The Brief Creative Newsletter
July 19, 2025
042 - Sameness vs. Consistency
They're not the same
The Spark
This is stuff I'm enjoying out in the world (it's probably not B2B).
When Katie and I first started dating we used to play a game called “what's something I don't know about you?” From time to time one of us would randomly ask each other that question and our answers varied from what we had for breakfast that morning to our biggest fears and dreams. We were long distance when we started dating so it was a great way to get to know each other.
This past weekend—after almost 15 years together—I realized I had a new one! She never knew how big of a Clipse fan I was because their last album came out before we even met let alone started dating (and I've been playing the new one on repeat since Friday).
‘Let God Sort Em Out’ is my album of the year
If you’re an old school hip-hop fan, Let God Sort Em Out is the perfect album in 2025. The grime is still there but there’s also substance to the music, Pharrell produced the whole thing out of Louis Vuitton in Paris which gives it a certain je nais se quois, and the features are on point: Kendrick, Tyler, Pharrell, John Legend, Nas. This is undoubtedly my album of the year so far.
The Deep Thoughts
This is what I'm thinking about.
Jenn and I were on a call last week with a friend of the brand. We were talking about all sorts of things and got onto templates. He asked the perfect question…
"The downside of templatizing is that at some point everything starts to look the same. How do you avoid that?"
-Oliver Pearce, VP Marketing @ Epista Life Science
Sameness is the classic pushback for execs who don’t believe in brand and one of the reasons why so much unnecessary custom work gets done. The fear of things looking the same is the exact thing that prevents your customers from actually getting to know you. In wanting to differentiate on everything, not only are you wasting time, effort, and resources, but you’re also losing consistency and consistency is how you build a relationship with your customers.
Sameness and consistency are not the same thing
What is sameness?
Sameness is the idea that by sticking to brand guidelines, frameworks, and repeatable templates that your content will all look the same and blend together. I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t happen. For immature and highly rigid brands, it absolutely does. The thing is the way your audience sees you these days has changed and as a result sameness isn’t an external issue, it’s an internal one.
Sameness is an internal issue
What do I mean by this? Your team is consistently cranking out content, right? They’re using the same tools day in and day out. They’re seeing similar assets everyday. They’re tired of them. Your audience is different though.
Your audience is only seeing a post or email or piece of content here and there. They’re nowhere near as close to the work as you or your team are, so for them you’re showing up in a consistent fashion. They recognize the format or the structure, maybe the color. To them, it’s a recognizable look and feel that draws them in. And that’s what I mean by sameness being an internal issue—your audience doesn’t care!
If you worry too much about solving for the squeaky wheels internally you may lose out on the opportunity to create consistently and build trust. There’s another downside to this that is even worse for Creatives.
By creating consistent work, you draw attention, which means that when you create something different or bespoke or custom, your audience is immediately going to take notice. Consistency makes the inconsistency stand out. And the inconsistent work is what we want to be doing!
How do you balance templates with custom work?
So that convo, like every convo we recorded with Fathom, and Oliver gave us permission to share it because Jenn (my co-founder at OhSnap!), delivered a masterclass answer to his question. Here’s the video.
Jenn says that 85% of your brand can look the same and that the consistency within that 85% allows the 15% to look really special. Beyond the look and feel, focusing on the 15% is also how you enable your big strategic projects or experiments. If you’re Creatives are spread across every workstream then that work can’t be particularly interesting or special because there isn’t enough focus, but by identifying the work that needs extra attention you can create something that’s really unique.
The balance between templatized to custom is 85% to 15%
It’s the difference between just delivering information and creating memorable experiences.
I wrote about how I think about high priority work vs everything else a while back. The high priority work is what we should be focusing our custom energy on, everything else is just a means of getting your audience’s focus there when the time is right.
