Creativity means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Many of us grow up thinking that creativity has to do with artistic expression or innovative solutions. If you venture into scientific domains, you might hear that creativity is about solving problems and explaining how things work.
For the sake of this article, I’m going to tighten the definition within the context of the work we do for our clients. Creativity is the ability to develop compelling, elegant ideas and strategies that effectively differentiate a brand to drive engagement for a group of people.
That is, we're crafting something purposefully distinctive, usually on the internet, to appeal to the people who are likely to buy what you're saying.
The Challenge of Creativity
The challenge is that creativity is risky. Any time you decide to do something different, to truly differentiate your brand, you’re stepping into territory where others have yet to go. You’re choosing to step off the path and see if others will follow you. While you can limit your risk exposure, if you want the benefit of differentiation, you have to accept the challenge of risk.
Vince Vaughn recently described the risk of creativity in movie-making on Hot Ones, the podcast where guests answer questions while eating unbelievably hot wings (which Vince was seemingly immune to). He was asked why Hollywood doesn’t seem to make the type of movies he is known for anymore. His answer was in the same vein as the kinds of work we often see in our industry—when people are afraid to take risks because studios are afraid to take risks, you end up making safe choices. That means instead of making a movie like Swingers, you end up making something terrible like Battleship (no offense to Rihanna, who remains incredible), because it was tied to existing IP and seemed safer.
We’ve not shied away from this kind of risk over the past 14 years. That also means we’ve learned lessons on how to manage risk in projects. We’ve built many products at Mostly Serious, from mobile games to website deployment automation tools, that didn’t gain a following. We’ve worked with our clients to build and launch novel solutions, like an immersive, animated travel experience to identify where to get medical care overseas, that failed to generate the following we hoped.
On the flip side, we’ve worked with many clients to take big swings that worked better than expected. When we rebranded Burrell Behavioral Health, aiming to end the stigma around mental health in our region, they opted to go with our most ambitious concept (fyi, we love working with clients do that). If you’ve followed Burrell’s dramatic growth and their impact on the communities they serve, you’ll know how well that positioning has worked over time.
We combine the lessons we learn from all of our experiences with risk to influence our future projects. We launched the SGF Trip Assistant recently with our partners at the Springfield CVB, the most accurate AI-driven destination guide in the country. We also launched Promptly, our solution for bringing AI tools directly into Craft CMS. Both of these tools are delivering something the world hasn’t seen before, or at least hasn’t seen at scale, which inherently comes with risk.
Limiting Risk Exposure
The million-dollar question, sometimes literally, is how to limit risk exposure while taking creative chances. Even if you’re working with innovative pioneers known for taking big swings, there’s an upper limit on risk tolerance.
Evaluate the Return on Risk
First, ensure the creative risk is worth it. As much as I struggle to admit this, the novel path is not always the best path. Sometimes it’s better to remain on the highway and let someone else explore the unknown. A current example is Apple’s leap into virtual and augmented reality with Vision Pro. Might there be huge opportunities for training, education, product design, and more in AR/VR? Absolutely. Is it incredibly risky to jump in today? Absolutely.
If you don’t see an outsized opportunity available, it’s often better to stay on the path with better odds of success. You’re a lot more likely to get rich being a dentist than betting the stock market.
Learn from Customers
Some leaders shy away from using customer research and feedback to identify areas where creativity and innovation is needed. This is partially due to some pioneers, like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, who seemingly discounted customer sentiment. People often quote (without historical evidence) Ford as saying “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” And Jobs was famous for pushing back against focus groups, claiming, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
But people do know their pain points and challenges. Wanting a faster horse doesn’t rule out a car, which achieves the same result as a faster horse. It’s up to the company to listen, understand, and interpret pain points and challenges, then work to provide creative and innovative solutions to solve those problems.
However, if your customers are asking for a faster horse and you deliver an advanced pair of running shoes, it won’t matter how far ahead your innovation is, it’s not solving their problem. Understanding how to learn from your customers is an important step in lowering risk by knowing where to invest in creativity.
Take an Iterative Approach
When doing something different, it’s difficult to know at the outset what is right and wrong. Finding the best path is an iterative process that is achieved by continued collaboration among various stakeholders.
I’ve always loved Rick Rubin’s approach to the creative process. He’s famous for producing albums for some of the world’s top artists, like the Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Jay-Z, Metallica, and many more. His approach is driven by a creative feel and his ability to express what is working and what’s not working. He doesn’t play instruments, doesn’t work the sound board, but consistently produces outcomes people love.
Rubin’s measure of success is that the artist makes the best work of their career. When an artist engages him on a project, he starts with a hands-off approach. His ideal scenario is that the artist makes the best work of their career without Rubin touching the work. Throughout the process, if the artist is off the mark, based on Rubin’s immaculate creative feel, he’ll start to put his fingerprints on the work. His guidance begins subtly: first, he might share a curated playlist of 100 songs that exemplify excellence in their genre. From there, he'll refine this selection to highlight the absolute best examples, using these to point out specific elements that shine in the artist's own work. His goal is to allow the artist to get there on their own when possible. If the artist continues to struggle, more of Rubin’s fingerprints get on the work, until it becomes as much his project as the artists. All in the effort to create the best work of that artist’s career.
Too many executives jump straight to putting their fingerprints all over the work. And, let’s face it, they aren’t Rick Rubin. This stifles the team’s ability to pursue creative solutions, to find their own path. Oftentimes, it diminishes creativity and the end product lacks differentiation.
We’ve explored new ways of working in 2024 to embrace a more agile approach that encourages taking chances while lowering risk through iteration. Learn more about Our Agile Experiments.
Test and Refine
Any time you aim to do something different, there’s a chance the first (or second or third) attempt doesn’t work. We aim to limit risk, but there’s no foolproof way to eliminate risk. If there were, every company would be positioned perfectly and every new project launch would be a success. The key is understanding that this, too, is part of the process.
Airbnb was in such deep financial debt in 2008 that they sold election-themed cereal to make ends meet, a smart but desperate idea. Their product was struggling to gain traction. Then, they noticed something about some listings that caused them to perform much better than others; good photos. They decided to do something that doesn’t scale and visited hosts in New York and took high-quality photos of their spaces. Bookings doubled.
Airbnb’s struggles didn’t stop there. In 2014 they launched a rebrand, including the logo we’re all familiar with today and a brand campaign titled “Is Mankind?” Almost everything about this effort was publicly mocked. The logo looks nearly identical to a logo mark in a late ‘80s design book. The campaign was confusing and unfocused. But, instead of tucking their tail between their legs and walking it all back, they found a way to iterate to success.
The first step was to acknowledge the misstep and not get defensive. They launched a new brand campaign, “Belong Anywhere,” that highlighted relatable experiences for hosts and guests. They launched an initiative called “Create Airbnb” where they asked hosts to create personalized versions of the new logo, making their audience feel ownership over the mark. And they focused on the practical benefits of Airbnb through localized marketing campaigns. These changes turned a complete bust of a rebrand into a footnote of a successful new direction.
When you decide to differentiate your brand or launch an innovative new feature or product, there will be struggles. That’s part of the process. Lowering the risk requires being open to customer feedback, identifying the areas that work well, and doubling down in those areas through iteration.
Leveraging Creativity to Avoid Mediocrity
Creativity in brand differentiation is inherently risky. But it’s a necessary step for any company that wants to stand out and become more than just another option for customers. The risk of avoiding all risk is stagnation and mediocrity.
We focus on doing what we can to reduce risk. It can’t be eliminated entirely, but we can allow for well-informed big swings and the ability to course-correct when needed. In the end, calculated creative risks are what set remarkable brands apart.