The individual champion trap

Marketing has become short of breath. We leap from one initiative to the next and, too often, start again from scratch. The result is a stream of isolated campaigns with no long-term strategic spine, no shared direction, no cumulative memory.

Will Rolls from Meta summed this up neatly in a recent conversation. We are producing more and more one-off masterpieces, brilliant individual campaigns, but fewer and fewer enduring brand platforms. That, in my view, is the core problem.

In our joint podcast episode, we go deeper into marketing effectiveness and the tension between brand building and performance marketing.

The industry celebrates the spectacular campaign that goes viral. We write award case studies about a single inspired moment. What gets lost along the way is strategic consistency, efficiency through serial formats, and recognition built through repetition.

Agencies lose out too. Without continuity, they remain executional suppliers rather than true value-creation partners. Sustainable brand impact does not come from isolated peaks, but from consistent repetition over time.
We have forgotten how to think in platforms. Not technology platforms, of which we have plenty, but strategic brand platforms. Long-term frameworks. Guiding ideas that allow for serial creative expression.

Snickers is the textbook example. “You’re not you when you’re hungry” has been running since 2010. The executions change, the core idea does not. That continuity is exactly why it works.

1. Deutsche Telekom. “Against hate online.” One theme, five years.

Since 2020, Deutsche Telekom has positioned itself against online hate with the platform “Gegen Hass im Netz”. Crucially, this is not a single campaign but a long-term commitment. Each year introduces a new execution and focus, all anchored in the same core message.

2020 “#DABEI”, 2021 “Wir entscheiden!”, 2023 “You’re the Voice”, 2024 “Licht an”, 2025 “Augen auf!”.
The reported results are impressive. An Effie Gold in 2025 in the “Evergreen” category, a 195 percent increase in awareness, an 18 percent uplift in brand image and more than 720 million media contacts. These figures are publicly communicated by Telekom and the Effie organisation, but should still be treated with caution in the absence of full methodology disclosure. [Unverified]

What matters more than the numbers is the mechanism. This is cumulative impact. Each new campaign amplifies the last instead of starting from zero.

The enabler is a long-term agency partnership. When the same people work on a brand for years, a level of understanding emerges that no briefing document can capture. The platform evolves continuously without losing its strategic foundation.

2. Hornbach. Fifteen years of the project-maker philosophy.

For more than 15 years, Hornbach has built its communication around the same platform. “Mach es zu deinem Projekt”. DIY not as home improvement, but as self-realisation.
Spring and autumn campaigns follow a recognisable pattern. Emotional, bold, transformative. Yet each execution feels fresh. This year, for instance, Hornbach deliberately breaks with perfection. “Kein Projekt ohne Drama” shows that things go wrong when you build something yourself. It works precisely because the underlying framework is strong enough to carry variation.

The continuity behind this is striking. Hornbach has worked with the same agency for over 23 years. The creative lead has stewarded the brand for two decades. That is no coincidence. Long-term partnerships are a prerequisite for strong platforms.

The biannual campaign rhythm also creates expectation. Consumers know that twice a year, the new Hornbach film will drop. That seriality is a strategic asset.

3. Edeka. Thirteen years of festive storytelling.

Since 2012, Edeka has told emotionally charged holiday stories with the same agency. From “Supergeil” in 2014, which went viral with more than 14 million views on YouTube, to “#heimkommen” in 2015 with the lonely grandfather, and the 2025 A-Team homage that swaps sentimentality for action.

The platform is recognisable without being rigid. What Edeka has done well is to expand its emotional range over time. Not just tear-jerkers, but humour and action comedy too. The constants remain. The same agency for 13 years, high production values, and a fixed festive timing.

The result is anticipation. Many people actively look out for the new Edeka Christmas campaign each year. That earned attention only exists because of disciplined platform thinking over more than a decade.

Look at Telekom, Hornbach and Edeka and a pattern emerges. All rely on long-term agency relationships. That continuity is not accidental, it is structural.

All are built on strong strategic frameworks. Abstract enough to allow flexibility, concrete enough to give direction. All use serial formats that create expectation. And all can demonstrate measurable brand impact over time, not just short-term awareness spikes.

Platform thinking works. The real question is how we get back to it.

Platform thinking is not dead. We have simply lost sight of it. The way back requires discipline and patience, but it is both possible and necessary.

Why now? Because pressure on marketers has never been higher. Budgets are shrinking, speed is expected, channels continue to fragment. At the same time, agencies and CMOs change more frequently than ever. In this chaos, platforms offer what is missing. Orientation. An overarching logic that allows individual measures to make sense within a system, instead of generating endless new briefings.

Brand platforms are systems thinking. They connect brand, consumer and agency over years, culturally, communicatively and organisationally. With a platform in place, it becomes easier to judge which projects add value and which merely add noise.

There is also an economic dimension that rarely gets discussed. Platforms are assets. Every euro invested builds on something that already exists instead of restarting the engine each time. That is not just strategically sound, it is financially rational.

It is no coincidence that cultural marketing thrives where it is grounded in long-term platforms. Credibility does not come from isolated stunts, but from sustained commitment. Brands that understand this no longer build campaigns. They build systems.

That is the real point. Brands today need an operating system, not just a strategy. Processes, knowledge, history, assets and decisions need to be documented, accessible and evolvable. When the CMO or the agency changes, there must be no hard reset. The platform has to endure.

The reality, however, is sobering. After five years of collaboration, what often remains is little more than a data dump of recent assets via FTP. The strategic foundation is gone. The learnings are lost. That is the real loss. Not the campaign itself, but the system behind it.

Brand platforms are the strategic core of that operating system. They are where knowledge, experience and direction converge. Not as a static deck in a drawer, but as a living system that grows with the brand.