"We've created a new holistic view of creative consistency, showing how consistency compounds creativity to grow ad effects, brand strength, and ultimately business results."
Andrew Tindall
Author; SVP Global Partnerships, System1
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A New Holistic View On Creative Consistency
5,000 marketers and counting downloaded the first look of Compound Creativity. Now, we’ve presented deeper insights on the benefits of consistency at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity alongside Les Binet and Sarah Carter. Data spanning the UK and US markets.
By defining a new multi-year brand metric, the Creative Consistency Score (CCS), we’ve analyzed 80 brands in the IPA Effectiveness Databank and 136 brands in the Effie Case Library for 13 consistency features over 5 years. Thousands of ads tested with System1’s Test Your Ad platform with real consumers to understand how consistency impacts creative quality.
We’ve also matched the brands to YouGov brand data and the IPA Effectiveness Databank and Effie Case Library to understand how consistency impacts brand strength and what brand and business effects their campaigns create.
Key findings:
The facets of creative consistency that matter are split into three distinct groups, showing that marketers need to focus on Consistent Creative Foundations, then a Culture of Consistency, before Consistent Execution.
Consistent brands make more effective advertising. Using System1’s Star Rating (an ad’s brand-building potential), we’ve shown that the most consistent brands create higher creative quality.
Advertising from inconsistent brands sees no average change in creative quality annually, while consistent brands achieve greater Star Ratings year-on-year. This creates a consistency gap that compounds the effects of creativity.
The powerful effects of keeping ads on air longer (creative wear in) and not changing your creative agency.
Campaigns from consistent brands create more very large brand effects. This leads to consistent brands being more famous and popular in YouGov brand data.
Consistent brands report more very large business effects. We even see them report double the very large profit gains.
We estimate inconsistency will cost just the brands in our study billions over the next 5 years.
Submit your details to download the insights launched at Cannes.
Watch Andrew Tindall walk through the key findings from our report, “The Magic of Compound Creativity” (download it for free below). Learn more about the new multi-year brand metric, the Creative Consistency Score (CCS), and what we can learn from the most consistent brands, thanks to insights from System1’s Test Your Ad Premium database and the IPA Effectiveness Databank.
FAQs
What is Compound Creativity?
Compound Creativity is a 5-year study from System1 and the IPA exploring how creative and media consistency build stronger brands and greater profits. The research analyzed 136 UK and US brands, 5,000+ ads and $5bn in cross-channel media spend to measure how consistency across Creative Quality, Brand Effects and Business Effects compounds over time.
What Are the Three Ways to Be Consistent?
The study identifies three distinct dimensions of consistency, together forming the Compound Creativity Score, a holistic brand metric measured over multiple years:
Creative Foundations, also known as “Brand Cohesion,” “Brand Roots,” or “The Long of It.” Made up of Consistent Positioning, Creative Idea Tenure and Agency Tenure.
Culture of Consistency, also known as “Creative Commitment,” “Cross Channel Consistency,” or “Integrated Marketing Comms.” Made up of Creative Wear In, Cross Channel Consistency, Commitment to Showmanship and Reusing Creative Assets.
Consistent Execution, also known as “Matching Luggage” or “Consistent Brand Codes.” Made up of Consistent Brand Assets, Fluent Device & Celeb Tenure, Soundtrack Commitment and Consistent Tone of Voice.
Do Consistent Creative Foundations Build Bigger Brand and Business Effects?
Yes. Brands ranked in the top third for Creative Foundations (Consistent Positioning, Creative Idea Tenure, Agency Tenure) report 2.8 very large brand effects on average (Awareness, Differentiation, Brand Image, Salience, Quality & Trust), versus 0.9 for the bottom third — roughly 3x more. On business effects (Volume, Value, Profit, Market Share, Penetration, Loyalty, Price Gains), the top third averages 2.6 versus 1.4 for the bottom third.
How Does Creative Consistency Affect Brand Memory?
Owning, committing to and refreshing the same positioning and idea builds significantly more branded memories. Brands with high (top third) versus low (bottom third) consistent Creative Foundations see: 5.4x more Awareness, 1.8x more Salience, 7x more Difference, 2.5x more Brand Image, and 4.2x more Trust (among cases reporting a very large brand effect).
Does Changing Creative Agencies Hurt Ad Quality and Results?
Yes. Brands that change agency less create higher-quality advertising and report more brand and business outcomes. Brands with no agency changes over 5 years see annual ad quality gains of +4.7 points in emotion (Star Rating) and +0.22 in distinctiveness (Fluency Rating) per year, compared with just +0.1 and +0.07 respectively for brands with multiple changes. Campaigns from brands with no agency changes also report more very large outcomes on average — 2.2 brand effects and 2.2 business effects, versus 0.8 and 1.6 for brands with multiple changes.
Does CMO Tenure Have the Same Effect as Agency Tenure?
No. This is one of the more surprising findings. Unlike agency tenure, CMO tenure showed no clear positive relationship with brand or business outcomes. Brands with the most CMO changes in 5 years actually reported slightly stronger outcomes (2.2 brand effects, 2.3 business effects) than brands with no CMO changes (0.8 brand effects, 1.2 business effects). Consistency in the creative partnership matters more than continuity in marketing leadership.
Does Committing to a Culture of Consistency Drive More Marketing Outcomes?
Yes. Brands ranked in the top third for Culture of Consistency (Creative Wear In, Cross Channel Consistency, Commitment to Showmanship, Reusing Creative Assets) report 2.5 very large brand effects and 2.8 very large business effects on average, compared with 0.7 and 0.7 respectively for the bottom third.
Does Letting an Ad "Wear In" Improve Its Performance?
Yes. Brands that allow their advertising to wear in build higher ad distinctiveness each year (r=0.52, p<0.01). A brand with an average campaign life of 713 days sees a +15% annual gain in ad-brand recognition, based on analysis of 80 UK brands matched to 4,000+ UK TV ads in System1’s Test Your Ad database.
Do Media Channels Compound Each Other?
Yes. Ads don’t work in isolation. In a geo-experiment analyzing Meta click-through rate at stable spend per region, adding 4 weeks of radio on top of Meta ads lifted CTR by +29%, and adding a further 2 weeks of OOH lifted it by +86% versus Meta alone. Deploying consistent creative across multiple platforms ensures every media dollar builds toward the same goal (source: Adriaan Hogervorst–de Jong, Goboony, UK geo-experiment, 2023).
Does Commitment to Showmanship Improve Short-Form Video Performance?
Yes. Analysis of 847 TikTok ads with brand lift data across the Americas and Europe found that the most entertaining short-form video ads (top 25%) generate +45% more emotion (Star Rating lift), +54% more attention (5-second view rate lift), and 2x more brand awareness lift than the least entertaining ads (bottom 25%). (Source: The Long and Short (Form) of It, TikTok & System1, 2025.)
Is Consistency Profitable?
Very. Among campaigns ranked by Culture of Consistency, 38.5% of campaigns with a high Culture of Consistency report very large profit growth, compared with 18.2% for medium consistency and just 6.7% for low consistency — a 6x difference between the highest and lowest consistency brands.
What Is Consistent Creative Execution?
Consistent Execution is “Fluent Familiarity”, using the same Consistent Brand Assets, Fluent Devices and Celebrity Tenure, Soundtrack Commitment, and Consistent Tone of Voice across campaigns and years, so that audiences instantly recognize a brand’s advertising. Examples cited include Tide’s “It’s Got to Be Tide” positioning (1989–2024), Geico’s Gecko, Gordon’s “…Shall We?” tone of voice, and long-running celebrity/spokesperson tenures for brands like T-Mobile and Coca-Cola.
Does Consistency Compound Creativity Over Time?
Yes. This is the core finding behind the study’s name. Tracking Ad Emotion (Star Rating) over 5 years, the most consistent third of brands (ranked by Culture of Consistency and Consistent Execution) improved from 3.1 to 4.0 (+0.23 per year), the somewhat consistent third improved from 2.9 to 3.4 (+0.12 per year), while the least consistent third actually declined from 2.6 to 2.3 (-0.08 per year).
Ad Distinctiveness (Fluency Rating) showed the same pattern: the most consistent brands improved from 89 to 99 (+2.6 per year), while the least consistent brands were flat at 87 (+0.0 per year). Expected market growth rate (ESOV efficiency) followed suit: 1.7 for the most consistent brands, 1.2 for somewhat consistent, and just 0.7 for the least consistent.
Are Consistent Brands Stronger Brands?
Yes. Comparing the top 20% most consistent brands (by total Compound Creativity Score) against the bottom 20%, on the latest campaigns in the 2024 IPA Databank, consistent brands report very large brand effects far more often: 41% vs 13% for Building Brand Awareness, 59% vs 7% for Differentiation, 65% vs 7% for Creating Brand Values, 65% vs 20% for Building Salience, 41% vs 7% for Building Belief in Quality, 18% vs 7% for Building Commitment, and 29% vs 0% for Building Trust.
How Much More Do the Most Consistent Brands Grow?
Across 80 brands spanning 54 categories, analyzed between 2017 and 2024 for 13 creative consistency features and matched to the IPA Effectiveness Databank (3,380 TV ads and digital campaigns, £3.3bn+ media spend), the most consistent quartile of brands generates 4.8x more very large brand effects (2.9 vs 0.6 average) and 2.2x more very large business effects (3.0 vs 1.3 average) than the least consistent quartile.
Does Consistency Compound Specific Business Results?
Yes. Comparing the top 20% most consistent brands against the bottom 20% on the latest 2024 IPA Databank campaigns: 75% vs 40% report very large Sales Value Gain, 69% vs 40% Sales Volume Gain, 38% vs 20% Profit Gain, 56% vs 20% Market Share Gain, 25% vs 20% Defend Market Share, 19% vs 0% Develop New Market, 19% vs 13% Revitalize Existing Market, and 44% vs 27% Customer Acquisition.
Does the Consistency Effect Hold Outside the UK?
Yes. A companion study, The Creative Dividend (Effie & System1, 2026), coded 139 US and UK brands for the same 13 creative consistency features over 5 years, matched to the Effie Case Library. The most consistent brands were more than 3x as likely to grow differentiation (37.3% vs 11.1% of campaigns) and were the only group to grow distinctiveness at all — no campaigns from the least consistent brands grew distinctiveness (0% vs 35.3%).
Does Consistency Drive ROI for US and UK Brands?
Yes. In the same Creative Dividend analysis, average ROI rises from $2.10 per dollar/pound/euro for the least consistent brands to $8.80 for the most consistent brands. The share of campaigns achieving incremental profit rises from 6.1% to 17.6%, and the average number of business effects rises from 1.3 to 2.5 across the same consistency quartiles.
Is Consistency Alone Enough?
No. Consistency needs to be paired with commitment. Analysis of IPA Effectiveness Award entries (2012–2018) by Hurman & Field (2020) found that Creative Commitment — driven by three factors, campaign duration, number of media, and budget — has a direct relationship with results: campaigns scoring 12–15 on Creative Commitment report an average of 1.8 very large business effects, compared with just 1.0 for campaigns scoring 3–7.
How Long Does It Take for Consistency to Pay Off?
Consistency delivers limited benefit in the first 12 months, but a consistent advantage builds after 1+ years. Consistent brands’ advertising, brand and business effects grow at an accelerating rate over time, while inconsistent brands’ effects grow much more slowly and linearly — the gap between the two is what the report calls “Compound Creativity.”
How Was the Advertising Analyzed?
Creative performance across the study was analyzed using System1’s Test Your Ad platform, which measures how people feel second-by-second while viewing an ad and whether they can correctly recall the brand. Key metrics include:
Star Rating: overall emotion felt, predicting an ad’s long-term impact.
Spike Rating: whether an ad brands early enough and the intensity of the emotional response, predicting short-term impact.
Fluency Rating: % of people correctly identifying the brand.
Tests also capture diagnostic data including Showmanship and Salesmanship creative features, spontaneous associations, and reasons why people felt the way they did.
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