Consistency and Commonality in Advertising Content: Helping or Hurting?

Scholars and practitioners widely argue that strong, successful brands are built on consis-tent and unique positioning, which should be reflected in the brands' advertising. Surprisingly, however, little empirical evidence supports this claim, especially with regard to advertising content. The authors investigate whether and to what extent brands' adver-tising content consistency-the similarity in the firm's own advertising content over time- and commonality-the similarity between the firm's and competitors' advertising con-tent-affect brands' sales. Insights emerge from the analysis of the impact on sales of the content of 247 television ads aired by 33 brands in six consumer packaged goods categories over a four-year period. Results indicate that more than advertising spending, both consis-tency and commonality in advertising content affect sales, especially with respect to long-term cumulative sales. However, brands differ considerably regarding the direction of the effects. While small brands tend to benefit from increased consistency and commonality in advertising content, large brands tend to suffer from increased consistency. Thus, whether consistency and commonality in advertising content will help or hurt depends on the size of the brand.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).