people are engaging with our content.
Despite what we might imagine, our audience isn’t seeing our advertising every time it runs.
In fact, chances are any individual placement only gets seen by a fraction of the intended audience at any time.
Just because we scan the media all the time doesn’t mean our customers do (especially if they are time poor, like advisors).
And even when someone does see our ad, it doesn’t mean they actually register or engage with it each and every time.
But even if they did, new research shows that the vast majority of ads don’t drop off the ‘effectiveness cliff’ once some magical (but mystery) threshold has been reached.
‘Au contraire’, most of them will still be growing in effectiveness at the exact time a marketer is ready to trash them (just because “it’s time”). And many ads – the well-considered and executed ones – will continue to remain effective for years, even decades.
So what does the research tell us?
Data from three highly respected and credentialled research companies – System1, Analytic Partners, and Kantar – tells us that wear out largely doesn’t exist.
Analytic Partners for example, studied over 50,000 ads in 2020 and found that only 14 – fourteen! – of these campaigns had run their full course and were exhibiting wear-out when they were replaced.
A study from System1 – which holds a database of over 100,000 TV ads – tells a similar story, suggesting constant tinkering with creative is actually damaging, with effective ads staying effective no matter how long they air. According to their research, repeated exposure to an ad is important for building mental availability and positive impressions.
The average rating for an ad on its database during the first month it airs is 2.2 stars out of 5. The average rating for an ad that has been continuously shown for more than two years is – wait for it – 2.2 stars out of 5.
Kantar’s tracking data shows a similar finding. “There is no evident impact of how long the ad has been running on that ads’ performance,” the company has publicly stated, adding “wear-out is not some unavoidable destiny for ads, it is possible to create strong ads that can maintain their success”.
How long can a message be kept in market?
Well, putting aside times when a creative change is mandatory (perhaps for legal reasons), in theory a timeless message can be told timelessly.
Kantar cites the ‘Tealand’ campaign from Twinings as an example of an ad that most marketers would consider over the hill, and yet which continues to perform strongly, almost a decade after it was first put to air.
Originally launched in 2013 in Chile, 2022 research showed the ad continued to be perform strongly for enjoyability, distinctiveness and effectiveness.
Welcome to Tealand!
Lessons for sales and marketing teams
There are a few lessons for marketers here.
One would be to realise that your audience doesn’t pay as much attention to your ads and content as you do.
By extension, marketers (me included) should learn more patience with their creative. Replacing creative unnecessarily is not only wasteful, in most cases – again according to research – you will be swapping to new creative that has an 80% chance of being LESS effective, in the short term at least.
“It’s a failure that so many marketers pull so many of their campaigns prematurely when their best days are yet to come.” Mark Ritson
Another lesson would be not to dismiss previously run campaigns, just because they are old. And don’t immediately trash the thinking of your predecessors – chances are they were smart too (maybe not as smart as you, of course) – and you may find some gems of wisdom in there.
In practical terms this could mean dusting off the archives and unleashing the power of your back catalogue of campaigns and creative.
Recycling is cool
Saving on creative means you can spend more on placement – getting your message out there more frequently and in more places. When budgets are tight (marketers are affected by inflation too), this can become even more important.
And hey, recycling is so hot right now!
Ensombl’s own data supports the research
As we celebrate our 10th year of operation, Ensombl has assembled quite a back catalogue of its own, and quite a lot of data, especially when it comes to podcasts (our foundational content).
Quashing any idea that advisor interest in good content is fleeting, the Ensombl podcast suite (which recently passed 800,000 lifetime downloads and is downloaded more than 15,000 times each month) remains evergreen, with most episodes attracting strong listenership more than a year down the track. Indeed, I recently checked the latest data, and found that in many cases, the downloads achieved in the first three months (when the content is at its freshest) were likely to grow another 40% over the following year.
That’s 40% more sets of ears on your content.
A similar story is seen with our written content, including our thought leadership whitepapers. One satisfied client tells us the whitepaper we produced for them was still working its socks off, generating leads, two years after it was launched.
The reality is, advisors are hungry for content that solves their problems. And if your content is evergreen, it can continue to work for a long, long time.
If you think you can help some of the big issues and challenges faced by financial advisors today, reach out for a chat. With around 8,500 users of the Ensombl platform, and around 1 in 3 advisors now members, chances are we can be a very effective way of you engaging your audience.
Your CFO will love that.
More from Richard Dunkerley
