System1 have published the follow up to their Cost of Dull report, and the follow up doesn’t paint a great picture.
After analysing over 80,000 ads across Europe and the US, they quantified that brands are spending an additional $189 billion in media to compensate for emotionally flat creative.
Shit.
As always, I’ll call radical accountability here and be the first to put my hand up for being guilty of this.
The temptation is generally to play it safe when you’re a business marketing to other businesses. Even more so when (as I often am) I’m working with a business that has gone from no real marketing strategy > having a strategy. Throwing a risky big creative idea in the mix feels like yet another leap.
But this report got my attention. And if you run a business selling to other businesses, and are running any form of marketing – you should pay attention too; not least because unfortunately business services have ranked the most boring of the boring across the full spectrum of the 80,000 ads being tested.
Here are my top 5 take-aways from the report.
All research in this report is courtesy of System1, and there is a link at the end of this article to download the full report via their website.
1. Advertisers are dull by default
System1’s data showed that across Europe and the US, 48% of ads triggered absolutely no emotional response. Not good. Not bad. Just nothing.
This is an issue because there’s lots of established research into the benefits of emotionally resonant creative.
We know eliciting an emotional response builds greater memory recall, and more positive brand affinity.
Yet still half of all ads are safe and vanilla.
This is more of an issue in B2B (where the subject matter is typically seen as drier), but telling that this is happening across the board. I don’t think the reason is necessarily a lack of knowledge or understanding; it’s a lack of courage and a diminished appetite for risk-taking.
With stretched budgets, timelines and teams (and as we’ve entered the era of AI slopification) it makes sense to me that ads would be getting more boring and less courageous.
But it also presents an opportunity. It’s a call to feel confident about doing something different – because the data shows that playing it safe is probably more of a risk than potentially missing the mark.
2. Lack of creativity affects every stage of your customer journey
I reckon I found this piece of research the most interesting, because it clearly shows the ripple effect of bad creative on everything else that comes after it.
Not sure if there’s a cause and effect situation (i.e. potentially the more risk taking you are, the more forward thinking you might be likely to be, the more that bleeds out into your culture and other areas of your business?) but the report itself offers the solution that emotion overall helps build a brand; while neutrality does not. And the effects of brand can be felt not just pre-sale in the awareness stage, but throughout an entire customer journey:
- Customer penetration: -48%
- Brand consideration: -43%
- Ad recall: -43%
- Market share growth: -37%
- Brand trust: -22%
- Long-term customer retention: -9%
This clearly is more than a marketing issue; it becomes an entire business issue.
I see a business problem. Lower retention. Slower growth. Weaker trust. These are outcomes that affect the bottom line directly; and this research suggests that these factors are all being influenced by whether or not your creative makes someone feel something.
3. B2B ads are the most boring (which is actually good news)
As mentioned above, Business Services ranked number one on the dullness scale. Business Software came in at number four. Across the B2B category more broadly, emotional neutrality ran as high as 60% in the UK – meaning six in ten people watching a B2B ad walked away with 0 feelings.
I can see exactly how we’ve ended up here.
In B2B there’s a tendency to think your business and your buyers are different. That they’re rational decision-makers who respond to logic, proof points, and ROI conversations rather than emotion and irrationality. So you lead with features. You explain. You demonstrate. You use voiceovers and words on screen and talking-head testimonials (again, first one to put my hand up here for these tactics which I have and continue to recommend for clients.)
The problem is that B2B buyers are still humans. They still make faster, more instinctive decisions about brands they feel something about – even if they’d never describe it that way, or even consciously understand the why behind their decision making. The emotional processing happens first, and the rational justification follows. There is an argument that there is no B2C or B2B, just “B2H” (Business To Human). Personally, I don’t want to throw yet another acronym into the mix – but I think the crux of this does hold true.
Here’s the flip side to this point, and it’s genuinely exciting: if your entire category is operating at 60% neutrality, the bar for standing out is low. You don’t need a massive production budget or a brave, boundary-pushing creative idea to be memorable. You just need to make someone feel something, while everyone around you is making them feel nothing.
4. Storytelling is the strongest way to building emotion and being remembered
System1 identified five creative pillars that defeat neutrality: storytelling, drama, melody, humour, and fluent devices. Storytelling ranked number one.
This makes sense when you think about how our brains are evolutionary wired. Storytelling is the way we have been built to make sense of the world, since the beginning of time.
Stories are built by (for lack of a better term) telling a story – with a beginning, a complication, and a resolution. When your creative follows that structure, people start anticipating what comes next.
The research is quite specific about what kills this: voiceovers, words on screen, product demos, talking directly to camera. These are the formats most correlated with dullness. Characters, scenes unfolding, knowing glances, hummable tunes – these are the ones that cure it.
I know what you might be thinking: our product is complex, we need to explain it. And I get that. And I think all that still has a place, in the mix. But there’s a meaningful difference between explaining what you do and showing what it means for someone. This argues that the best chance at the most effective B2B creative doesn’t lead with your product – it leads with a person centred narrative and a problem, then how it was solved.
You don’t need to be a filmmaker to do this. You just need to resist the urge to lead with the features list.
5. Keep It Simple, Stupid
You’ve likely heard this a general rule of thumb, but it holds true in this context too.
Attention spans are shortening. You have milliseconds to get someone’s attention. The idea of not only a boring ad, but a boring and confusing ad, means you’ve got zero chance at making an impact.
We favour things that are easy to digest and understand. I generally talk about all marketing messages and comms having a ‘single minded proposition’ – the ONE thing you need and want people to take away. That’s reflected in this data too.
The lens in this report is that people naturally build affinity towards things that are easy to recognise and process. Things like characters, symbols, sounds or styles act as mental shortcuts, helping brands come to mind and be recognised quickly and effortlessly.
In System 1’s words – used consistently, simplicity can help build familiarity and affinity over time, making decision-making faster and more intuitive.
So, where does this leave us?
In a currently stale ass position to be fair, but with lots of room for opportunity (or challenge) depending on how you look at it. But I am an optimist.
If you are a B2B business running no campaigns, or boring campaigns, hopefully this provokes some thought about how you might be able to push some boundaries, take some risks and build a lasting impact.
Thank you to System1 for the great insights – you can download the full report called The Cure for Dull HERE.
