The cosy conformity of best practice may feel safe but it’s also a threat to the creativity brands need to flourish, argues Ashgrove’s Terry van Rhyn

There are few phrases in modern marketing more reassuring, more widely accepted and more quietly dangerous than the term “best practice”.

The moment those words enter a meeting, something curious happens. Heads begin nodding. Risk levels immediately drop. PowerPoint slides suddenly feel more credible. Somebody inevitably references a global brand case study from Scandinavia and, before long, an entire room of intelligent people start to convince themselves that somehow following the crowd is strategic thinking.

I have fallen into this trap myself over the years. Like many marketers, I once believed “best practice” represented accumulated wisdom – a kind of commercial shortcut towards effectiveness. If successful brands all behaved a certain way, surely there was logic in following their lead. It felt sensible. Rational. Safe.

And that, of course, is precisely the problem. Best practice rarely creates breakthrough brands. It creates conformity.

By the time something becomes accepted as best practice, it usually means the market has already absorbed it, copied it and become largely numb to it. What once felt fresh gradually becomes formula, then cliché, then wallpaper.

The irony is that, despite supposedly being built on originality, the advertising and marketing industry has become remarkably good at producing work that resembles other work. Entire sectors now look and sound almost interchangeable. The same tone of voice. The same social media trends. The same inspirational video edits. The same carefully calibrated “authenticity”.

Somewhere along the line, many brands stopped trying to stand out and started trying to fit in professionally.

This is particularly visible on LinkedIn, where every company now appears to be “delighted”, “thrilled” or “excited to announce” something accompanied by a photograph of several people pointing enthusiastically at a wall-mounted screen.

One suspects even the wall-mounted screen is exhausted.

The problem with best practice is not that it is always wrong. In fact, many best practices are operationally useful. They help create consistency, efficiency and reliability. The problem arises when they become creative handcuffs.

Because consumers do not remember brands for behaving correctly. They remember them for making them feel something – and feelings rarely come from caution.

The brands we admire most today almost always broke conventions when they first appeared. They disrupted visual language, challenged category norms or communicated with a confidence that felt slightly uncomfortable at the time.

Many of the world’s most iconic campaigns would never have survived a modern committee review process obsessed with optimisation, stakeholder alignment and best practice benchmarking.

Imagine presenting some of the great campaigns in history today. Someone would undoubtedly suggest making the logo bigger, softening the message and adding a clearer call to action “for digital engagement purposes”.

Creativity by committee is usually just mediocrity with excellent attendance.

Of course, being provocative simply for the sake of provocation is not the answer either. Recklessness is not strategy. But meaningful creativity does require courage. It requires the confidence to move beyond what is proven and explore what is possible. Ultimately, that is our job as marketers and creative people.

We’re not here to decorate conformity more attractively than our competitors. Nor to produce content that disappears politely into the algorithm. We’re here to create work that cuts through clutter, provokes an emotional response and leaves a lasting impression. Because in a world overwhelmed by communication, safe work becomes invisible remarkably quickly.

This is something the industry occasionally forgets. Marketing is not a compliance exercise. It is not an exercise in avoiding criticism. It is an exercise in creating attention, memorability and meaning. That, inevitably, involves risk.

Interestingly, consumers themselves are often far more open to brave creative work than organisations assume. Most people are desperate for something surprising, entertaining or emotionally engaging amidst the endless stream of generic corporate messaging flooding their screens every day.

And as AI, automation and data-driven optimisation continue reshaping the industry, this tension will only intensify. Machines are exceptionally good at producing average work efficiently. Which means average work will become increasingly abundant.

The bigger risk today is not being too bold – it is being ignored. Originality, judgement and creative bravery therefore become more valuable, not less.

Perhaps the real danger of “best practice” is that it quietly encourages brands to outsource their instincts. To stop trusting creative intuition and start relying excessively on precedent. But if every brand follows the same map, they inevitably arrive at the same destination. And there is nothing particularly memorable about arriving exactly where everyone else already is.

The brands that truly endure are rarely the ones that followed best practice most closely. They are the ones that had the courage to challenge it.

Because in the end, consumers do not reward brands for fitting in beautifully.

They reward them for standing out meaningfully.