Taking Creative Risk

I'm around a lot of average creative work. Everyday we are bombarded by it. Heavy handed, uninspired, unoriginal. Ineffective at inspiring anything other than maybe blunt awareness and boredom.

Millions and millions spent to create and propel buckets of boring, predictable, quickly forgettable creative work. And it's not just advertising, it's true in music, theatre, film, food, apparel and on. It's mostly the same and it's mostly average. The output of an endless parade of C students copying from each other.

But once in a while I come across creative that stops me. Haunts me. Propels me. Inspires me. Touches me. Why is it so damn rare?

A large part can be forgiven by inexperience and ineptitude. We all start here. But do we have a national shortage in competent marketers, creatives and artists? No. What we have is a shortage of intestinal fortitude.

Every great creative work starts at a point of difference and in that difference lies risk. Risk for the creator, risk for the marketer, risk for the manager, risk for the organization. So we see great creative and rather than nurture it forward and share the risk, we seek to mitigate the risk, to hedge. Great creative is marginalized, muted, ultimately snuffed out...and in its place comes safe, predictable, average work with predictably average results.

When's the last time you saw great creative from a Fortune 500 company? They have the strategy and resources, it's their risk aversion that thwarts them. So rather than step out and try something creative and new, they opt for expected and safe. Rather than demand new ideas, they run to the safety of proven ones. And then they wonder why their brands fail to inspire.

Steve Jobs had equal parts guts to genius. The simplicity and elegance of his design ethic was not his own, but he alone was willing to take the risk to follow the ethic. He made hard choices. He relentlessly prioritized. He refused to straddle, to compromise. He stepped out while others stepped back.

As a marketer, you must embrace the creative risk. You must step forward, because no one else in your organization will. If you don't rally for the work, who will? And at the end of the day, which is the greater risk? Playing it safe or trying for something special?

Be brave.

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”