Creative work is only valuable when it solves the right problem
Most bad creative isn’t badly made. It’s beautifully made work answering the wrong question. The expensive mistakes happen before anyone opens a design file.
I’ve spent a lot of my career on both sides of the creative process, writing the strategy and then picking up the camera to make the thing. That dual view has taught me something slightly uncomfortable: the quality of the craft is rarely the problem.
The problem is usually the brief.
Beautiful answers to the wrong question
A stunning brand film that nobody remembers the brand from. A clever campaign that wins praise from marketers and confuses customers. A product video full of cinematic shots that never actually shows how the product works. These aren’t failures of talent. They’re failures of definition. Somebody skipped the step where we agree what the work is for.
Creative is a solution. If nobody agreed the problem, it’s just decoration.
The question before the idea
Before any creative work starts, I want honest answers to four questions:
- What should change? Not “raise awareness”, but what someone should think, feel or do differently.
- For whom? The specific people who can deliver the business result, not “everyone aged 18 to 45”.
- What’s stopping them now? The barrier the creative has to remove, whether that’s doubt, confusion, inertia or a better-known competitor.
- How will we know? The measure we’ll judge it by, agreed before anyone gets attached to an idea.
None of this kills creativity. In my experience it does the opposite: a sharp problem gives creative people something to push against.
Two examples from my own work
When I produced product demonstration videos for Symphony Mobile, the job wasn’t to make beautiful films. It was to show buyers what the phone could actually do, the closest thing to holding it in a shop. Clarity was the creative brief.
On LG Bangladesh’s Smart Home campaign, the brand problem wasn’t explaining features. It was making smart technology feel relevant to local family life. The story, written by my colleague Syed Tahmid Zaman, came from a human insight about what a new bride leaves behind when she marries. The technology was the supporting act. The campaign was judged on new customers, not views.
Where AI makes this more important, not less
AI has made making things cheap. I use it myself to explore concepts, environments and moods that would once have needed a full production. That’s brilliant for testing ideas. But it means the scarce skill is no longer making a thousand options. It’s knowing which one answers the problem and fits the brand.
If only good taste came with a subscription.
A simple test
Next time you review a piece of creative, cover the logo and ask: if this works perfectly, what changes for the business? If nobody in the room can answer in one sentence, the problem isn’t the creative. Go back to the brief.