"If you’re worried about the cost of developing new campaigns, then maybe stop throwing them away while they’re still working," says David Thomason

We’ve been told for decades about the dangers of ‘wear-out’ – the point when your audience gets sick of seeing your ad, and its effectiveness begins to fall. The truth is that this very rarely happens.

While marketers and agencies might get sick of their own work, for your audience, wear-out isn’t really a thing.

In 2022, Analytic Partners Australia tested more than 50,000 ads and found 14 had run past their ‘best before’ date. That’s 0.02%. The rest were binned prematurely – meaning the cost of replacing them exceeded any drop in effectiveness.

But it’s worse than that. Or better, depending on your point of view. System1, a UK-based global marketing research and effectiveness company, recently coined the phrase ‘compound creativity’ after analysing 56 brands and 4,000+ ads over five years.

It concluded: “Campaigns from consistent brands create 27% more ‘very large’ brand effects.” (Not necessarily running the same ad, but the same recognisable campaign.) So, not only is wear-out not a thing, but your campaign is very likely to grow more effective with age, and for many years.

Consistency wins.

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