Why Your Best Campaign Is the One You’re About to Kill ☠
Why our obsession with the shiny new thing can blind us to what’s already working.
We marketers are like magpies, we love shiny new things; new channels, new formats, new creative. But as Paul Sinkinson, Managing Director for Analytic Partners in Asia and Australia, reminded a packed room at SXSW recently, our obsession with the shiny and new can blind us to what’s already working.
In fact, the campaign you’re most tempted to kill could be the one still quietly delivering your best results.
The maths behind creative success
Paul would be the first to admit he isn’t a creative by trade - he’s a mathematician who’s analysed nearly a trillion dollars of marketing investment across 25 years. His verdict?
“Creative isn’t the number one factor in advertising effectiveness. It’s number two. The number one factor is advertising spend - your reach.”
Even a mediocre ad shown to everyone will outperform a masterpiece seen by only a few. But once reach is established, creative quality becomes the biggest driver of ROI. Analytic Partners’ global data shows that two-thirds of video performance comes from the quality of the creative, and even in static formats, creative accounts for around 40% of results.
The message is clear: stop arguing about media weights and start sweating the creative that actually lands with people.
Why brand messages beat performance 80% of the time
One of the most startling insights from Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome® is that brand messaging outperforms performance messaging in 80% of cases.
That’s not an anti-retail or anti-digital statement - it’s just maths. A brand campaign works across your entire portfolio. A tactical ad sells one product. In a world where most marketers face shrinking budgets, the campaign that builds equity across the whole business nearly always wins on efficiency.
Paul jokes that the one marketer in Australia whose budget hasn’t been cut should still take note:
“If you want to drive results dollar for dollar, the brand ad is your safety net. It’s the thing that earns you the right to do more product work later.”
Wear out? Or wear in?
Marketers love to talk about wear out. When creative gets “tired”, it’s often code for when we get tired of it. Well, we tested over 51,000 ads to find out when it truly made financial sense to replace an existing campaign.
Of those 51,000, only 14 had genuinely worn out. The other 50,985+ were still pulling their weight. In other words, most brands are binning their best-performing work far too early.
During the pandemic, when many brands couldn’t film new ads, something interesting happened: ROI went up. “Because,” says Paul, “for once, we let the ads wear in.”
When campaigns run longer, consumers move from learning the story to simply being reminded of it. Efficiency climbs. One brand that doubled down on its core creative platform for 30 weeks a year saw ROI grow 2.5 times over four years. Longevity didn’t dull performance, it amplified it.
Consistency: the unheralded superhero
Consistency also unlocks the budget to do things properly. By running fewer, longer-lived campaigns, brands free up funds to create fit-for-purpose content for each channel i.e. the right framing, contrast, pacing and story arc for mobile, rather than lazily dumping a 30-second TVC on YouTube.
The payoff? Up to 300% higher returns for creative designed for digital, compared to recycled TV edits.
Synergy is real AND measurable
Running a campaign across multiple channels doesn’t just increase reach - it compounds impact. Analytic Partners’ research shows that brands using five channels achieve up to 70% higher ROI than those relying on one. The reason is twofold: incremental reach, and creative synergy.
A well-timed retail poster or digital placement reignites all those brand associations built through TV or video. Suddenly, the consumer walking into store is thinking about more than just price.
Even adding more digital channels to a campaign boosts ROI - the effect isn’t limited to mixing online and offline. Integration multiplies value, while fragmentation quietly kills it.
The power of context
Paul also points to the rise of contextual relevance as one of the most reliable performance drivers. Sports creative on a sports page, weather-triggered outdoor, or content aligned with the viewer’s interests; these tactics consistently outperform generic programmatic placements.
Context doesn’t just make intuitive sense. Analytic Partners’ data shows 57% higher ROI for weather-adjusted digital out-of-home campaigns compared to static schedules.
Lots of littles and one long
So how do you balance the need for long-running brand work with today’s demand for constant content? It’s not a contradiction; it’s an “and”.
Short, snackable creative builds cumulative attention. A stream of quick, relevant pieces can add up to the same effect as a single ad watched for several seconds. But those little pieces only work when anchored by a strong, consistent brand platform - the long-form storytelling that gives meaning to every micro-moment.
In other words: make the big idea once, then let the small stuff orbit around it.
The surprising power of sound
When the Distinctive Asset Research Group measured every brand cue — from mascots to taglines — one clear winner emerged: sound.
Whether it’s a full-blown jingle or a sharp sonic logo, audio branding sticks in our memory in a way few visuals can. Sure, Netflix’s ta-dum is iconic. But a proper tune you can hum? That’s where real brand magic happens.
Take McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it.” Twenty years on, it’s still everywhere — from TV to TikTok — wearing in, not wearing out. Every note deepens recall and emotion.
Jingles might make some creatives cringe, but data says they’re your best long-term brand investment.
And this isn’t just theory. At a marketing event I attended last week, world-renowned speaker Maz Farrelly made this point in unforgettable fashion. She had the whole room stand up and dance to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Every person — from Gen Z to Boomers — knew the lyrics. That’s the staying power of sound.
Make the logo smaller but the product matter
Paul’s other creative provocation: stop shouting your logo. “Bringing the logo in within the first two seconds gives you an 11% bump,” he says. “But showing the product early gives you a 57% higher ROI.”
People pay attention to what interests them. Tell an interesting product story, and they’ll remember your brand without needing it stamped across every frame.
So what should marketers actually do?
Paul closed with three practical takeaways every CMO should write on the office wall:
Stop talking about wear-out and start talking about wear-in. Great creative gets better with time. Let it.
Build one strong, consistent brand platform. Adapt it for five channels and make every format fit for purpose.
Use data to prove longevity, not justify novelty. The maths shows that “the next new thing” is rarely your best move.
The campaign you shouldn’t kill
Paul’s final advice was equal parts humour and truth: “Please, for the love of God, stop killing campaigns too early. They’re just starting to work.”
In other words, your best campaign might not be the one in production, it might be the one already running, still compounding in the minds of your customers, still building the brand you’ve worked so hard to earn.
So before you kill it, measure it properly. It might be the smartest thing you never changed.
Ready to see what’s really working?
If you’re rethinking what to cut — or what to keep — our modelling team (including Paul!), can show you where your brand is quietly compounding value you might be missing.