THE CASE FOR CONSISTENCY IN SAFETY

24 Sept

In the world of advertising, compound creativity is the principle that consistent, repeated messaging amplifies a brand’s impact over time.

New research has found that brands with compound creativity achieved up to 4.8 times more brand impact than those with inconsistent messaging.

Seems obvious, right? Not always. Let’s start with a little tale close to our hearts.

In late 2024, a huge and diverse retail organisation launched a beautifully designed safety promise as part of their Safety Value Proposition (we should know, we helped co-create it).

Naturally, after a big-bang launch, we celebrated the milestone along with our collaborator. It was a big moment!

But nearly a year later, we found ourselves developing a four-week Safe Work Month campaign to breathe fresh life into the same promise. Why? Not because it wasn’t well designed, but because in a complex organisation with countless competing priorities, even the strongest messages can fade if they aren’t consistently reinforced.

In safety, as in brand building, consistency is the multiplier. Without it, even the most well-crafted ideas can lose their power.

Lessons from the brand world

That report, The Power of Compound Creativity (System1 & IPA, 2025), looked at over 5,000 ads and £3.3 billion in media spend to assess how consistency affects advertising outcomes.

Here’s what they found:

Brands with high creative consistency saw up to 4.8x more brand impact and 2.2x more business impact than inconsistent brands.
The more consistent the idea, positioning, and execution, the greater the gains in trust, awareness, loyalty and recall.
Organisations that stuck with the same messaging across channels, over time, achieved compounded returns year-on-year.

Now let’s apply this to safety.

Imagine your safety promise or vision is your brand idea. It’s not enough to launch it once and move on. Repetition builds belief. Consistency builds culture.

In safety, inconsistency creates confusion

Your people are constantly scanning for signals. If your safety messaging shows up sometimes, or in some places but not others, you can erode trust—even unintentionally.

This is especially true in large, complex organisations. Without a strong system of consistent reinforcement, your safety endeavours risk fading into the background.

From our research into the safety experience in high-risk industries, we know that embedding and awareness are the most vulnerable domains when consistency drops off. Engagement fades. Safety behaviours drift. People disconnect from the core message.

Brand science meets safety culture

So, our safety messaging needs to be consistent—but it can’t be monotonous. Repetition without variation breeds habituation: people stop noticing, even if the message is important. At the same time, variation can’t slip into inconsistency, or the core message gets lost. How do you strike that balance?

To answer that, let’s look back to the brand world, where marketers face the same challenge every day: keeping audiences engaged while hammering home a single idea. Here are three truths to remember:

1. Consistency beats novelty (over time)

The data shows brands that commit to consistent creative foundations — same tone, idea, symbols, and language — achieve better results over time.

In safety, this means your SVP or core message doesn’t need to change often. But how you express it can — and should — evolve. That’s the power of disguised repetition: keeping the message fresh without changing the meaning.

2. Cross-channel consistency creates cut-through

Brands that showed up consistently across multiple platforms — TV, digital, radio, out of home — saw significantly better outcomes. Why? Because all the touchpoints worked toward the same goal.

In your organisation, this means linking up your safety comms across:

Toolbox talks
Intranet messages
Safety campaigns
On-site or environmental visuals
Leadership language
Onboarding
Frontline Leadership Programs
Safety Learning and Training
Peer stories

When all roads lead back to the same safety message, the consistency creates belief.

3. Agency (or leadership) stability matters

In advertising, brands that stuck with the same creative agency over time outperformed those that changed creative agencies more frequently.

In safety? Maybe it’s less about creative agency and more about leadership alignment. If one part of the business lives by your safety values or promise and another part doesn’t, the message fractures. It’s why embedding your safety leadership habits across leaders and sites is critical — not optional.

the start of safety consistency

This October, for Safe Work Month, many organisations will run a campaign. The message will be hopeful. The visuals will be strong. But come November, for many, it’ll be gone.

Let’s not do that. Let’s make it the start of a consistent drumbeat.

Because the best campaigns don’t win hearts overnight. They compound. They’re recalled, reinforced, and repeated. Just like a great safety culture.

In fact, Safe Work Month is the perfect moment to restart, with a plan to maintain consistency of your safety messaging going forward.

So, how consistent is your safety brand?

Let’s finish with a few questions:

Does your key safety message still show up — in conversations, in campaigns, in leadership behaviours?
Can your people see the same idea expressed across different touchpoints?
Have you built a system for consistency, or are you relying on momentum alone?

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

If you want to bring brand-like consistency to your safety efforts, we’re here to help. Our SVP work is built on the same principles that drive strong, sticky brands — because at the end of the day, a consistent safety culture is a competitive advantage.

Book a call to chat all things SVP at a time that suits you.