Agencies often pitch exciting, ambitious "North Star" campaigns that get one department excited. However, these ideas frequently fail because the client's internal teams (e.g., digital, PR, comms) are siloed and not aligned. The agency sells a vision that other departments ultimately block, leading to an inability to deliver.

Most brands never unified their marketing operations. Instead, they bolted on new models for digital, social, and influencers, leading to siloed teams, inconsistent briefs, and conflicting agencies. This hidden complexity is why creative work suffers.

According to analysis by strategist Peter Field, the industry's reliance on cheap, low-attention media forces the creation of dull creative. To improve creative effectiveness, marketers must first address the foundational problem of their media strategy before attempting to fix the creative work itself.

Creativity thrives not from pressure, but from a culture of psychological safety where experimentation is encouraged. Great thinkers often need to "sit on" a brief for weeks to let ideas incubate. Forcing immediate output stifles breakthrough campaign thinking.

One-off creative hits are easy, but replicating them requires structure. Truly creative marketing integrates storytelling into a disciplined process involving data analysis (washups, SWAT), strategic planning, and commercial goals. This framework provides the guardrails needed to turn creative ideas into repeatable, impactful campaigns.

Consistently great creative is underpinned by excellent operations. To achieve this, operational roles like program managers shouldn't be in a centralized PMO. They must be part of the creative organization to understand how their work directly enables high-quality output.

The discussion over in-house versus agency marketing is a distraction from the fundamental problem. The core failure in most marketing today—from billboards to social posts—is a lack of strategic intent. Brands are simply 'posting shit' without a clear purpose, a flaw that exists regardless of who executes the work.

Transform a creative department from a production house into a strategic partner by changing how you brief them. Instead of giving prescriptive directives, present the business problem that needs to be solved. This empowers creative minds to contribute to strategy and deliver more impactful solutions, not just executions.

Businesses prioritize maximum output, speed, and low risk, which stifles creativity. True creativity requires time, safety for risk-taking, and tolerance for failure—conditions that are antithetical to typical business operations.