Modern marketing is ass.
And that offends me. Which, as you know, is the worst thing you can be these days.
I got into marketing thinking it was going to look like Mad Men. Creative ideas. Big swings. Ads people talked about for years. Maybe some vodka lunches and terrible-ish life decisions mixed in.
Instead, I got webinars, white papers, and a warm bag of boring.
And it’s not just me saying that.
The industry keeps writing about the same problem. Marketing departments losing creativity. Super Bowl ads playing it safe. Teams killing great ideas because they’re afraid to take risks.
One piece of research stuck with me. Campaigns that win creative awards are seven times more efficient at driving market share growth. Emotional, creative, fame building campaigns outperform the safe stuff, especially when brands focus more on long term brand building instead of short term tactics.
None of this should be surprising.
Apple’s 1984 commercial sold tens of thousands of units of a product they barely showed.
Cadbury ran a drumming gorilla ad that tested terribly because it didn’t even show someone eating chocolate. Sales went up anyway.
Old Spice turned a dying brand around with one bold campaign and grew dramatically.
Burger King ran a moldy Whopper campaign that broke every traditional rule and still drove sales.
The pattern is obvious.
Creativity works.
Safe marketing doesn’t get remembered. It doesn’t build fame. It doesn’t create emotional connection.
And that’s where most brands are stuck right now. Playing safe. Trying not to offend anyone. Producing content that disappears the second someone scrolls past it.
If you embrace creativity, you stand out.
If you don’t, you blend in with everyone else.
And in marketing, blending in is expensive.
If you want to do something creative and actually say something that gets attention, get on camera and let’s build it together.
