Before committing to expensive TV ad production, Gab created multiple concepts and tested them using surveys sent to their target demographic. By asking questions about purchase intent after viewing a concept, they used data to select the most promising ideas, increasing the likelihood of success.

Contrary to the belief that ads quickly wear out, strong creative often performs better with repeated exposure. This concept of "wear in" justifies patience, allowing a new campaign to build familiarity and emotional connection with the audience, as stories grow resonance over time.

By re-running a successful past Christmas ad, Amazon guaranteed an emotional hit, avoided creative fatigue, and reallocated the entire production budget to media spend for a bigger share of voice. This "bake your cakes longer" strategy challenges the industry's obsession with newness.

Peter Field's analysis, applying attention data to media costs, reveals TV's high value. With an average 14-second attention span versus 1.7 for in-feed ads, TV's attention-adjusted CPM is extremely low. It also captures over 50% of Gen Z's media consumption, busting the "TV is dead" myth.

Data shows that brand-building ads rarely suffer from "wear out." Amazon successfully reran their "Sledging Grannies" ad two years later, and it tested with the exact same effectiveness, proving that great creative has a long shelf life.

In mature ad markets, creative quality is the biggest variable for success, not media spend. High-performing companies now shift budget away from platforms like Meta and Google and reinvest it into producing more content. This superior creative makes the remaining, smaller media spend far more effective.

Once ad copy proves to resonate with a target market, it may not need to be changed. A multi-million dollar ad campaign ran for a full year with the same copy, focusing solely on testing and rotating new creative visuals to maintain effectiveness and reach new audiences.

The common marketing belief in ad "wear out" is wrong, as familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. Consequently, marketers often pull their advertising campaigns right at the point where repetition is making them most effective.

Familiarity breeds contentment, not contempt. The 'Mere Exposure Effect' shows that repeated exposure to a stimulus makes us feel more positive towards it. This explains why consistent campaigns outperform those that frequently change creative. The performance gap between effective, consistent campaigns and inconsistent ones widens dramatically over time, creating a compounding advantage.