Why advertising’s next era should mean more opportunity and less orthodoxy

For decades, marketing communications has been structured around a simple hierarchy of effectiveness: TV's reach, attention and consistency made it the battlefield on which the industry fought. Recently, with traditional TV consumption in decline, some are eyeing a new era of effectiveness, where social comes first, creators are key, and everything is personal. But this view mischaracterises an environment where the hierarchy of effectiveness has not been reorganised but removed: where brands, for the first time, have multiple different methods of affecting meaningful commercial outcomes. We need to move beyond single-minded ideology and embrace the freedom – and evidence – of a new world of opportunity.

New beliefs, old models

It feels just as likely that marketing communications is entering a post-hierarchical era of effectiveness, where there may be no dominant strategy, and where we are no longer compelled to use any specific channel or method except the one that best suits the strategy we choose.

Fernando Fernandez is sure that things have changed. The new CEO of Unilever recently declared he was “absolutely convinced that the times of big corporate big brand messages are gone.” In his mind, brands need to reject the “lazy days of marketing” and instead focus on “variety of creators, volume of content, velocity of posting”. He worries that "today, brands – by definition and by default – are met with scepticism when their messages come directly from corporations”, and he’s committed the business to “creating marketing systems where others can speak for your brand at scale.” In place of broadcast messages come a creator in every postcode. Hyperlocal, hyperpersonal, hyperproductive.

In a world where smartphones are now the primary device for media consumption, you can understand why people like Fernandez are keen to reorder the imagined hierarchy of marketing effectiveness. TV’s long-running dominance of media time – combined with its above-average levels of attentive consumption – placed it atop that hierarchy for multiple decades. Make a well-crafted piece of advertising and you could pay to guarantee its broad visibility amongst the entire population inside a few days. Find enough money, make your ad better than theirs, and you had what game theorists would call a ‘dominant strategy’. But with TV’s consumptive superiority being usurped, many – Fernandez and Unilever included – see a new hierarchy forming.

In doing so, however, those advocating for this reordered hierarchy – a world in which singular, ‘one to many’ TV advertising loses its place to a “social-first demand model”, with brand messaging atomised across creators, platforms and audiences – may be transposing old expectations into a new world. They are assuming there must always be a vertical hierarchy, running from best to worst. But it feels just as likely that marketing communications is entering a post-hierarchical era of effectiveness, where there may be no dominant strategy, and where we are no longer compelled to use any specific channel or method except the one that best suits the strategy we choose.

The old methods haven’t gone away

Those who assume that creator-led marketing has become the new dominant strategy overlook some key data. Paid social as a channel shows middling comparative returns in the long- and short-term, and creators – whilst showing promise as a brand-building opportunity – display extreme variance of outcome, even on small budgets. Whilst there are big brands that have thrived with its usage, not least Unilever’s own Dove, platform algorithms tend to flatter the usefulness of creator content: they de-prioritise the many unsuccessful creator campaigns to the point of invisibility, and reward the brands getting it right. Unlike the observable failure of misguided TV or outdoor execution, the worst of creator marketing disappears literally without trace. Critically, we also know that video advertising – whether through a linear TV channel or an on-demand platform – still works; even Unilever’s most progressive brands continue to invest heavily on it.

We should also recognise that – for as much as the era of “big brand messages” might be over for businesses like Unilever – they appear to remain effective for others. Cadbury has again brought back its “Made to Share” campaign, just as it has repeated singular campaigns for its Secret Santa Post Office and its “Glass and a Half” work for Dairy Milk. McCain won the IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix in 2024 for an undoubtedly big, “one to many” brand campaign that had been running for a decade; Yorkshire Tea won Gold for its single-minded embrace of TV storytelling. This broad consistency can also be seen in sport and culture: recently, Guinness was again ubiquitous during the Six Nations; Rolex will soon return to its iconic Masters golf partnership; this summer, Coca-Cola’s association with the FIFA Men’s World Cup reaches year 48. Micro-creators might sell shampoo, but it appears the world’s most famous footballers still sell soft drinks.

An increased variety of effectiveness

People of all ages still love sitting down to watch something on their TV. But almost everyone now has a phone, uses social platforms, is reachable via audio, retail media, search, and more.

These examples are not intended to claim that any one campaign is superior, but to show that – for almost any advertising method you might place at the top of your hierarchy – you can find brands winning with entirely opposite choices. If you want to make the case for a “social-first demand model”, you’ll find countless beauty brands winning on TikTok; you’ll also find B2B brands succeeding with humorous, mass-reach TV. Some brands win with authenticity, others by employing Hollywood directors to make professional-grade brand films. And whilst brands of all ages are diving into niche creators, digital-native brands like Uber have pivoted towards world-famous stars like Robert De Niro and Brian Cox, whilst Google has leant on well-known partners to accelerate adoption of their Pixel hardware.

This lack of hierarchy shows up in people’s media consumption too. The average person is probably on social media for no more than 90 minutes daily – less than they spend listening to the radio. Social consumption is significant, but it is not overwhelming.

However, time spent with traditional media is, in parallel, in a slow decline, fuelling an environment that hasn’t had its hierarchy re-organised so much as disintegrated: consumption and influence is increasingly split across different channels and platforms. With ubiquitous fast mobile internet and increased advertising supply, we can reach almost any audience anywhere, in any mode, at any time. People of all ages still love sitting down to watch something on their TV. But almost everyone now has a phone, uses social platforms, is reachable via audio, retail media, search, and more. Whilst they chat. Whilst they travel. Whilst they read, listen, stream, share.

Approaching a world of parity

For all the evidential gaps in the effectiveness of digital media in the aggregate, it also needs to be stated that newer tactics do show promising effects on critical brand outcomes. Per Amplified data, social media – both in-feed and formats like Reels and Stories – constitutes a significant share of people’s higher-attention media consumption, which Ebiquity has shown to correlate with ROI in the short- and long-term. Early benchmarks on creator performance show an ability to deliver outcomes on par with traditional TV campaigns. And we have seen multiple brands scale through the relentless capture of demand at point of sale, offline or online.

Whilst some seek to swap one dominant strategy for another – out with TV, in with creators – we should revel in the potential liberation this new landscape offers. For most of its existence, the advertising industry has been hemmed into orthodoxy by structural factors outside its control: media scarcity and consumption trends meant that advertisers largely competed on quality and quantity of print and TV execution for multiple decades. But those structural constraints are increasingly absent, and re-committing to a new tactical straitjacket won’t help. Instead, we need to embrace this freedom: acknowledge that our strategic options have increased exponentially; explore a creative canvas that has never been broader; liberate ourselves to experiment with new solutions. For the first time, marketers can truly compete, with advertising solutions as distinctive as the businesses they are created to support.

Within this world, it is likely some underlying principles will remain. The old principles of reach, distinctiveness and mental availability travel across any medium and any method. What is most interesting is the executional toolkit which every brand now possesses – and what they choose to do with it.

An industry-wide opportunity

We need to grasp that opportunity, in the work we produce but also the evidence we create, for the betterment of our commercial prospects and the credibility of our industry.

For IPA member agencies and their brand partners, this is a time of revolutionary opportunity. Those promises of boundless freedom from the early internet era – echoed in Jeremy Bullmore’s insistence that “brand advertising in the next 20 years is going to demand a great deal more than the ability to write, produce and place a 30-second spot on network television” from 1996 – are finally coming true. We need to grasp that opportunity, in the work we produce but also the evidence we create, for the betterment of our commercial prospects and the credibility of our industry.

So, with the entry deadline hurtling into view, my simple hope for this year’s IPA Effectiveness Awards is this: that we end with no theme, no hierarchy, no dominant strategy. That advertisers of all types and advertising of all shapes and sizes is represented. Where we have some broadcast excellence and where we have some creator innovation. Where some brands win the heart, and some go straight to the wallet. Where brands are exploring the full potential of a world in which we aren’t replacing old rules with new rules, but realising that there might be fewer rules entirely. And where the only priority is to use marketing communications to grow your client’s business, not conform to a stylistic expectation.

Charlie Ebdy is Convenor of Judges for the IPA Effectiveness Awards 2026. Entries are open until Thursday, 16 April.

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.