Why Corporate Marketing Usually Falls Flat

It’s by design.

Picture this:

You’re a new intern at a mid-level agency or corporate job. You have just been tasked with designing a creatives for an upcoming campaign that will use x and instagram as the platforms. No problem, your personal account gets more traction than half of the companies in the industry combined. You have a really good pulse on what trends and what is cringe. Your style and sense of humor goes over well with a majority of the population.

You put the creatives into the task on the company’s totally unnecessary project management system for approval. This is where things start to go downhill.

Your gen x marketing manager who still gets in heated debated about the oxford comma doesn’t understand why the post has spelling errors. They are unable to understand the meme humor behind the creative and are worried that it may reflect negatively on the company. We can’t have anyone thinking we don’t know how to spell!

Next it will get passed to some random person in the company (usually and old head who has been there for years) for some reason. They look at it and think its kind of engaging on the surface, but not quite as engaging as the post their friend made on facebook last week. So they put in their edit suggestions to make it even more crusty. The post has went from a photo with some catchy humor to a stale, polished image with boomer humor.

And then here comes the killing blow. The review from the HR department. If the creative isn’t dead yet, this is where it goes to die. All pizzaz will be sucked out of it in order to be made “safe”. HR departments are responsible for more dead marketing campaigns than any other offender.

This final version is eventually what gets published, and will almost certainly fall flat….and who get the blame?

The junior employee with the original, exciting idea.

No way it could have been anyone else, they all have years of experience! They never let their egos get in the way! Yeah, right.

Unfortunately, a tragic, vicious circle.

The moral of the story here is, don’t look to these companies for inspiration if you are just starting out marketing. Get inspiration from the underground. Look at small businesses that are taking risks. Look at new creators who are making moves. Look anywhere except only the best corporate marketing departments.

Take the risks.