Once we know something, it becomes hard to imagine what it feels like not to know it.
More quotesAdvertising that studies only advertising eventually develops the genetic diversity of a royal family.
The same disease is thriving elsewhere. B2B homepages promise to “empower teams” above identical purple gradients. Coffee shops install pale wood, a sans-serif menu and one apologetic fern. Recruitment adverts copy other recruitment adverts until every job happens in a “fast-paced environment” inhabited by “self-starters” with no visible task. Everyone is benchmarking. Nobody is looking out of the window.
This is not merely an originality problem. Customers do not live in categories. Their references come from family rows, terrible commutes, games, films, supermarkets, group chats and the workaround they invented because our elegant product journey failed. When the team consumes only trade press, competitor campaigns and conference panels, it loses contact with the language and texture of the life it is supposedly selling into. I would rather hear one customer explain the problem badly in their kitchen than see another immaculate category trends deck. Study hotels for recovery, games for progress, emergency services for clarity, street markets for selling. Import the mechanism, not the costume. Originality is often an ordinary idea that crossed a border while everyone else was at the industry awards. Bring something useful back.