Creating a Unified Approach: The Secret to Successful Omnichannel Creative

Head of Paid Social and Programmatic Chloe Bratherton outlines how brands can use an omnichannel approach to deliver results when developing a creative advertising strategy.

Creative advertising has taken centre stage in the modern paid media space. With AI-driven tools like Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max reshaping ad strategies, creative content has become the most controllable – and impactful – way for advertisers to reach their chosen audience.

According to insights shared at Meta’s 2023 Performance Marketing Summit, creative ads influence 56% of ad auction outcomes this year, with those with high user relevancy sometimes outperforming higher bids.

But winning the auction is just the start. With such a competitive market, ads need to stand out. Marketing Dive’s report into a 2016 Lumen study revealed that only 9% of image ads are viewed for more than a second; conversely, the average video watch time on Meta is three times that.

It’s safe to say that on social, every moment counts.

Let’s explore how to develop a successful omnichannel creative approach that captures attention, boosts engagement, and drives results across platforms.

The path to long-term growth

Capturing consumer attention isn’t just about brand visibility; it’s also directly linked to profitability. When you grab viewers’ attention with a relevant and compelling message, performance follows naturally; in fact, there is actually an almost perfect correlation between attention generated from ads and profit.

As digital media channels have evolved to become more diverse, their creative requirements have, surprisingly, become more aligned.

A few years ago, each platform required specific creative formats, meaning you’d need to create separate briefs for each. Thankfully, today, a few aspect ratios—like 1×1, 9×16, and 16×9—will work across several channels. This shift makes it easier to build omnichannel creative assets with a single brief and minimal changes, reducing production time.

Strong creative doesn’t just engage; it lets your ads punch well above their weight in competitive ad auctions, allowing them to outperform competition even with a modest budget. This is why creative has become irreplaceable for brands aiming to build a consistent, long-term presence.

6 tips to pull off omnichannel creative that works

An omnichannel approach is priceless when trying to reach a wider audience with your creative projects, but it can be tricky to know where to start.

Here are some tried and tested tips to help you create a strategy that’s effective and saves time:

1. Take time to craft a brand story

One of the most essential elements of a successful creative campaign is a well-established brand story. A compelling brand story goes beyond just presenting products or services; it conveys what your brand is, what it stands for, and why it matters to your audience. Use your time effectively for maximum impact — don’t rush your story development!

Showcasing your brand story on broad-reach channels like connected TV and digital audio can also help reach a wider audience. These platforms offer unique opportunities to create memorable campaigns by giving your creative more time to develop a narrative with an emotive hook. People who hear your story on the radio or see it unfold on TV are often more receptive, especially when the audio track is heard while scrolling on a second screen and seeing the corresponding display or social ad for the brand

2. Nail your brand messaging

Your brand messaging is vital to the success of your creative approach. You’ll need to decide on one core message that’s consistent across all channels, as this will maintain longer ad stock. Having too many different messages live at once will dilute brand association.

Although keeping the same messaging is important, don’t be afraid to play around with the layout for creative posts. For example, you might use a ‘text message’ format for a social media post to make it more eye-catching. The format can be tweaked to suit your chosen platforms as long as the core messaging is consistent.

Specsavers is a great example of a brand that delivers a consistent message across online and offline channels. The phrase ‘should’ve gone to Specsavers’ is synonymous with the brand and is used consistently across most of their broad-reach media, which is then reinforced through social media using a mix of informative and user-generated content (UGC) — as seen below:

Source: https://www.lbbonline.com/news/the-specsavers-stunt-that-got-the-uk-talking-serendipity-or-marketing-mastery

This campaign worked on several layers, acting as an offline advertisement and creating a stream of social media posts that further promoted the Specsavers brand.

Another strong example is Just Eat, which has mastered the art of using clear brand messaging across all its creative formats while leaning into each channel’s strengths. Their TV advertisements include a full branded story with a recognisable soundtrack and jingle, while their short-form video ads on YouTube and streaming platforms also use its core soundtrack message (‘Did somebody say Just Eat?’).

3. Streamline your briefing process

To streamline your creative briefing process, group your platforms based on how they’ll be seen by consumers.

For example, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, and TikTok all share a similar format, so a single brief can be used to create ads for all three channels. The content can then undergo minor edits in post-production to tailor it to each specific platform.

Briefing this way reduces the number of deliverables created, as each channel is aware of all the creative content being produced. As mentioned above, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, and TikTok all use 9×16 short-form video, and Meta, Pinterest, and TikTok can also use images. These images are recommended in a 1×1 and 9×16 format and can also be used across some demand gen placements.

Here’s a handy cheat sheet to help you figure out which content formats work for cross-channel posting:

This gives designers and copywriters more time to work on additional assets or special formats, like PR stunts, interactive formats, and AR/VR, which can all be implemented alongside regular creative content.

4. Design campaigns with outcome in mind

Digital creatives should be designed with the desired outcome in mind. As we all know, every campaign has primary KPIs — or, at least, they should.

Make sure that each creative campaign aligns with these goals. For example, avoid long-form video formats if you’re trying to drive web traffic, as viewers will typically lose focus before you reach your CTA, and don’t expect a basic catalog ad to drive a huge amount of brand awareness alone. But you’ll also need to consider how the creative can impact a KPI.

A strong creative will reduce CPM thanks to better performance in auctions, so measuring CPM over time can give an initial view of ad quality. From there, CTR and click volume (or view-through rate for video campaigns) can show how well the creative is resonating with your audience. For example, seeing a CTR increase is a strong indicator of ad relevance.

Some other KPIs, like average order value and CR, are often more tied to site experience, product mix, and seasonal changes. Because of this, these aren’t strongly recommended for measuring specific creative impact.

5. Find tools that work for your customers

If you’re working at scale, there are loads of tools to help your customers, consumers, and teams make their creative assets work harder across multiple channels.

Tools like Hunch can not only apply branding to catalog ads but can also unlock new creative opportunities, such as using live countdowns in ads. This allows for better alignment between affiliates, PPC, and paid social ads, as this feature isn’t possible within paid social platforms themselves currently.

Other tools, like Confect, can also reduce the amount of creative being briefed as the creative elements are uploaded into the platform and can be iterated repeatedly instead of having new frames or overlays created each time.

6. Always test your hypothesis

Testing your hypothesis is critical to creating campaigns that connect with your audience. By this, I mean testing how effectively your creative has reached the target audience. There are two key ways to do this: iterative testing and A/B testing.

Iterative testing lets you test multiple variations to see which performs best. The benefits of this method include:

• One of the quickest ways to experiment with your creative approach
• Ability to identify any potential risks early on and adjust accordingly
• Based on real user data and feedback

While most channels now offer dynamic ads, the results aren’t always transparent, making it hard to pinpoint exactly which creative elements are driving success. That’s where working with a specialised partner like Channel Factory can be a game-changer, helping to bring more clarity to these results to tailor your approach even further.

Another method is A/B testing, which splits your audience to compare two different versions of an ad. This is a popular option because:

• It’s easy to set up and interpret (though it can be slow if you’re testing multiple ideas!)
• It helps to improve the user experience by identifying design elements that work best
• It can help to increase conversion rates by showing which version generates clicks
• It can help improve ROI by identifying which campaigns work and which don’t

For broader insights, holdout testing, which often uses geo-targeting or lift studies, can give you a clear snapshot of how a campaign or channel is performing without interference from other ads.

If you’re just starting out, AI-driven iterative testing across various creative elements like tone of voice, colour, and style (e.g. live-action or animated) will help you gather insights to build on.

On the other hand, if you’ve already honed your creative and want to push it even further, frequent A/B testing with a clear hypothesis will give you practical takeaways to use across all paid media channels, like testing the effectiveness of “percentage off” vs “price slash” offers.

Attend our live webinar: The Perfect Blend

Want to learn more about how to build an omnichannel approach? Don’t forget to sign up for our upcoming webinar, The Perfect Blend, where we’ll discuss more ways to master omnichannel paid media strategies.

During the webinar, we’ll get hands-on with the risks of relying on single-channel marketing and suggest collaborative approaches to unify your paid strategy across channels. And, of course, the proof is in the pudding — so we’ll also be including plenty of real-world examples of cross-channel strategies in action.

Book your spot

Bring omnichannel creative to your brand

Building a successful omnichannel creative strategy starts with what matters most: compelling, well-crafted ads that engage with your audience and drive results.

Are you ready to take your brand’s creative strategy to the next level? Get in touch to discover how we can support your omnichannel journey.

In the meantime, visit our blog for more insights from our incredible team at Bring.