Marketing minus the hype jam: creativity

Posted by Mike O'Brien on April 21, 2026 in Postcards from the digital frontier | Leave a comment

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Welcome to our Marketing minus the hype Jam. This episode… why creativity is under pressure.

Marketing has never produced more content.

More posts.
More campaigns.
More variations.

AI has accelerated production even further.

On the surface, creativity should be thriving.

But many marketers feel the opposite.

Work is faster.
Output is higher.
But impact is harder to achieve.

Because creativity is not the same as volume.

And when everything starts to look similar…
Attention becomes harder to earn.

The pressure to perform drives safer decisions.

More templates.
More repetition.
More optimisation of what already exists.

And over time, originality starts to fade.

That is where creativity comes under pressure.

This is the pivot from hype to help.

The shift is to treat creativity as a discipline… not a by-product.

Three practical moves make that real.

First… create space for thinking.

Not just production.

Creativity needs time to connect ideas… not just execute them.

Without that space, everything becomes reactive.

Second… anchor creativity in insight.

Not assumptions.
Not trends.

Real understanding of customers, context, and tension.

Because strong ideas solve something… they do not just look different.

Third… measure impact, not output.

More content does not mean more effectiveness.

Focus on what changes behaviour… not just what fills channels.

When these shifts happen, something changes.

Work becomes more distinctive.
Ideas carry more weight.
And marketing starts to stand out again.

Because creativity is not about doing more.

It is about making something matter.

And there you have it.

Our jam is… Marketing, minus the hype.