The Lead Guitar Problem

After decades bobbing along the creative industry's coastline, the current has pulled me to an undeniable place: big, bold creative is not the silver bullet it's made out to be.

Conversions. Authenticity. Trust. Brand affinity. Better creative alone ain't gonna reliably deliver any of them. It just won't. 

Good creative does matter, of course.  Myriad has the American Advertising Awards and AICP nods to prove our commitment to it. It's just that its cause célèbre status has resulted in all of us losing the plotline for why we're here.

Creative ideas are the lead guitar of the advertising world. Celebrated, technically brilliant, the center of attention. Yet really more Jack Black in the opening of School of Rock than the golden god we imagine.

I get it. The pressure is real, the risk high, the timeline tight. Of course you pick up the guitar and shred. But too often, all anyone is left with is a virtuoso solo performance.

I've Experienced This

I've lived it more pointedly than I'd like to admit. Pitching ideas to clients reminds me of a precocious five year old at their parents' dinner party. All brightness and originality on one side of the room, a panel of judges on the other. Your own ego asks you to swing for the fence. I have. But I've also watched a bold, ambitious piece of work land with a thud. The client was gracious. The relationship didn't survive. A significant budget went with it. I'll never know for certain why. But I've always suspected the idea won the room more than it won the people watching.

The Missing Step

Howard Moggs of Uncommon nailed something important recently:

"But clients aren't paying for creativity. They're paying for relief from low conversion, brand irrelevance and declining sales. They need solutions, not services. They need substance over style."

He's right. Outcomes matter. But there's a step before outcomes that most processes skip entirely: knowing the audience. Creative and outcomes both depend on it. Skip it and you're building on sand. In Post 2 of this series I shared that when the audience has a seat at the table, everything downstream improves. Engaging them with genuine curiosity and openness to having what you learn change your mind…that's the missing step.

Aimed at a Job Title, Not a Person

Here's what that gap looks like in practice (from a real project brief, details removed):

Security and risk management professionals responsible for securing industrial environments. CIO/CISO: budgetary authority, oversight of IT and OT systems, proactive approach to security. Plant Managers: responsible for everything within the facility, reactive approach, security only a concern when it causes downtime or financial impact.

That's undeniably thorough work. Someone mapped the org chart, the purchase authority, the decision-making dynamic. And still not a single line about what the plant manager actually worries about at 2am. Not what the CISO has tried before and abandoned. Not what success would feel like to either of them as human beings navigating a genuinely frightening set of responsibilities. The brief describes their roles. It has almost no idea about their lives. Better creative built on that foundation is still aimed at a job title, not a person.

The Bar

If we're asking for someone's attention, we owe them something in return. Not a clever idea. Not an impressive execution. Something genuinely useful to them — in their lives, on their terms. Educate, inform, entertain or better yet, help them take action on something they already care about. Help them feel seen and understood by the brand. That's not an anti-creativity argument. It's a pro-purpose one. The best creative earns its place by delivering something useful to the person watching. That's good for the audience. It's also the surest path to the brand outcomes clients rightfully aspire to.

That's the bar. More on what clearing it actually looks like next.