The Two Marketeers Podcast

Is Effectiveness Killing Creativity? - Part 1

Welcome to another episode of The Two Marketeers podcast! This is a special one, so buyers should beware. Have you ever wanted an up-close glimpse into the brains of co-hosts Sean Patrick and Lindsay Waugh? Well, ask, and you shall receive.

In this episode, titled 'Is Effectiveness Killing Creativity,' Sean and Lindsay explore the relationship between creativity and effectiveness and unpack how we got to today's over-engineered creative process and need for measurement control over creativity. From digital to analytics and measurement, they call out and question it all in relation to creativity and ask some complex, possibly unanswerable, questions... Can creativity truly thrive and flourish in the handcuffs of today's environment? And, in turn, what will happen to human creativity as we know it? 

Buckle up, Marketeers, and happy listening. This one is a wild ride.  

Mac n' Cheese n' Beer

Marketeers, it was love at first sight! Or sip? Or snack? In any case, as soon as Sean and Lindsay, co-hosts of The Two Marketeers podcast, saw the latest campaign from Kraft Heinz, produced by their internal agency, The Kitchen, they knew they had to dive in.

As seen in Strategy Online, the Kraft Heinz brand is having fun with beer marketing cliches for its LTO freebie. In the article titled "KD makes a case for being at The Beer Store", Strategy states, "KD’s latest campaign puts a twist on a time-honoured cottage tradition by helping locals stock their vacation getaway pantries for the Victoria Day long weekend, rolling out the “KD 2-4,” the first ever 2-4 of KD mac ‘n cheese cups, created in partnership with The Beer Store. Starting Friday (May 17, 2024), consumers can get their hands on a free 24-pack of KD Cups while supplies last.

“As many Canadians head to the cottage for the long weekend in May, stopping at the Beer Store for their 2-4 is an unheralded tradition,” says Brian Neumann, head of brand communication, Kraft Heinz Canada. “We took the opportunity to piggyback on this consumer behaviour with the KD 2-4, 24 cups of Canada’s favourite Mac & Cheese in our most convenient snackable format.”

Neumann adds that KD cups were a perfect fit to provide easy snacking on long weekends for Gen Z consumers searching for “cravings and convenience. He adds that the product also allows consumers to enjoy it without having to spend extra time in the kitchen during their long weekend."

Happy listening, Marketeers, as Sean and Lindsay guide you along this long weekend road trip, one bite at a time.

For reference:

Strategy Online, "KD makes a case for being at The Beer Store"

Mastery of More Ideas

In April 2024, Contagious sent out its weekly newsletter, the 'Contagious Edit: Your Weekly Dose of Contagious Thinking,' which immediately caught the eye of The Two Marketeers as it discussed the virtues of churning stuff out.

The newsletter states, "In his 2018 book, Atomic Habits, James Clear tells a story about a photography teacher that holds a useful lesson for creative types.

Clear had come by the story in another book, called Art & Fear, which was published in 1985. The authors of that work had — for not especially interesting reasons — obscured the truth of the tale by omitting the name of the teacher in question and changing the locale to a ceramics class. But after Clear got in touch with them — and then spoke with some of the teacher’s former students — he learned the facts behind the fable, and this is apparently how it really happened.

Jerry Uelsmann was a successful artist who taught a film photography class at the University of Florida. On the first day of class one year, Uelsmann divided his students into two groups. He told the first group that they would be the ‘quantity’ group, and he would grade them on how many photos they submitted by the end of term. The other group, he said, was the ‘quality’ group, and they only had to produce one photograph all semester, but it had to be near-perfect to earn an A.

When it came time for Uelsmann to review his students’ photographs, he saw that the best compositions almost all came from the quantity group. While the students in the quality group had fussed over one or a few pictures, the quantity group were clicking away like an arthritic ankle in winter, and apparently became better photographers for it.

Former psychology professor Dean Keith Simonton spent decades studying human greatness in art and science, and he also found that, when it comes to creative endeavours, there is great value in volume.

After researching the lives of more than 2,000 eminent scientists, Simonton told the LA Times in 1988 that the single most important quality these great thinkers shared was probably ‘the willingness to produce a tremendous amount of work — often on seemingly trivial or useless projects — without fear of failure.’

In 1997 Simonton published a paper that articulated this finding as the ‘equal-odds rule’, which states that ‘the relationship between the number of hits (ie, creative successes) and the total number of works produced in a given time period is positive, linear, stochastic, and stable.’

The relationship between quality and quantity is not written in stone. A 2008 paper by Aaron Kozbelt, for example, found that classical composers produced their greatest concentration of hit songs around five years after their productivity peak, which suggests things like experience and expertise have a role to play. And common sense would suggest that you have to pay at least some attention to the quality of your ideas and compositions to eventually hit paydirt.

Still, it’s a fairly reliable rule of thumb that you need to have a lot of ideas to have great ones."

Join The Two Marketeers in this episode as they debate the quality vs. quantity of ideas and how to become a master of more. Happy listening!

What Happened to the Brief?

Welcome to a less-than-brief conversation all about the brief! As creative strategy people in the marketing and advertising industry, The Two Marketeers co-hosts, Sean Patrick and Lindsay Waugh, are obsessed with the brief. And rightfully so! The brief is the kick-off to brilliant (and, unfortunately, mediocre) work. But, it should NOT be the beginning of the work being done. In this episode, Sean and Lindsay discuss and debate the role of the brief, all that has to go into creating one, and what to do in the absence of a great one, or let's be real, one at all. 

Happy listening, Marketeers! Then, get out there and craft better briefs. 

For reference: 

MarketingWeek, "Mark Ritson: The idea that marketers need to be creative is a load of baloney, we’re useless at it."