Guidelines Killed Creativity

Agreed, to set a standard in communication - whether its advertising or corporate communication, guidelines serves as a base to build campaigns on but there is a paradox attached to it. What is the impact, when creativity is bounded by guidelines which acts as a gospel where as they should be considered as light houses.

Creativity is imaginative by its very virtue and by setting up guidelines and standards, the brand mistakenly puts a harness around this wild horse's neck. As an argument one can always comment that the world's strongest and the mightiest brands also have strict guidelines to ensure that the standards are effectively met. But what baffles me the most is how will a brand evaluate a communication which negates its guidelines and yet it is capable of creating a lot of interest, promotes desired action in the target audience and is powerful enough to easily stand out, breaking the clutter. Should the brand accept it considering the impact of such communication and understand the natural evolution cycle or should the brand rejects it merely based on the non-compliance of the guidelines.


Custodians of the brand equity continuously engage themselves asking as to how to increase effectiveness in their relentless campaigning, where as it is my strong belief that in an epic battle to attain excellence in communication, there comes a time when the need to challenge all the guidelines and rules starts marking the difference between uniqueness and orthodox.