Brand consistency and human nature - the odd couple

But then, given how much we know about human nature, perhaps it’s more natural to ask how consistency ever happens at all. 

Recognising the human side of brand strategy

We’re all guilty. Have you ever:

• changed a campaign after some bad tracking threatened the business?
• won a pitch by changing a brand’s strategy?
• created an off-brand innovation to win some tactical sales?
• felt the double-espresso buzz of your new idea, and conveniently forgotten the brief?
• developed a fabulous idea that’s completely off-strategy, to win a creative award?

(N.B. multiple ‘Yes’ answers are allowed)

It’s only human. Change is delicious. A natural response to threat. A source of hope. We’re hardwired to do it. 

So rationally arguing for the long-term benefits we will enjoy from consistency over the short-term excitement we get from change isn’t enough. We have to make consistency the answer to our other human needs, too.

Here’s what we have learned about doing that, from maintaining 20+ years of consistency with Haleon. The two examples we will focus on are:

• parodontax: tripled value and share during a 7-year campaign, within a longer 17-year strategy (evidenced in our IPA 2024 case).
• Sensodyne: 10x revenue over 22 years, with one marketing strategy and campaign ( IPA 2016 case and Marketing Society 2025 case).

We’ve seen three big ways to go off track – and for each, we have found some ways in which consistency can be the answer to human needs rather than its competitor.

1. Have a North Star. One that’s emotional, enduring, one you want to follow

It sounds obvious, but you can’t be consistent if you don’t know where you’re going. parodontax's North Star is gum health, Sensodyne's is sensitivity treatment. Both are richly emotive topics, motivating for marketer and consumer alike. And enduring.

Innovate to the North Star. Innovation and consistency aren’t easy bedfellows.  But they have to be brought together.  For parodontax, gum health is the problem that every innovation seeks to solve. The task is finding product innovations to solve that in new ways, rather than solving new problems. And in doing this, we have found innovations that are more likely to succeed in the short term and also endure in the long, thus reducing costs and driving longer paybacks.

Communication faces the same tension.  Following the North Star, the task for communication is to find ways to do the same thing to new audiences – not to find a new story.

For example, with parodontax, the task was to grow while staying true to gum health. We aimed to recruit less severe sufferers. These were not connecting to the threats of catastrophic tooth loss that we had used to recruit severe sufferers. For them, the social stigma of their less severe gum-driven problems, such as bad breath, was a better match.  

So, we shifted communication to talk about the connection between gum disease, fresh breath and other more everyday oral health problems. 

At the same time, we created a clearly codified rulebook on what core brand assets we would keep, e.g., getting people to act on seeing blood in the sink.

2. Build the case – make consistency important to sales

As humans, we make decisions based on what feels important. Sales are important – so, all other things being equal, we will optimise to hit today’s sales targets.  Consistency is often the loser.

Haleon invests internally to make consistency important too – specifically in building the case for it as a sales driver, today and not just in the future. It’s part of the common language. When pressure comes, there is an accepted argument, backed with tracking, pretesting, MMM and equity reviews, penetration growth studies and internal case studies.

Public awards also help – once you’ve stood on stage and won a prize for doing something well, it’s harder to stop doing it.

3. Give consistency star quality

When transformation strategies are the king-makers of marketing, consistency can feel a bit … dull.

Change is often the way for people to prove their talent. It’s hard to prove your worth when you’re just repeating what the last person did, right?

Fortunately, there’s a happy paradox; consistency unlocks new opportunity. If you’re not spending talent, time and money reinventing the core, you can spend it elsewhere.

Haleon is able to direct resources to experimentation and exploration of new media platforms, new audiences, new technologies. People know how today’s assets work and are free to build on the success of teammates in new and different ways. They get to work where change is, instead of changing what’s working.  When you get it right, consistency actually helps with the people challenges.

So, perhaps we’ve been marketing consistency wrong – all rational arguments and no emotional benefit. 

Make consistency an answer to your human questions.  Appeal to the heart not just the head. Because if there’s one thing you shouldn’t ever try to change, it’s human nature.

At Grey, Matthew Gladstone is Planning Partner Head of Effectiveness, and Stephanie Tuesley is Global Planning Partner. Stewart Lees is Global Marketing and Digital Director at Haleon.

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and were submitted in accordance with the IPA terms and conditions regarding the uploading and contribution of content to the IPA newsletters, IPA website, or other IPA media, and should not be interpreted as representing the opinion of the IPA.