The Creativity Multiplier Series | Part 1 of 3
Fergus Kibble | FORWARD Agency | June 2026
TL;DR
In This Article
Every year, the marketing industry produces a mountain of content about media buying, targeting precision, programmatic efficiency, and the latest platform algorithm changes. CMOs build elaborate dashboards tracking impressions, CPMs, and attribution models down to the last click.
And every year, the research says the same thing: none of it matters as much as the quality of the creative work.
WARC’s landmark study with Kantar, cross-referencing their global profit ROI database with Kantar’s Link database of ad effectiveness metrics from over 450 matched ads, found that creative quality is the second biggest driver of profitability, with a multiplier of 12x. That means better creative can deliver twelve times the return on investment of weaker creative, holding everything else constant.
To put that in perspective, the most creative and effective ads generate over four times more profit compared to the least creative, with a profit return on investment of 6.62 compared to 1.42. That is not a marginal improvement. That is a fundamentally different commercial outcome from the same media spend.
The Data
Creative quality multiplier: 12x profitability. The most creative ads deliver profit ROI of 6.62 versus 1.42 for the least creative. This multiplier has grown from 10x in 2014 to 12x in 2025.
And this multiplier is growing. In 2014, the creative quality multiplier sat at 10x. By 2025, it had reached 12x. As media becomes more commoditised, the creative work itself becomes the primary differentiator.
For consumer brands, the data is even more pointed. Nielsen’s analysis of nearly 500 FMCG campaigns found that creative quality is responsible for 47% of the sales uplift from advertising, ahead of reach (22%), brand (15%), and targeting (9%). In other words, creative quality contributes more to sales than every other factor combined.
This should be a wake-up call for any brand that is spending disproportionately on media optimisation while underfunding creative development. The maths is clear: a 10% improvement in creative quality delivers more commercial value than a 10% improvement in reach or targeting.
Peter Field’s investigation into the IPA’s Effectiveness Awards databank tells a more troubling story. Over the period from 1996 to 2008, creatively awarded campaigns were approximately 12 times as efficient as non-awarded ones. By the 2006 to 2018 period, that advantage had fallen to below four times. Creatively awarded campaigns are now less effective than they have been in 24 years of data analysis.
The culprit is not a mystery. Short-termism in marketing has eroded the conditions that allow creativity to work. Budgets have been cut, campaign durations have shortened, and the obsession with performance metrics has squeezed out the kind of bold, fame-building work that historically delivered the biggest returns.
The Effectiveness Crisis
High-performing campaigns are almost half as likely to have short-term goals compared to low performers. They target long-term objectives like market share growth and achieve fame. The industry knows this. The research is unambiguous. And yet the pattern continues.
The research identifies consistent characteristics of high-performing creative. Strong ads tend to feature the product prominently and early. They build emotional connections rather than relying purely on rational claims. They are distinctive enough to be remembered and shared.
But the most powerful thing good creative does is something the data captures indirectly: it earns attention beyond the media buy. Good creative drives fame because people are more likely to talk about it and share it, and it is more likely to generate mainstream press coverage. All of which are share-of-voice multipliers that extend the impact of every dollar spent.
This is where the creativity multiplier meets earned media, and where PR agencies like FORWARD have a distinct role to play. Because if the single biggest lever in your marketing budget is creative quality, and the single biggest amplifier of creative quality is earned media, then the combination of the two is where the real commercial advantage lives.
That is exactly where Part 2 of this series picks up.
Creative Effectiveness Starts Here
FORWARD combines creative acceleration with earned media expertise to deliver campaigns that earn attention and drive measurable commercial impact. Start with a conversation.
Sources
The creativity multiplier is the measurable impact that creative quality has on advertising profitability. WARC and Kantar research shows that high-quality creative work delivers a 12x profitability multiplier compared to low-quality creative, meaning the same media spend generates dramatically different commercial outcomes depending on the quality of the creative execution.
Nielsen’s analysis of nearly 500 FMCG campaigns found that creative quality is responsible for 47% of the sales uplift from advertising. This is more than reach (22%), brand (15%), and targeting (9%) combined, making creative quality the single most important factor in FMCG advertising effectiveness.
Peter Field’s research using the IPA Effectiveness Awards databank shows that short-termism in marketing is the primary driver of declining creative effectiveness. Reduced budgets, shorter campaign durations, and an overemphasis on performance metrics have eroded the conditions that allow creativity to deliver its full commercial impact.
Good creative drives fame because people are more likely to talk about it, share it, and because it is more likely to generate mainstream press coverage. These earned media effects act as share-of-voice multipliers, extending the commercial impact of the creative work well beyond the original media investment. This is why combining strong creative with earned media strategy produces the highest returns.
Brands should rebalance their investment toward creative development rather than over-indexing on media optimisation and targeting. The research consistently shows that investing in distinctive, emotionally resonant creative work delivers greater commercial returns than equivalent investment in reach or targeting improvements. Brands should also commit to longer campaign durations and resist the pull of short-term performance metrics that undermine creative effectiveness.
