January 10, 2022

A lot of business people tend to think an old marketing campaign is a bad marketing campaign.

After seeing the same billboard for several years, it's easy to want change.

This is usually a very costly marketing mistake.

In fact, advertising legend Rosser Reeves proved in his book (Reality in Advertising) that it is better to run a substandard campaign for 10 years in a row, then interrupt it and start a new, more superior campaign in its place.

This is because the new ad would destroy all of your progress in penetrating your customers' mind.

For instance, let's look at Little Caesars.

In 1994, Little Caesars was the #2 pizza chain in America (just behind Pizza Hut) with $2 billion in annual sales. This was largely due to their successful "pizza! pizza!" advertising campaigns that claimed you could get two pizzas for the price of one.

For whatever reason, marketing executives at Little Caesars got tired of the slogan, and began experimenting with new ideas such as "Delivery. Delivery", "Big ! Big ! Pizzas", and actually stopped offering two pizzas for the price of one!

The results were painful.

In 2010, Little Caesars dropped to 4th place in the pizza market, just behind Papa John's. Had they kept their original campaign, they'd probably still be #2 in the pizza industry today.

So, the big takeaway is only change your marketing strategy if sales start declining. An old ad is always better than a new ad that your customers will have to spend years getting to know.

Numbers matter, not our opinions.

To your success!