Is marketing creativity dead?

I'm fully of the direct response world of marketing.

I like to understand the direct result of the things I do. But, I've always had a soft spot for the more creative campaigns.

Maybe because I'm not that good at the creative side and have always envied the more creative marketers out there.

But, sadly, I think that the creative side is taking a huge hit right now.

I feel like in modern digital marketing, creativity is being left behind for direct response testing at insane scale.

But, the big imaginative hooks, angles, concepts etc seem to be forgotten for algorithm chasing.

Case in point.

The Diary of a CEO podcast tests 100 Thumbnails for each video.

And take a look at that image.

These are not the big creative swings we would have seen in the past.

It's usually just a handful of combinations between...

... 2 faces and 3 facial expressions each
... 5-10 headline variants

And the rest is always the same colour scheme of black background, white text, red highlight.

I'm not attacking Steven Bartlett or his team here.

This is a case of don't hate the player, hate the game. And he's playing the game well.

More just a commentary on how now, a lot of marketing is being boiled down to iterative testing at insane scale to appease the algo for better reach.

And if there's a lesson here, it's if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

My own new social strategy I'm rolling out is all about finding what's already working, testing my own take, and then doubling down on the positive signals.

Is it super creative?

No.

Will it work?

Yes. Because I'll be able to quickly understand what works and do more of it.

And also, it's less work than having to come up with loads of super creative differences.

I've been talking about this more in GM+ and explaining how I've been building a system to help me do more of this.

​You can get access to all of that here.​

Pete "not that creative" Boyle