Playful consistency: the secret to super effective advertising

What if I told you that the real key to effectiveness isn’t chasing the new but mastering consistency?

For years, research has shown that brand consistency is the cornerstone of long-lasting advertising effectiveness. The truth is, if you’re starting from scratch every time, you’ll never create truly impactful ads.

What makes an ad effective?

Effective ads rely on three key elements: grabbing attention with emotion, reinforcing your brand, and connecting your product or service with a customer need. This combination is not just about capturing attention, but also about building lasting mental structures that predispose consumers to choose your brand. 

As Peter Field points out in Eat Your Greens, brand building is a long-term process that conditions consumers through repeated exposure.

This is where brand assets play a crucial role. They strengthen these mental structures in the brain and build mental availability, making it easier for consumers to remember and choose your brand when the time comes.

Our brains crave efficiency, and when we recognize something quickly, we’re more likely to engage with it. This is why repetition isn’t just useful; it’s essential. The more people see your brand assets, the more they internalize them, making them easier to process and more emotionally resonant over time.

What is playful consistency?

The most successful brands codify their communication, using familiar assets—logos, colors, jingles—in fresh, engaging ways.

This approach keeps their ads instantly recognizable while also connecting emotionally with their audience, making it easy for people to remember the brand in the long run.

These brands don’t just repeat themselves—they evolve within their established brand codes. At Behavio, we call this playful consistency. Instead of reinventing the wheel, brands build on their existing visual, audio, and conceptual elements, placing them in engaging new contexts.

McDonald's golden arches transformed into delivery paths, Mercedes-Benz’s logo doubling as a Christmas tree, or a brand mascot taking on different roles. All of these creative executions feel fresh while reinforcing the brand’s identity.

The three-step process of playful consistency

Playful consistency follows a three-step process:

1. Establish distinctive brand assets: Build strong assets that stand out from your competitors. Logos, jingles, and visual elements should be instantly recognizable.
   
2. Roll out across different formats: Make sure these assets remain recognizable across various media. This keeps your brand top of mind, no matter the context.
   
3. Keep it fresh: Find new and surprising ways to adapt your assets, keeping them exciting and engaging without straying from your core identity. This ongoing evolution helps keep your audience interested and connected to your brand.

This method leads to super effective ads, sometimes delivering up to 11 times higher sales impact for the same media spend. While new brands can’t achieve this overnight, they can start laying the groundwork in just a few years. 

By embracing playful consistency, brands can tap into the full potential of their identity and strike the perfect balance between familiarity and creativity to drive long-term success.

Examples of playful consistency

McDonald’s

McDonald’s has a knack for keeping its golden arches fresh while making sure they’re always unmistakable. In the “Follow the Arches” campaign, they turned parts of their iconic logo into clever road signs. Simple, smart, and instantly recognizable.

The fast food chain’s "Raise Your Arches" campaign is another great example of playful consistency using same brand asset. Instead of traditional product shots or slogans, it used a simple, universal gesture—raising one’s eyebrows—to signal a craving for McDonald’s.

Google

Since 1998, Google has made a habit of switching up its homepage logo to celebrate everything from cultural moments to holidays and historical figures.

These playful twists are a fun way to keep things engaging and make Google feel alive and in tune with the world.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola’s “Recycle Me” campaign creatively used its iconic packaging to promote sustainability. The familiar red and white colors and classic contour bottle kept the brand’s identity intact, while the “Recycle Me” message added a timely call to action. 

P.S. We tested how well this ad resonated with respondents - check out the results in our platform!

KFC

When a chicken supply fiasco forced hundreds of KFC locations to shut down, the brand didn’t panic—it got creative. In a bold print ad, they rearranged the letters on their iconic bucket to spell “FCK”.

It was a cheeky yet on-brand way to acknowledge the mess-up. 

Final thoughts

“Consistent and creative are not opposites, it turns out, but actually happy bedfellows: the secret sauce of the effective advertiser. Indeed, consistency not only demands but enables freshness.” —Laurence Green, Director of Effectiveness, IPA

Playful consistency is a clever strategy that allows brands to evolve while remaining instantly recognizable.

It may seem counterintuitive, but true freshness in advertising doesn’t come from constant reinvention—it comes from building on what’s already familiar. 

The best brands don’t just repeat themselves; they remix, reimagine, and reinvigorate their assets in a way that feels both familiar and exciting.