A resolution to build brand longevity

It's sufficiently early in 2026 for some of our resolutions to still be holding up. For instance, I'm acing my Dry January. Although the triumph does involve a minor semantic loophole. White wines, provided they are strictly bone-dry, are deemed to fall within the descriptive envelope.

But I digress. Whatever our personal resolutions, the bigger question is what should our resolution as an industry be?

The answer, in terms of output, should be to improve the longevity of the product we make. The value of compound creativity is beyond debate. It is the key to building mental availability over time. This is the foundation on which brand consideration depends, and which ultimately translates into market performance. Name me a successful brand you haven't heard of.

The history of advertising is littered with unforgettable, enduring brand shorthands, characters, mnemonics, graphics, symbols and sonic devices. They were, literally, grrrreat. But, like a gym quitter, we have stopped putting the work in. We are getting worse, not better, at creating the long-term, enduring brand properties on which compound creativity depends.

Survey after survey proves this point. The most recent, from Ipsos, makes grimreading.

Sonic cues are used in only 6% of the 2,000 ads researched. Yet ads with sonic devices are a whopping 8.5 times more likely to achieve a top tercile branded attention score than those without. Why, one is bound to ask, are they used so parsimoniously? (Full disclosure-oo-hoo, they are 3.5 times more likely to be used in work produced by VCCP).

Brand characters (as distinct from the borrowed interest of hiring a celebrity) fare a little better. They are used in 14% of the ads surveyed. And they deliver a very creditable 6 fold increase in top tercile branded attention.

In an age that is witnessing the rise of the AI agent, an age where search engines will become answer engines, we will no doubt see an increase in the number of branded characters. Not only are they more memorable than hired guns, they also have the huge advantage of being more deployable across formats, platforms and channels. This makes custom-built celebrity both less expensive and more effective than borrowed celebrity (twice as effective according to the survey). In a multi-media world it is simples more fit for purpose.

But I mustn’t be too down on borrowed interest. The use of celebrities does come 5th in the survey, just above taglines (with multiples of 2.8x and 2.2x respectively) and just below jingles and product iconography (5.0x and 3.2x respectively).

There is, however, a usage paradox across these six top-performing assets. In that the least effective ones are most used, and the most effective ones are least used. The top four performers on average feature in 14% of ads, whereas celebrities feature in a whopping 39%, and taglines an even higher 48%.

It is not surprising to see taglines around the halfway point, and it is gratifying to see the contribution that these concise brand mantras can deliver. You might say it doesn’t (glass and a) half make a difference. I have always been an endline fan.

But it is difficult not to give the industry a C- for its reliance on the predictable tactic of hiring someone else’s fame as opposed to building it ourselves. Especially when it is half as effective, less suited to multi-media and less long-lived.

The trouble with any research, especially when it rather artificially disaggregates component parts, is that it can look mechanistic.

And there will be plenty of people who’d argue that there’s no set way to make a great ad.

But that’s a different point to how you make a great campaign, where there are set ways. And one of them is to have a stable of repeatable assets that anchor your communication to your brand. That build a communication wall over time, rather than leave behind a trail of communication rubble (as an old boss of mine used to put it).

I can think of lots of famous campaigns, but I can’t think of any that don’t include at least two of the six ingredients listed above. And within these, very few of my favourites rely on the use of celebrity because, with a few glorious exceptions, this kind of endorsement seldom lasts.

Regardless of personal preference, the overall conclusion is clear. It is also reasonably uncontentious. Our resolution for 2026 should be to build more famous work that lasts.

We know the ingredients. We just need to be more liberal with them. Especially the ones we use least.