Marketers are frequently the biggest agents of change in a business.
Inside marketing teams, there’s a constant drumbeat for change, particularly when new members join the team. In my first marketing job, junior managers rotated to new brands every 12 months. Each new assignment brought fresh energy to make a mark on the brand. Higher level marketers rotated less frequently but pushed for higher level changes.
In general, new CMOs are often the biggest change agents of all.
From new packaging, to new campaigns, to new agencies, brands are constantly evolving. In some ways, the openness to change in marketing is healthy. Businesses overall can get stuck in a rut.
But what’s gets lost in the revolving door of marketing newness is the power of consistency. Marketers get tired of our marketing long before consumers do. In many cases, constant change just makes it harder for consumers to recognize our brands.
System 1 released a study last month proving that “consistency compounds creativity.”
They tested brands in the UK and US on 13 measures of “creative consistency” (from positioning to distinctive assets to agency tenure) and mapped against brand and business outcomes. They found:
“Not only were the most consistent brands more likely to produce better ads … 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.”
As Contagious recapped the System 1 study:
“It challenges the idea that brands need to be fearful about ad wearout. The creative success of good ads that are allowed to wear-in continues to grow.
“It also emphasises the importance of identifying and committing to long-term brand platforms. Brands should be wary of abandoning a successful brand platform if the concern is merely a fear that people are getting bored of seeing the same work.”
Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years:
