The cost of playing it safe

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox.

Most marketing departments think of bold creative work as the risky option. The safe choice is to stay within category norms, avoid anything too distinctive, and optimise for short-term metrics you can defend in a budget review.

The data says otherwise. Dull campaigns cost 40% more to achieve the same results as emotionally engaging ones. Playing it safe is the expensive option.

This finding comes from The Creative Dividend, a new book from Andrew Tindall and the teams at Effie and System1. They analysed 1,265 advertising campaigns across the US and Europe from 2007 to 2023, and the core finding is striking: creative quality combined with media support explains 60.1% of campaign business results. Not media alone. Not creative alone. The interaction between them.

What caught my attention was the framework the researchers use to measure creative quality – something they call the Creativity Stack. It breaks effectiveness down into four dimensions: emotion, distinctiveness, showmanship, and consistency.

Before launching Department of Creative Affairs, I spent eleven years at Contagious, a creative intelligence company that helped brands and agencies improve their creative output. Part of that work – led by the consultancy team – involved building evaluation frameworks for companies like Heineken. These tools helped marketing teams assess work against criteria that actually predict effectiveness, rather than gut feel or seniority. Arif Haq, who led much of that work, recently wrote about how these frameworks have evolved over the past decade.

The questions those frameworks asked map almost directly onto the Creativity Stack. Does this stand out, or is it category wallpaper? Does it make people feel something? Is it unmistakably ours? Can we commit to it? The consultancy team was working from principle and pattern recognition. Now there's hard data behind it.

So why aren't more brands using frameworks like this?

What the research shows

The Creativity Stack doesn't just name these dimensions – it quantifies what happens when you get them right or wrong.

Emotion. Dull campaigns cost 40% more to achieve the same results as emotionally engaging ones. And the industry is getting worse at this: average emotional response to advertising has declined over the past decade, with a 71% correlation to the loss of brand effects. The categories with the highest neutrality? B2B at 46%, finance at 44%. These aren't excused from the requirement to be interesting. They're where the opportunity is greatest.

Distinctiveness. Without brand recognition, emotional advertising loses its power entirely. You're investing in generic category uplift that competitors will harvest. The research found that Fluent Devices – characters, scenarios, sonic assets that are uniquely yours – triple the chance of reporting distinctiveness gains. Yet jingles and sonic devices are declining in use, despite consistently strong performance.

Showmanship. This is the craft dimension – how you create the feeling. It's particularly crucial in skippable formats, delivering a 40% lift in emotion and 54% lift in attention for short-form content. But showmanship features are declining while salesmanship features rise.

Consistency. Fluent Devices take three to five years to deliver their full emotional benefit. Campaigns running less than six months struggle to convert spend into profit regardless of quality. The pressure for constant refresh actively undermines the conditions creativity needs to pay off.

Campaigns in the top 10% of creative quality are eight times more likely to report profit than those in the bottom 10%.

The confidence gap

If the evidence is this clear, why isn't behaviour changing?

60% of marketers lack confidence in the commercial impact of their creative work. They know creativity matters in theory but can't make the case internally. So they default to what's measurable over what's meaningful – short-term metrics that light up dashboards but build nothing lasting.

There's a 91% correlation between Meta's global revenue growth and the rise of short-term campaign objectives. More short-term objectives means fewer profit and share gains. Marketers are funding the platforms while starving their own brands.

This is where evaluation frameworks earn their keep. Most organisations don't have shared criteria for assessing creative work. Without them, evaluation stays subjective, political, and inconsistent. The CFO asks for evidence; the marketing team offers intuition. Budgets shift to performance channels, and the cycle continues.

The Creativity Stack gives marketers vocabulary for these conversations. Emotion, distinctiveness, showmanship, consistency – these are measurable, discussable, improvable. But vocabulary isn't enough. You need organisational commitment to use it: training, consistent application, and leadership willing to back the conclusions even when they're uncomfortable.

What this means for the marketing majority

For brands without enterprise-scale budgets, the implications are practical.

Build or adopt an evaluation framework. It doesn't need to be elaborate, but you need shared criteria for what good looks like – criteria that map to the dimensions this research proves matter. If your creative reviews consist of people sharing opinions until someone senior makes a call, you're leaving effectiveness on the table. Start with the four dimensions of the Creativity Stack and build from there.

Use the framework to raise ambition. The goal is pushing for better. When everyone understands what great looks like, the conversations change.

Make the business case in terms finance understands. Creativity is a measurable driver of profit and market share, with effects that compound over time. "Stabilisation of future cash flow" carries more weight in a budget meeting than "brand building".

Commit for longer than feels comfortable. The data is unambiguous: time in market matters. Emotional and distinctive campaigns struggle to convert spend into profit if they run for less than six months. When the same campaign runs for years, the probability of profit rises sharply. The temptation to refresh is often the enemy of effectiveness.

The real risk

The principles behind the Creativity Stack have been understood by the best practitioners for years. What's new is the scale of evidence – 1,265 campaigns, analysed with enough rigour to settle the argument.

The tools exist. The evidence exists. The only remaining question is whether you'll use them.

Because the biggest risk is doing something safe that definitely won't work. 

Looking for a new agency? DCA cuts through the noise to connect brands with agencies that fit

• We cover all types of projects and disciplines, from strategy and creative to performance and tech.

• Our editorial team vets every agency, so you skip the pitch theatre and get straight to capable partners.

• We offer consultancy, pitch management, or a complimentary shortlisting service if that's all you need. Submit a brief today

Amar Chohan, Founder and CEO - Department of Creative Affairs.