In the age of social media, creative fragmentation creates better connections with modern consumers.

By Tim Harkins, Executive Creative Director at Hook

With the rapid evolution of media consumption, repetition is losing effectiveness. In fact, recycling the same message across multiple platforms is increasingly a waste of time, money and creative energy. Today’s consumers are savvy, engaging with fewer channels and tuning out tactics they’ve seen before. They don’t respond to campaigns that simply mirror the same content across platforms; they want authenticity and variety in their interactions with brands.

We know that repetition is one of the best ways to get something to stick in someone’s memory, but candidly, it’s also the easiest tactic to rely on. Younger consumers recognize the tactic more easily, and it loses its power when it can be easily ignored. In traditional 360 campaigns, creative concepts and messages often become diluted as they’re adapted for different placements, resulting in overused taglines and pithy slogans that fail to resonate. The result? A target audience weary of a brand that they haven’t connected with on an emotional level.

Why a Single Message Is Losing Its Power

Fifteen years ago, it was easy to imagine how someone would experience a 360 campaign: They would watch a 30 or 60 second broadcast spot, then they would see a cutdown of the spot as a rich media ad on their favorite websites, or a static version of it on a billboard. Maybe they’d get a retargeting email or see some earned media articles—but everything was intentionally cohesive. This worked because media consumption was more accurately predictable, and we had fewer channels competing for consumer attention.

But consumer behavior has changed, especially among younger demographics. Some may still catch your TV ad, while others may encounter a shorter version of it on YouTube—or they may not see those at all because they spend their time elsewhere. They might spend their time solely on TikTok or Instagram, where a cut-down version of a broadcast ad won’t make much sense and will stick out as an ad. You’ll be lucky to get over 20% open rate on marketing emails, so you can’t count on that to help reinforce your message.

The point is that repetition is no longer guaranteed with how media consumption and internet usage has changed. Beyond that, the traditional 360 approach doesn’t leave much room for creator advertising or leaning into timely social trends that are highly effective when used correctly.

When crafting your platform-specific campaigns, consider using novelty, relevance or emotion as ways to create a connection. Modern audiences crave authenticity, and what feels authentic varies by platform. In the early days of Instagram, brands that used unique, high-quality images that fit naturally into users’ feeds saw more success than those using assets that simply extended a 360 campaign. We can look to Instagram again to see how this trend has evolved, where Stories ads now find success by using lower fidelity, quickly produced assets. This approach feels more native with the organic content users see, creating a more natural feel.

Brands Need to Let Go

So how can brands create authentic, impactful campaigns? Through creative fragmentation. This approach requires understanding how each audience interacts with specific channels and the types of content they consume there. Even the most well-defined audience segments will interact differently across various platforms. To feel genuine, brands need to engage their audience on each channel with distinct creative pieces that feel personal and relevant. Flexible tone of voice is key to maintaining authenticity on different platforms—a traditional 360 campaign simply doesn’t offer that flexibility.

We need to help clients get comfortable with increasing the variety of ways their brand speaks to their consumers—not letting go of brand rules completely, just a slight reduction from how they were operating a few years ago. We saw it in the early days of TikTok. Brands who ran safe and predictable ads on that platform were swiped away within milliseconds. As soon as something felt like an ad, it was treated like an ad.

Take the recent paid and owned work from Nutter Butter on social as an example. A 55-year-old product is taking risks and leaning heavily into a creative concept that could only work on TikTok. We even see successful, platform-specific campaigns in the B2B world, with brands like Gong and Figma leaning into the unique strengths of platforms like LinkedIn where they get the benefit of speaking to their target audience’s more leaned-in, professional personas.

But we are seeing a shift, albeit slowly, towards a more effective strategy. This has actually been helped along by the success of influencer campaigns. In the past, influencers may have been provided a strict script to follow or phrases that need to be said. Now, brands understand that these creators know how to speak to their audience authentically, and providing scripts or pushing the creator to speak in an unnatural way will be rightfully sussed out as an ad. When we see brands take risks—even small ones—and move away from a strict adherence to brand rules, we see better-performing campaigns. Nutter Butter has been so successful at this that other brands are collaborating with them, they saw a massive increase in followers, and creative teams the world over are talking about how to emulate their success. I’d be shocked if you found any similarities between what they run on TikTok and what is in their brand guidelines.

This Is Just the Beginning

This isn’t to say brands should abandon multi-channel campaigns altogether. Instead, each channel should be approached with its own creative lens. Embrace the world of creative fragmentation, embrace the changes to the advertising landscape, and prepare for the future which will see even greater changes to media consumption and advertising strategies (ahem—Gen Z being immune to the consumer funnel).

To creative teams and brands aiming for better performance: next time you’re working on a multi-channel campaign, challenge yourself to view each asset through the unique lens of its respective platform. Try designing standalone campaigns for each channel and compare them, putting yourself in the audience’s shoes. More often than not, you’ll find that the value in platform-specific, authentic content far outweighs the conventional 360 approach.