Marketing should be boring

We’re about a month out from the Cannes Lions and that means it’s about time to take a look at what everyone has to say about it.

Cannes gave us a good look at the best and most creative work of 2024. We see in real time the hold that comedy and ‘weird’ factor has, especially in social media channels (a personal favourite would have to be the Gold-winning ‘No Smiles’ McDonalds recruitment campaign which does just that — it’s weird, it’s funny, and it works). This doesn’t mean the festival came without its criticism.

Creativity is at the centre of the festival but its role in marketing is perhaps overstated.

That’s not to say your marketing should not be creative. Especially in communications, creativity can be key to engaging target audiences. But in the overall scope of marketing, a flashy creative team can distract from some of the core fundamentals.

And you know why? Because it’s boring.

(That’s a lie, but give me a minute and I’ll explain.)

As you’re here, I’m going to assume you’re passionate about marketing. In fact, I’ll assume you have an interest in B2B marketing specifically and, in many cases, improving the thinking behind it. But it’s hard to make that sound sexy.

But that should be the point. Strategy that drives success shouldn’t be sexy. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be incredible — it absolutely should be — but it should primarily be concerned with aligning the needs of your consumer with solving key pain points of your client or organisation and masterfully creating a plan based on research and customer-focus to do this.

That’s not boring.

It’s also not visible.

The point of Cannes is to show the most creative marketing and advertising work of the last year and it absolutely did that. And creativity in communications is fantastic — if it speaks to your audience and has measurable results then it can become integral to audience retention and creative campaigns. See, again, the McDonalds campaign. No Smiles led to a 115% increase in McDonalds applications so it’s hard to argue creativity doesn’t work. But that’s not all that marketing is. Don’t let the showy comms at Cannes let you forget it.

In today’s podcast, we hear from perhaps the biggest critic of Cannes, Mark Ritson, as he discusses the overemphasis of creativity in marketing (along with a whole host of other great insight as can be expected from him). He discusses his somewhat controversial views on Creative’s role in marketing and his insistence that Marketing needs a bigger seat at the (less flashy) table to really see the results that your senior leadership wants.