There’s a recent conversation every CEO should spend an hour on.
On one side, Sir John Hegarty, one of the most influential figures in advertising history and co-founder of BBH London, the agency that rewrote the rules of international communication over the past forty years. On the other, Gary Vaynerchuk, the American entrepreneur who went from a New Jersey liquor store to founding VaynerMedia, one of the world’s most listened-to communication agencies.
Two generations. Two continents. One conviction running through every minute of the conversation: creativity is business strategy. Not an ornament. Not an exercise for restless marketing departments. A real lever that drives measurable commercial results.
From that conversation comes a principle every executive should absorb before signing off on the next budget.
Creativity isn’t improvisation.
“To break the rules, you first have to know them,” Vaynerchuk says. He was thirty-one when he started talking about wine in a new way, but he’d already spent sixteen years studying it.
This is the first misunderstanding many companies live with. They think creativity is instinct, intuition, natural talent. It’s the exact opposite. Creativity that drives results comes from a deep knowledge of the product, the market, the people. It’s discipline before it’s inspiration. You can see this principle in action in Out of the box. where lateral thinking produces results that no conventional brief would have generated.
Great marketing doesn’t save a bad product.
Vaynerchuk says it bluntly: great marketing speeds up the funeral of a bad product. The faster people get to know it, the faster they realize it isn’t worth it.
No communication budget, however generous, can make up for a product that doesn’t deliver what it promises. As I wrote in No use quality if you can the real problem is rarely quality. It’s the inability to communicate why that quality matters.
Ideas only matter when they become reality.
“I need your great ideas. And then I need to know what you can actually build.” Creativity isn’t a boardroom presentation. It’s practice. It’s execution. It’s the ability to take an idea out of your head and into the market.
This is where many companies stop. They produce brilliant concepts that stay on paper, slides that dazzle the executive committee but never translate into coherent action in the market. And without action, even the best idea disappears.
The market doesn’t reward those with the best ideas. It rewards those who get them out of the meeting room.
Between intuition and result, there are months of consistent work. That work is the real creativity. The difference between strategy and tactics and why most companies confuse the two is exactly here.
The customer isn’t stupid.
Another warning from Vaynerchuk: companies need more humility. Too many organizations still believe that repeating a message is enough to make it believable. It isn’t. The market doesn’t work that way.
Effective communication comes from a deep respect for the listener. From the ability to understand what they really want, what they feel, what they’re looking for. Without that strategic empathy, every euro spent on communication is wasted. This is precisely the argument behind They weren’t listening to you. They were listening to what you made them feel.
Who runs all of this, inside a company?
This is where the question every CEO should be asking finally arrives. If creativity is business strategy, if it requires deep knowledge, discipline, execution, empathy and vision, who can lead it inside an organization?
Not a marketing manager. The marketing manager thinks in terms of sales, campaigns, short-term results. It’s an essential role, but an operational one.
You need someone who looks higher and further. Someone who translates creativity into brand identity. Someone who protects reputation while building it. Someone who sits at the table with executive leadership, not only with commercial departments.
You need a Communication Manager.
Confusing the two roles is one of the most expensive mistakes a company can make. I wrote about it in an earlier article: Marketing & Communications Manager. It’s an oxymoron.
Creativity demands optimism.
The last thing Vaynerchuk says is perhaps the most important. You can’t imagine a different future if you’ve already convinced yourself it won’t work. Creativity is an act of strategic optimism. It’s the ability to see possibilities where others see only limits.
Companies that understand this, win. The others communicate by inertia.
Want creativity to become a real growth lever for your business? Let’s talk.