Originality is not a
creative nice-to-have,
it’s a commercial advantage
This article is part of our Challenge Insights: The Seven Traits of Content series, where we explore what really drives audience engagement, brand differentiation and buyer decision-making in content marketing.
Across recent conversations on the Challenge Accepted podcast, one theme keeps surfacing. Many marketing challenges aren’t caused by a lack of effort or data, but by a lack of clarity, conviction and actionable insight.
At the heart of the problem, is originality. Or the absence of it.
Here, we explore why originality plays a critical role in turning attention into action, and what happens when it disappears.
As growth targets increase, budgets tighten, competition builds, and stakeholder-input rises, originality in content is usually the first casualty. Familiar language and category conventions begin to feel sensible and reassuring, and careful. And many marketers default to what already exists.
It’s understandable. You want to reduce risk, avoid internal pushback, or make sure you don’t stand out for the wrong reasons. But in crowded markets, where most audiences aren’t always ready to buy, playing it safe isn’t a sensible move, it’s expensive — and the fastest way to be forgotten.
According to the LinkedIn B2B Institute, more than 95 percent of buyers are not in-market at any given time. This means you’re not just competing to close a deal today; you’re competing to be remembered tomorrow. This single statistic should change how you think about marketing.
What if blending in is the real risk?
As a marketer, your job is to educate and build memory. And create associations that come to mind when a buying situation eventually appears.
When you look and sound the same as other brands, people won’t remember you. It doesn’t matter how accurate your data is or how polished your production looks, if your message blends into the background, it has already failed.
Originality is the “glue” that makes marketing stick. We aren’t talking about cheap gimmicks or novelty for the sake of it; we mean creating recognisable, meaningful work that makes you easier to find, easier to remember, and—ultimately—easier to choose.
Many organisations still treat originality as a creative risk. In reality, blending in is a bigger commercial one.
Research by Les Binet and Peter Field reveals businesses that invest in long-term brand building consistently outperform those focused purely on short-term activation. Emotionally-driven, distinctive campaigns are far more effective at driving growth over time, than rational, product-led messaging alone.
Yet, originality often gets smoothed away. You see it in the language, with everyone using terms like ‘innovative’, ‘customer-centric’, ‘trusted partner’. The result? Commoditisation. Messages no longer mean anything, buyers struggle to tell suppliers apart, decisions become price-led, and marketing has to work harder for smaller gains.
As Scott Taylor shared on the Challenge Accepted podcast, originality isn’t about being outrageous. It’s about creating something people haven’t seen before, while staying rooted in business reality.
Attention: the gateway to growth
Everything that leads to growth starts with a simple reality: if you don’t earn attention, nothing that follows matters. But originality isn’t just a creative spark that happens in a design studio; it starts with conviction. It comes from being clear about what you believe, what you prioritise, and what you’re willing to stand behind. Without that clarity, creativity has nothing to anchor to.
You might produce bold visuals or clever formats, but they will feel hollow if they aren’t grounded in strategy. This matters commercially. Ehrenberg-Bass research shows that mental availability — how easily your brand comes to mind in buying situations — is one of the strongest predictors of growth. Brands without a clear point of view struggle to build that availability, no matter how much content they churn out.
The commercial power of being yourself
Strong brands make choices. They draw lines in the sand and accept that standing for something means they won’t appeal to everyone. This conviction gives creative teams permission to be distinctive without being random.
Originality is more than just a marketing preference. Our brains are constantly filtering information and will ignore familiar patterns to save energy. But, when something deviates from the norm while remaining relevant, it interrupts that autopilot.
Our resident behavioural scientist, Ginny Follen, explains this through the Von Restorff effect: distinctive stimuli are simply easier to notice and recall later. This is why originality is the engine of engagement. Attention comes first, clarity and relevance follow, and emotion locks the memory in place. Without that initial spark of attention, the chain reaction never happens.
Scott’s Data Puppets are a perfect example of this. They take a familiar headache for marketers — confusing data language — and present it in an unexpected way. The format earns the attention, but the insight resonates because it reflects an organisational truth. It isn’t shock value; it’s just enough surprise to give the message a chance to land.
The high cost of playing it safe
The biggest threat to originality in any type of marketing content are internal fears: stakeholder pushback, appearing unprofessional, or standing out too much. Over time, these fears compound; with approval cycles diluting creative ambition and decisions becoming led by consensus rather than conviction.
Choosing safety often results in the very outcome organisations dread: invisibility.
Gartner research shows that B2B buyers spend just 17% of their time meeting potential suppliers. If you don’t stand out in their memory before that point, you may never even make the shortlist. As Scott noted, the bar for standing out is incredibly low. “You don’t have to be outrageous, you just have to avoid doing exactly what everyone else is doing.”
When originality is rooted in strategy, it does more than just turn heads, it drives preference. Distinctive brands are more emotionally resonant and less reliant on price-led competition. McKinsey research shows that brands with strong differentiation can command price premiums — even in crowded categories.
Essentially, originality reduces the friction in growth. It helps buyers recognise you faster and choose you with more confidence. As our own Lucy Allen puts it: “Originality isn’t about being first or loud. It’s about being unmistakably you in a world that’s trying to make everyone the same.”
The brands that sound like everyone else are treated like everyone else. And in today’s market, that is a far bigger, more expensive risk than standing out.
We explore this theme in more depth on the Challenge Accepted podcast, where we unpack how clarity, insight, originality, individuality, consistency, empathy, and creativity all work together to drive commercial impact in complex markets.
Hear real-world examples and candid perspectives from leaders navigating these exact issues.
