31 Flavors Are Better Than 1
The other day I walked into an ice cream shop. I was excited to try a few different flavors: new stuff, stuff that I'd never tried before. One of the jo...
Forty years in this business and I still learn something from ice cream. Last week I walked into a shop near my office, ready to work through a few flavors I'd never tried. That's half the fun -- you don't know what you like until you taste it.
Turned out this place had exactly one flavor. Some kind of birthday-cake-cookie-dough mash-up. The kid behind the counter proudly told me it was their best seller. I didn't have the heart to tell him that when you only sell one flavor, it's mathematically guaranteed to be your best seller. I hated it. Not my thing at all. And I walked out without buying anything.
I tell you that to tell you this: advertising creative and an ice cream shop with 31 flavors have way more in common than you might think.
Stick with me. I've written somewhere north of 100,000 ads across 9 Super Bowls and every category you can name, and this is one of the simplest, most consistently ignored truths in the whole business.
Different People, Different Flavors
An ice cream shop stocks 31 flavors because different customers want different things. Kids want the neon-colored stuff. Grown-ups want something with actual coffee in it. Nobody at Baskin-Robbins argues that vanilla should be the only flavor on the menu, because that would be idiotic and they'd be out of business in a month.
So why do so many brands run one flavor of ad creative and expect the whole market to love it?
That's damn near insanity.
And yet, multiple times a day, I get served ads from businesses running a single note: same joke, same tone, same visual, same offer, over and over. I tune it out fast. If it keeps showing up, I go from ignoring it to actively resenting it. I've texted friends in all caps about brands that won't leave me alone with their one flavor of ad. I'm not proud of it, but it happens.
Why One-Flavor Ads Are Killing Your Business
We test multiple pieces of creative for the same reason a shop stocks 31 flavors: different people respond to different things, and you don't know which one moves your audience until you put it in front of them.
Serve a straight, hard-sell ad to someone who only responds to humor, and you'll get nothing. Serve a goofy, irreverent ad to someone who wants to be told the facts, and you'll get nothing. Mismatched creative doesn't offend people, mostly -- it just goes invisible. And invisible ads don't sell anything, no matter how much media weight you put behind them. If your headline isn't built to filter and hook the right person in the first place, none of this variety work even gets a chance to matter.
"Variety is the spice of life," and in 40 years of testing creative for clients who've collectively generated well over $300 billion in revenue off the back of it, I've never seen that stop being true.
Variety Wins Every Time
People come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Ice cream comes in dozens of flavors. Paint comes in thousands of shades. Your ads need range too, or your entire addressable market shrinks down to the one person who happens to like your one flavor -- and only that flavor.
To grow a business, you need to reach a variety of audiences. To reach a variety of audiences, you need a variety of messages and messaging styles, tested against each other, not guessed at once and left alone. If you disagree, you're running a one-flavor shop and calling it a business strategy.
Just because you like vanilla, don't think the rest of the world does too.
Frequently Asked Questions
Just like different ice cream flavors appeal to different consumers, different ad creative appeals to different people. If you only run one style of ad, you're limiting yourself to the small audience that responds to that specific flavor—which is damn near insanity when you're trying to grow your business.
People who don't like your single "flavor" of messaging will ignore your ads, then eventually despise them. Ken points out that mismatched ads—like serving a funny ad to someone with no sense of humor—will have zero impact and net you a bad return.
The post doesn't specify an exact number, but Ken's ice cream analogy (31 flavors versus 1) makes it clear you need variety—multiple messaging styles and flavors to reach different audiences. If you only have one flavor, you're limiting yourself to that one person who likes only that flavor.
Assuming everyone likes the same flavor of ad creative. Ken sees countless businesses serving only one style of messaging every day, which ignores the basic truth that different people have different tastes—whether it's ice cream or advertising.
