What is Competitive Creativity®?
Competitive Creativity® is the creation of meaningful, memorable and ownable difference relative to the environment in which a brand competes. Because different isn't something you are. Different only exists through comparison.
Marketing never operates in isolation. A brand competes with other brands, other messages and everything else demanding an audience's attention. It then competes to be remembered, correctly attributed and eventually retrieved when a buying situation arises. This means creativity shouldn't only be judged by asking "Is it good?" or even "Is it different?" The more useful question is:
"Does it give this brand a creative advantage over what it is competing against?"
Competitive Creativity® is LogicLogicMagic's approach to answering that question. It combines Imaginative Creativity, which uses novel, meaningful ideas and experiences to increase the probability of engagement and memory, with Systematic Creativity, which creates the clarity, consistency and usability that help people understand and act. The principle isn't to be different for difference's sake. It's to identify what you're competing against, what you're competing for, and what kind of creativity gives you an advantage.
Why is it called Competitive Creativity®?
Because marketing is competitive and creativity is one of the ways brands compete. Brands don't just compete for customers. Long before someone is ready to buy, they compete for attention, engagement, memory and recognition — and eventually to be recalled and considered when a buying situation arises. Creativity can give brands an advantage in each of these competitions. But that advantage is relative. Research into contextual distinctiveness shows that distinctiveness isn't simply an inherent quality of something. It is influenced by what surrounds it. Something can stand out in one environment and disappear in another because the context has changed. To reference the famous metaphor at the heart of advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty's positioning, a black sheep amongst white sheep is distinctive. Put it amongst a flock of black sheep and the advantage disappears. Advertising works the same way.
A visual style, message or creative device might appear highly distinctive when presented alone but become almost invisible when competitors use similar colours, language, imagery and ideas. That's why the Competitive in Competitive Creativity® matters. We don't just ask whether something is creative. We ask whether it is creative relative to what it needs to compete against — and whether that difference gives the brand an advantage. The aim isn't simply to be different. It is to create advantageous difference: creativity that is meaningful enough to matter, memorable enough to survive and ownable enough to become associated with the right brand.
Sometimes that means doing something dramatically different. Sometimes it means using familiar conventions because familiarity makes something easier to understand or use. Competitive Creativity® is knowing what you're competing against, what you're competing for, and how creativity can help you win.
What is a brand actually competing against?
More than its commercial competitors. Marketing competes at several levels. It competes with everything else in the environment for sufficient attention and processing. It competes with other experiences for a place in memory. It competes with similar brands, messages and visual conventions for distinctiveness. It competes with other memories to be retrieved when a buying situation occurs. And ultimately, it competes with commercial alternatives to be chosen. The competitor therefore changes according to the creative job. Sometimes the competition is another technology company. Sometimes it is another message. Sometimes it is category convention. Sometimes it is complexity. Sometimes it is indifference. Sometimes it is simply forgetting. Competitive Creativity® starts by identifying what the brand needs to compete against before deciding how creativity should help it compete.
Why do technology brands need Competitive Creativity®?
Technology markets are crowded with capable companies making similar claims. Faster. Smarter. Simpler. Safer. More productive.
The products may be genuinely different. The marketing often isn't. Many technology brands take the systematic creativity of their website and product — the colour palette, interface, icons, diagrams, typography and rational messaging — and extend it into their advertising.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this. These systems create clarity, consistency and usability. The problem occurs when principles designed to organise information and improve user experience are expected to perform a different job: competing for attention and memory amongst audiences who aren't yet interested.
Similarity doesn't simply make brands look alike. It changes the competitive environment in which they operate. When a category converges around similar visual codes, language and creative conventions, meaningful deviation has greater potential to create contextual distinctiveness. Competitive Creativity® doesn't advocate being different simply because competitors are similar. It identifies where meaningful difference can create an advantage and where familiarity, clarity and consistency remain more valuable.
What is Imaginative Creativity?
Imaginative Creativity uses novel, meaningful ideas and experiences to increase the probability of engagement and memory. It includes characters, stories, humour, metaphor, music, emotion, entertainment, unusual juxtapositions, distinctive brand worlds and other forms of lateral creative thinking. Imaginative Creativity is expansive. It creates associations beyond products and features and gives audiences something worth noticing, feeling and remembering before they have an immediate reason to buy. This matters because most potential buyers are not actively shopping for a solution today. But they are still encountering brands and forming memories that may influence which companies come to mind tomorrow. Imaginative Creativity helps brands compete for those future memories. It creates cognitive traction.
Rather than simply making information easier to process, it gives an audience a reason to process it in the first place.
What is Systematic Creativity?
Systematic Creativity organises information and experiences into coherent, consistent and usable systems that increase the probability of comprehension and action. It includes positioning, proposition development, messaging systems, information hierarchy, brand identity systems, user experience, product demonstrations, landing pages, performance content, nurture journeys and sales enablement.
Systematic Creativity is reductive. It takes complexity and makes it understandable, navigable, repeatable and usable.
Technology companies are often extremely good at it — for good reason. Complex products need explaining. Digital experiences need to be intuitive. Global organisations need scalable systems. Buyers need clarity and evidence. Systematic Creativity reduces unnecessary cognitive friction. The problem comes when it is expected to perform every creative job, including those for which it may not be optimised: engaging indifferent audiences and creating new memories.
How do Imaginative and Systematic Creativity work together?
They solve different problems. Imaginative Creativity creates cognitive traction. Systematic Creativity reduces unnecessary cognitive friction. When audiences have little existing interest, marketing disproportionately needs to earn engagement and build memory.
As interest and intent increase, the competitive problem changes. Clarity, comprehension, evidence, usability and ease of action become increasingly important.
Competitive Creativity® therefore doesn't argue that Imaginative Creativity is better than Systematic Creativity. It argues that different creative problems require different creative approaches. Without Imaginative Creativity, systematic marketing may attempt to convert people who barely know the brand. Without Systematic Creativity, memorable advertising may create interest without giving buyers sufficient clarity, evidence or direction. Imagination gives people a reason to care. Logic makes it easier to act.
When should you use Imaginative or Systematic Creativity?
At the beginning of a buyer journey (if we accept that journeys are rarely as neat as funnels suggest) most potential customers aren't actively looking for you. The greater challenge is getting noticed, creating interest and building memories that might be retrieved later. This is where Imaginative Creativity has a disproportionately important role. Characters, stories, humour, emotion, music, metaphor and unexpected ideas can give people a reason to engage with a brand before they have a reason to engage with its product.
As intent increases, the problem changes. A prospect who is actively evaluating a solution doesn't need to be continually surprised. They increasingly need to understand what you do, why you're relevant, how you're different, whether they can trust you and what they should do next. This is where Systematic Creativity becomes increasingly important: positioning, propositions, messaging, proof, information architecture, product experience, UX, sales enablement and conversion. So the balance shifts.
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Higher up the journey: more Imaginative Creativity to create cognitive traction.
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Further down the journey: more Systematic Creativity to reduce unnecessary cognitive friction.
This isn't a rigid formula. Imagination can improve conversion and systematic brand assets can aid recognition at the top of the journey. The appropriate balance depends on the audience, category, channel and competitive problem. But as a working principle, LogicLogicMagic thinks of the complete journey as approximately two parts Logic to one part Magic. That's where our name comes from. Logic. Logic. Magic. Enough imagination to get remembered. Enough system to turn that memory into action.
Is Competitive Creativity® just another name for brand and demand?
No. Brand and demand describe broad marketing objectives. Competitive Creativity® examines how creativity performs within them and the competitive environment in which it has to perform. Two campaigns may both be described as brand building while using very different creative tools. One might rely on a colour palette, typography and rational product claims. Another might use a character, story, original sound and ownable visual world. Their competitive performance may differ depending upon what surrounds them, how audiences encounter them, what they remember and whether that memory becomes associated with the correct brand. Competitive Creativity® therefore asks more specific questions:
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What are we competing against?
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What are we competing for?
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What kind of creativity does that require?
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What will people remember?
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Will they know it was us?
Is being different enough?
No. Different does not automatically mean distinctive. Distinctive does not automatically mean memorable. And memorable does not automatically mean effective. Difference only becomes valuable when it creates an advantage. Something wildly unusual may attract attention while having little relevance to the brand. An entertaining advertisement may be remembered while the advertiser is forgotten.
A distinctive execution may create a powerful short-term impression without building anything the brand can use again. Competitive Creativity® therefore seeks advantageous difference. It should be meaningful enough to matter, memorable enough to survive and ownable enough to become associated with the right brand. The objective isn't simply to zag when everybody else zigs. It is to understand why everybody is zigging, whether zagging creates an advantage, and whether the brand can own the zag.
What is the Competitive Creativity® Matrix?
The Competitive Creativity® Matrix maps creative assets across two dimensions:
Memorable ←→ Forgettable
How likely is the asset to create and retain memory within its actual competitive environment?
Memorability isn't judged entirely in isolation. A creative device may appear unusual on a presentation board yet become unremarkable when placed alongside competitors using similar devices. Its competitive context matters.
Ownable ←→ Unownable
How effectively can the asset become uniquely associated with one brand? Something can be highly memorable without being ownable.
A celebrity, cultural reference or popular visual style might create memory while remaining equally available to competitors. Conversely, an asset can be highly consistent and recognisable to existing audiences while doing relatively little to earn attention from new ones.
The most valuable territory is Memorable + Ownable. These are assets capable of creating memory and helping the audience correctly identify whose memory it is. The Matrix therefore asks brands to evaluate their creative assets as audiences actually experience them:
alongside everything else competing for the same limited share of memory.
What is the difference between contextual distinctiveness and brand distinctiveness?
They perform different jobs.
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Contextual distinctiveness describes how strongly something differs from what surrounds it.
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Category distinctiveness describes how strongly a brand or execution departs from the conventions of its competitive category.
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Brand distinctiveness describes how strongly a cue evokes the correct brand rather than its competitors.
A campaign can perform strongly on one and poorly on another. An extraordinary piece of advertising might stand apart from everything in its category and be widely remembered — while nobody remembers who made it. Equally, a highly consistent piece of communication might be immediately recognisable to people who notice it but insufficiently distinctive within its environment to earn much new attention. Competitive Creativity® aims to connect the two: Make the expression surprising enough to compete. Make the ownership familiar enough to compound.
Which creative assets are most effective?
No creative asset is automatically effective. Its value depends upon its quality, relevance, competitive context, consistency, investment and relationship with the brand. But some devices provide richer opportunities for imagination, memory and ownership than others.
Strong Imaginative Creativity can include:
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Brand characters
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Sonic identities and original music
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Ownable visual worlds
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Recurring narrative platforms
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Metaphors with strategic meaning
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Humour and emotional storytelling
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Distinctive language and verbal devices
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Experiential ideas and creative behaviours
Systematic Creativity can include:
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Positioning and propositions
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Messaging frameworks
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Brand identity and design systems
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Information architecture
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Product demonstrations
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Websites and landing pages
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Demand generation content
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Nurture journeys
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Sales enablement
Competitive Creativity® doesn't suggest abandoning systematic assets. It asks whether the overall creative system contains sufficient imagination to compete outside the environments the brand already owns. You can't graphic design your way to fame. But you do need excellent design once people arrive.
Does consistency make brands less creative?
It shouldn't. Consistency and imagination aren't opposites. The objective isn't to continually reinvent the brand in pursuit of novelty. That can prevent distinctive memories from accumulating. Instead, brands can build familiar, ownable assets while continually finding imaginative new ways to express them. Characters can enter new stories. Brand worlds can contain new experiences. Sonic identities can be reinterpreted. Recurring ideas can respond to new situations. The familiar elements help audiences recognise the brand. The imaginative elements give them something new to engage with. Keep the memory structure. Change the experience.
How does LogicLogicMagic apply Competitive Creativity®?
We begin by putting the competitors back in the room. We analyse the public marketing activity of a technology brand alongside its nominated competitors. We assess which Imaginative and Systematic devices are being deployed, which visual and verbal conventions dominate the category, which assets appear memorable and ownable, and where similarity creates opportunities for meaningful difference.
This creates a map of the competitive creative environment. From there, we identify opportunities to:
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Preserve existing assets that already carry recognition
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Strengthen or reinterpret underused brand assets
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Identify category conventions worth retaining
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Identify category conventions worth breaking
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Create distinctive Imaginative Creativity
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Clarify positioning and proposition
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Strengthen Systematic Creativity where comprehension or action is difficult
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Connect brand-building activity with demand generation
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Carry recognisable assets across campaigns, channels and sales activity
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Build familiarity without continually reinventing the brand
The result isn't creativity for creativity's sake.
It is creativity designed to create competitive advantage.
Does LogicLogicMagic practise what it preaches?
Yes. As a B2B brand ourselves, we deploy Imaginative and Systematic Creativity across our communications. Our brand character is Mogic, the white-knight unicorn chess piece. Mogic represents the fusion of Logic — the chess piece — and Magic — the unicorn. He speaks with a Scottish accent, adding a distinctive sonic cue and reflecting the fact that the unicorn is Scotland's national animal. Mogic stars in our brand film, The Musings of Mogic, set within our visual brand world: the technology Zen garden. It is a place designed to evoke growth and calm beneath a distinctive dark-green starry sky.
We also use sonic assets through different versions of the LogicLogicMagic song, which tell our story and accompany our showreel.
Our proposition of two parts Logic to one part Magic also comes alive through our original storytelling card game, now in its third edition. It was designed as an entertaining, experiential way for clients, prospects and their families to experience how we think rather than simply read about it.
Alongside these Imaginative assets sits our Systematic Creativity. Gotham and Book Antiqua represent Logic and Magic typographically. Golden yellow and ivory operate against dark forest green. Squares derived from the chessboard form part of our design language. Our content system includes multiple formats, including the eighteen-chapter Mogic's Guide. The intention isn't simply to possess lots of brand assets. It is to build a collection of assets that perform different jobs while becoming increasingly recognisable as LogicLogicMagic.
Does Competitive Creativity® produce measurable growth?
Competitive Creativity® is designed to improve both brand familiarity and commercial performance. For spend-management platform Soldo, our analysis revealed an over-reliance on Systematic Creativity and a shortage of distinctive, memory-building assets. Rather than discarding the existing identity, we built on its most recognisable elements. We positioned the brand around "Liberate finance. Accomplish more," created a distinctive hummingbird character and developed an imaginative visual world that brought light and colour to spend management.
Those assets were deployed consistently through brand and demand-generation activity. Over the following 18 months:
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Prompted brand awareness increased by 625%
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Demand-generation pipeline increased by 252%
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Net Promoter Score increased by 36%
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90% of pipeline came from net-new prospects
Imaginative Creativity helped build familiarity. Systematic Creativity helped turn that familiarity into understanding and action.
What research supports Competitive Creativity®?
Competitive Creativity® doesn't claim to have discovered how attention, memory or brands work. It builds on established research across cognitive psychology, behavioural science, advertising effectiveness and marketing science. This includes research into:
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Contextual distinctiveness and the relationship between difference, similarity and memory
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Competitive interference and how similar information can compete within memory
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Advertising creativity, including the relationship between novelty, divergence and relevance
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Mental availability and the competition between brands to be retrieved in buying situations
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Distinctive brand assets and the importance of correct brand attribution
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Emotion, entertainment and memory
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Brand building and sales activation
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Processing fluency, cognitive effort and comprehension
Relevant work includes research from academics and organisations including Hedwig von Restorff, R. Reed Hunt, Ehrenberg-Bass, Byron Sharp, Ipsos, System1, Les Binet, Peter Field and Orlando Wood. Competitive Creativity® connects these established areas through a particular lens:
creativity operates under competitive conditions. Our developing hypothesis is that brands can improve their creative advantage by understanding those conditions and deliberately applying different kinds of creativity to different competitive problems.
Who created Competitive Creativity®?
The term Competitive Creativity® was coined by Alistair Ross, Creative Partner at LogicLogicMagic. It grew from more than 30 years working in advertising and technology marketing and from earlier experiences of sporting competition. Before advertising, Alistair competed internationally as an oarsman, representing England, Scotland and Great Britain. Competitive sport taught him that performance is relative. Being good isn't enough. Racing depends upon how you perform against the people alongside you. It's possible to beat crews who on paper might be better than you if you think creatively how you can outcompete them on the day.
Four years at Edinburgh College of Art exposed Alistair to all forms of creativity from fine art to fashion to architecture, but this was not creativity that was necessarily designed to overtly compete. Advertising brought the two worlds together. Unlike many creative disciplines, advertising creativity has a commercial opponent. Ideas compete for attention, memory, attribution and ultimately choice. Competitive Creativity® is an attempt to understand that relationship more systematically: combining established research with decades of observation and creative practice to explore how creativity functions when it has something to compete against.
Is Competitive Creativity® only for large technology brands?
No. Any brand can benefit from understanding the competitive context in which its creativity operates. Large brands can use Competitive Creativity® to identify fragmentation, inconsistency and underused assets across complex organisations. Smaller brands can use it to concentrate limited budgets on creative assets capable of compounding over time rather than continually producing disconnected campaigns. It is particularly valuable when:
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Competitors look and sound increasingly similar
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Product superiority is difficult to communicate quickly
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Brand awareness is low
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Marketing is clear and professional but difficult to remember
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Demand-generation performance is declining
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Marketing investment needs to work harder
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A rebrand risks discarding valuable recognition
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Brand and performance activity feel disconnected
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The organisation needs to do more with less
Does Competitive Creativity® require a rebrand?
Usually not. Our philosophy is to build on what is already there wherever possible. Brands often possess distinctive elements without recognising their potential. A polarising logo, unusual colour, memorable name, overlooked founder story, distinctive phrase, existing character or established metaphor may offer more competitive value than an entirely new identity. Familiarity can compound through consistent exposure. Continually replacing assets can destroy memories that marketing has already paid to create. Competitive Creativity® therefore asks two questions before creating something new:
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What already has value?
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What is missing relative to the competitive environment?
Evolution is often more competitive than revolution.
How can we assess our own Competitive Creativity®?
Start with five questions:
1. What are we actually competing against for attention and memory?
2. What would someone remember if our logo were removed?
3. Which of our assets could only belong to us?
4. Are we using Imaginative Creativity to create meaningful difference and build memory amongst future buyers?
5. Does our Systematic Creativity make it easy for interested buyers to understand and act?
The first question forces the brand to look outward rather than evaluating itself in isolation. The next two examine memory and ownership. The final two examine whether the balance of Imaginative and Systematic Creativity matches the jobs marketing needs to perform. LogicLogicMagic conducts Competitive Creativity® analyses comparing a brand's marketing with nominated competitors. The result is a clearer picture of what to preserve, what to strengthen, what to stop and what to create next.
Where can Competitive Creativity® be applied?
Across the entire buyer journey. Competitive Creativity® isn't a marketing service. It's the way we approach marketing. Wherever a brand needs to compete — for attention, memory, engagement, understanding or action — we ask what it is competing against and which kind of creativity gives it the greatest advantage. That means the balance changes according to the job.
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In brand marketing, Imaginative Creativity can play a greater role in creating distinctive experiences, building memory and making the brand easier to recognise and recall.
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In demand generation, imagination earns engagement while Systematic Creativity connects that interest to relevant propositions, content and actions.
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In field marketing, brands compete for attention in highly concentrated environments, making the combination of imaginative ideas and systematic execution particularly important.
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In partner marketing, creativity has to work across organisations, propositions and audiences. Distinctive ideas create engagement while systematic frameworks make programmes clear, repeatable and easy for partners to use.
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In sales enablement, the competitive problem increasingly becomes one of complexity, uncertainty and inertia. Systematic Creativity helps turn complicated propositions into clear, persuasive reasons to act.
So Competitive Creativity® doesn't sit alongside Brand, Demand Generation, Field Marketing, Partner Marketing and Sales Enablement.
It runs through all of them.
Make your marketing more competitive
Technology buyers cannot choose a brand that never enters or returns to memory. But being noticed isn't enough. The memory needs to mean something, belong to the right brand and eventually help someone understand why they should choose it. Competitive Creativity® helps technology brands identify what they are competing against, what they are competing for and what kind of creativity gives them an advantage. Create meaningful difference. Make it memorable. Make it yours. Then make it easy to act.