I’ve been a content creator and curator for more than 30 years. As a creative director, designer, copywriter, and now as an educator. Across that time, one pattern stood out: very few people could clearly communicate what they wanted from me or my team.
Clarity is king, yet it’s often treated as optional. Too often I’d hear lines like: “I don’t want to be too specific, because I don’t want to constrain your imagination.” On the surface, that sounds generous. In reality, it leaves creators guessing, wasting cycles, and producing “creative” interpretations of messages that were never clear in the first place.
And then comes the irony: the same people expect their audiences to magically grasp what they themselves couldn’t articulate. The result? Confused campaigns, wasted budgets, and frustrated teams.
Now, with AI in the mix, the stakes are even higher. You can’t expect an algorithm to become your saviour if you can’t express the message in a way that humans can actually understand. Garbage in, garbage out. Only nowadays, at machine speed.
The truth is simple: clarity is not the enemy of creativity — it’s the foundation of it. The clearer the brief, the stronger the outcome. Creativity thrives when it knows where to land.
Clarity has become the missing service in most organisations, and the one they can’t afford to ignore now. So, stay tuned.