System1 Advent Calendar 2025

 1. Misattribution costs advertisers millions, even on the biggest night in advertising. 

Super Bowl 2025 had the strongest performing ads in six years, but Fluency (brand recognition) hit an all-time low. 21% of viewers couldn’t recall the brand behind the ad. That’s millions wasted. 

 2. The enemy of conversion isn’t dislike, it’s indifference.

Salesmanship features help short-form video ads convert. But marketers need to make sure ads pushing a sale can entertain. Dull ads are 27% less effective at driving conversion.  

 3. Consistently driving more emotion than competitors reflects in higher business and brand growth.

System1 and Effie’s The Creative Dividend report shows that high-emotion campaigns deliver more brand effects and more business results over time compared to low-emotion campaigns.

The takeaway? Make emotion your creative edge.

 4. In OOH, design for the glance. 

JCDecaux’s and Lumen report found that the average dwell time on static OOH posters is just 2 seconds. In that blink of time, either you land the brand or the opportunity is lost.  

When we tested hundreds of real-world OOH campaigns and linked them to in-market outcomes, the pattern was clear. Ads that achieved brand recognition within 2 seconds saw a +54% boost in overall campaign recall. 

 5. Learn from legends to leave the average behind. 

Across the 70 ads we tested in our Living Room Legends report with ITV and D&AD, the average Star Rating was 4.1, representing ‘Strong’ brand-building potential. That puts them well above the UK TV average of 2.7 Stars.  

The insight: Great creative stands the test of time and still outperforms today’s average. Want to leave the average behind? Look back. The classics hold the playbook. 

 6. Fluent devices are the ultimate creative effectiveness best practice. 

While advertising overall is becoming less emotional, Aardman’s work stands out. Their ads consistently score in the top 1% for predicted long-term effectiveness by leaving people feeling great.  

Ads featuring Aardman’s iconic IP tap into the emotional equity held in beloved characters, and propel Aardman’s already exceptional ads into 5* territory – proving that fluent devices (recurring characters and scenarios) can supercharge any ad.

 7. Emotion builds brands, but neutrality – feeling nothing – is the main response to B2B TV advertising. 

Emotion is what drives brand growth, yet too many B2B ads fail to stir any feeling at all. Our research shows that neutrality – feeling nothing – dominates audience responses to B2B TV advertising, accounting for 60% of sentiment in the UK and 54% in the US.  

Playing it safe may seem sensible, but it comes at a real cost. When brands don’t make people feel, they don’t make people buy. 

 8. Better creative has a “double impact”.

The strongest long-term brand building campaigns have a potent impact on short-term sales, meaning this creative has a dual payoff. 

Looking at Star Ratings (predicting long-term growth) and Spike Ratings (measuring short-term sales potential), we found that 92.1% of strong equity-building ads performed well in the short term, too.  

How? By creating demand among those consumers who are ready to buy, and also building long-term equity. 

Such ads typically employ storytelling devices like narrative, strong characters, meaningful dialogue, melodic music and cultural resonance. 

 9. Short-form ads that entertain viewers see big brand-building gains and also convert more.

By stopping the scroll, holding more attention, reaching more people and leaving them feeling great, entertaining short-form ads not only create lasting effects but they convert.

 10. Feel-good audio ads make advertising campaigns more famous. 

Our Listen Up! study found that advertising which leaves people feeling more positive (i.e., higher-than-average Star Rating) leads to increased Word of Mouth, with 0.6% uplift in claimed Word of Mouth between non-exposed and exposed groups for ads with below-average Star Rating, and 5.5% increase for ads with above-average Star Rating.  

We saw similar effects with listeners choosing to share something about the brands on social, with a 6.3% uplift for ads with above-average Star Rating. 

 11. Start with a strong creative idea, not a celebrity.

60% of Super Bowl ads aired over the past 6 years have leveraged celebrity talent. Despite the hefty price tag for spokespeople, effectiveness is not guaranteed.

On long-term effectiveness, ads with a celebrity perform no better than ads without them. However, they can work to drive short-term effects better.

Our advice: ads that do feature celebrities should showcase them doing what they are known for; try to stick to the same talent to build brand linkage and integrate celebrities into a brand creative idea or story.

 12. To resonate with Gen Z, nail the fundamentals of short-form advertising: storytelling, characters & hummable music. 

Avoid leaning into digital clichés or generational divides. Gen Z want to see real people from different backgrounds and ages interacting, learning from each other, and sharing experiences, not characters glued to screens. Real connection comes from community, not Wi-Fi. 

 13. Emotion helps little brands grow like big ones. 

Our report, The Creative Dividend, shows that campaigns that connect deeply with audiences generate more brand effects, with 31% more for challenger brands and 16% more for category leaders compared to low-emotion ads. 

Emotion is not just for the big players. In fact, we see when challenger brands lean into emotion it can be a great leveler for brand size. When brands of any size make people feel something, they build stronger memories and long-term growth.  

 14. Emotional OOH creative isn’t just “nicer”, it’s more profitable. 

Eliciting positive emotion through OOH creative doesn’t just make people like your ad more. It leaves a lasting memory that drives conversion, store visits, and future purchase intent. 

Our research with JCDecaux shows that the top 20% happiest campaigns delivered +167% higher brand association lift than the dullest campaigns. Ads achieving a 3-Star Rating saw double the commercial effect compared to less emotional creative. 

15. Fluent devices pay off with time. 

Fluent devices (recurring characters and scenarios) take time to work – but when they do, they pay back in a big way. After just 3 years, campaigns using fluent devices outperform others on both emotional quality and brand-building efficiency. 

Our Compound Creativity research the IPA found that:  

• Consistent brands create ads that work twice as hard   
• They report double the profit gains of the least consistent brands   
• And they generate 27% more very large brand effects 

 16. Showmanship is on the decline, despite being more important than ever. 

Over the past two decades, ads have shifted from emotionally rich, story-driven work to short-term, sales-focused executions. Humor, memorable characters and narrative storytelling, the hallmarks of broad-beam, right-brain creativity, are disappearing. Left-brain, functional ads may grab attention, but they rarely build lasting memory or brand growth.  

Work produced by Aardman proves there is a better way. While the industry moves further towards salesmanship, Aardman has held on and even doubled down on showmanship. By investing in story, character and emotion, the studio’s campaigns consistently score in the top 1% of our database.

 17. Happiness and surprise, the most effective emotional responses, suffer most when ads evoke high levels of neutrality. 

Dull ads don’t just fail to entertain, they fail to move people. 

When we grouped thousands of US TV ads into dullness quartiles, a clear pattern emerged. As ads evoke more neutrality (i.e. become more Dull), the two emotions that matter most for effectiveness, happiness and surprise, drop sharply. 

Neutrality might feel safe, but it costs brands attention, emotion and growth. 

 18. Ads that win on the short rarely drive long-term growth. 

Based on a study of over 41,000 ads, we found short-term, performance-led creative usually falls short at contributing to lasting market-share gains. 

Looking at the top 25% of ads in terms of their Spike Ratings (short-term sales potential), 53.4% recorded 1 or 2 Stars, meaning their impact was limited to just a few weeks.  

Such ads typically relied on creative elements like voiceovers, fast-paced rhythmic soundtracks and freeze-frame effects at the expense of equity-led storytelling. 

 19. Keep it simple and real when trying to appeal to younger audiences. 

The most talked-about generation is also the most misunderstood by marketers. In an age of social media, it’s easy to assume Gen Z is obsessed with celebrity and influencer culture, self-absorbed and superficial. After all, this is a generation that grew up with information at their fingertips. Parents, grandparents, and older generations could not possibly teach them anything new, right?

Wrong.

Our research shows that Gen Z respond most positively to ads that highlight family bonds and intergenerational relationships. Parents teaching children how to shave, grandchildren checking in on relatives and families sharing simple moments around the table all resonate far more than celebrity endorsements or influencer cameos.

20. Radio ads with high brand recognition cause large increases in brand trust gains.

Radio is a well-established, public, yet intimate media channel. This enables radio to be a trusted source for delivering news and advertising. 

In our Listen Up! study, we were able to take a detailed look into these trust effects at a campaign level by analyzing the brand trust gains delivered by each radio ad and the related level of brand recognition. If the campaign is not attributed correctly to the right brand, the brand is not able to take advantage of these trust effects 

Some campaigns we measured saw an increase of almost 20% in brand trust; however, we saw ads with high brand recognition (Fluency Rating) build trust most effectively. Ads with above-average Fluency Ratings doubled the trust-building effect, an increase of 6.8% more on average. 

 21. Consistency’s long-term payoff is exponential. 

The most creatively consistent brands see advertising, brand and business effects compound the longer they invest in consistency.  

 1. Creative Foundations: Long-term positioning, creative idea tenure and the same creative teams to execute on long-term plans.

 2. Culture of Consistency: Dedication to consistency across channels, commitment to longer ad life and a focus on entertaining the audience, to drive business impact.  

 3. Consistent Execution: How brands show up. The visible features that consumers will learn to recognize and cement the brand in their minds. 

 22. Salesmanship sells, but it comes at the expense of brand. 

Ads which lean into Salesmanship – assuming the interest of the viewer, intending to land messages and product features – are marginally better at driving conversions, but fall short on driving brand outcomes like Brand Awareness or Brand Image. They perform, but they don’t build brand over the long term.  

 23. Emotional advertising is important, but so is being distinctive. 

Campaigns that blend emotion with fluent brand assets and stick to them over time are the ones that keep paying back. After 3 years, 45% of fluent and emotional campaigns reported achieving incremental profit, compared with 33% of emotional-only and just 6% of non-emotional campaigns. 

When emotion meets fluency, brands don’t just grow faster, they grow for longer. 

24. OOH is not just about memory, it’s about being interesting enough to matter.

The best OOH creative makes people feel something, and that feeling builds future customers. Yet 1 in 3 OOH campaigns fail to do either, missing the mark on emotional connection and distinctiveness — and with it, campaign recall.  

Our data shows that well branded emotional OOH drives a 3–5% uplift in unprompted recall, proving that creativity and commercial impact go hand in hand. 

 25. Branding early on short-form platforms helps brands of all sizes grow. 

On platforms like TikTok, making ads entertaining can help brands of all sizes grow, but only if it’s clear who is talking to audiences. Category leaders have an unfair advantage because of their size, their often long tenures in consumers’ lives, their large media budgets, their quickly recognizable assets and more.  

Meanwhile, ads from smaller brands that aren’t distinctive from the outset struggle to build awareness. This is because the positive sentiment and attention that entertainment drives isn’t being correctly attributed to the brand. Consumers don’t like to be confused. 

The fix? Distinctive Entertainment. Leverage assets early on to easily communicate to viewers that your entertaining creative is indeed yours.