You may not be aware of this, but there’s widespread theft happening in B2B marketing organisations around the world. The crime is subtle but significant: we’ve stolen creativity from ourselves.
But, here’s the thing – we haven’t done this wilfully, but systemically… through the outdated structures we cling on to. By creating departments labelled “Creative,” there’s a chance that we inadvertently signal to everyone outside of that team that creativity isn’t in their ‘wheelhouse’. We’ve compartmentalised creative thinking into job titles and organisational charts, effectively telling most of our people they don’t have permission to think creatively.
This insight emerged during the recent roundtable discussions we hosted with senior B2B marketing leaders. As Andrea Clatworthy put it with striking clarity: “Creativity belongs to everyone. You shouldn’t stick a label on people.”
The cost of this self-imposed creative limitation is becoming increasingly apparent. In an era where AI is commoditising traditional B2B marketing approaches, we risk squandering our most powerful differentiator: human creative thinking that’s applied across the entire customer experience.
The So-B2B ROI Paradox
Our roundtable participants identified what Stibo Systems’ CMO Gustavo Amorim calls the “ROI mantra” – the reflexive need to attach immediate financial metrics to every creative endeavor. “Sometimes the goals are not necessarily financial,” he explained, “but that’s when a lot of times it becomes a showstopper.”
This creates a paradox: we know intuitively that creative differentiation drives commercial success, yet we struggle to measure it in ways that satisfy financial stakeholders. As Kaila Yates observed, “Rational minds need data,” but that data needs to speak the language of business, not marketing.
The Not-So-B2B way forward
Untethering creativity from the creative department requires a fundamental shift in how we think about creativity in B2B:
- 1. Redefine creativity as an approach to problem-solving, not production
Ely Santos made a crucial distinction: “Creativity is essentially the ability of being creative regardless of what you’re doing… And then creative, it could be the creative department.”
- 2. Connect creativity to commercial outcomes
Following Kaila Yates’s advice to collect and share “impact data” that demonstrates creativity’s business value in terms executive teams understand.
- 3. Use experience design as a bridge
Kaila Yates calls it “a brilliant unifier for all of the different functions in an organisation” to bring creative thinking into cross-functional conversations.
- 4. Embrace ‘extreme customer insight
Andrea Clatworthy shared her perspective that deep customer understanding is “the key to creative B2B marketing” and the foundation for meaningful differentiation.
The most powerful creative act you can undertake in today’s B2B environment might be dismantling the very concept of “the creative department” not to eliminate creative expertise, but to liberate creative thinking from its artificial confines.
Want to explore these ideas further?
Download our new playbook: “The Not-So-B2B Creativity Playbook: Helping Creativity Break Out of the Creative Department” to discover how leading B2B organisations are reimagining creativity’s
