The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

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I cannot tell you how much I love it.

Not because the speaker answers the question in a way that forces the entire audience to reconsider or re-evaluate their own perspective or judgement … but because I feel it shines a light on something we – as an industry – are increasingly failing to care about.

And that is, ‘do we like what we are creating?’

Don’t get me wrong, I know our job is to find a way to make audiences think or care about our clients in a way that offers them a commercial advantage … but too often it feels we’re ignoring the importance of whether ‘we like it’ in favour of whether ‘the focus groups’ and/or ‘research methodology’ does instead.

And while I fully expect many people will say, ‘who cares, the only people who matter are the customers’, you’d be wrong.

Not simply because it can feel you’re making work to please/appease the C-Suite more than the audience. Not simply because despite billions spent on market research [$150 billion in 2025], we still see high levels of underperformance when work is put out into ‘the real world’. But because if the people creating the work don’t find any joy in the work, then why the fuck do you expect anyone else to like it?

Actually, let’s go one step further …

If you don’t find any joy in what you’re creating, why would anyone else like it to the point they will actively choose to pay large sums of money for it?

Of course, ‘like’ is subjective. On top of that, it is incredibly dependent on having been exposed to a level of breadth, depth and craft of creativity that enables them to make objective and considered choices in how they judge and answer challenges. Which all leads to 3 points:

1. Companies need to stop thinking outsourcing their annual ‘one-size-fits-all’ training is acceptable behaviour. Especially when it’s outsourced to the same individuals and companies as everyone else is using, even though – ironically – they have never actually made any work that has made a sustainable and meaningful impact on society or categories.

3. Marketing needs to respect and elevate the value of ‘experience’ again.

Not popularity.
Not price-point.
Not the ability to write ‘thought leadership’ articles.

Actual experience.

People who have consistently created, crafted and delivered work – not simply been associated with it – that has achieved, challenged pushed standards, brands and categories over and over again.

Because while they may be more expensive than other hires.
While they may be harder to work with because they call out the bullshit.
The value they offer is they’ll create work for you that passes the first level of the harshest critics … themselves.