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What is Competitive Creativity®?

Competitive Creativity® is LogicLogicMagic’s approach to B2B technology marketing. It combines imaginative creativity that builds brand familiarity with systematic creativity that captures and converts demand. The premise is simple: technology brands become easier to choose when they are easier to remember. Most technology companies are naturally good at systematic creativity. They simplify complex products, design intuitive experiences and communicate rational benefits clearly. But the creativity that helps build a product is not always the creativity that can make it famous. Competitive Creativity® brings logic and magic together. Imagination builds familiarity. Logic converts it.

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 and rational messaging — and extend it into their advertising. The result is usually clear, consistent and professionally executed. It is also remarkably easy to forget. Marketing failure often happens because brands attempt conversion before familiarity exists. They optimise websites, landing pages, content journeys and sales funnels while remaining largely unknown to the people entering them. Competitive Creativity® addresses both sides of the problem: becoming remembered before buyers are ready to choose, then becoming easier to choose when they are ready.

What is Imaginative Creativity?

Imaginative creativity captures attention and creates memories. It uses devices such as characters, stories, humour, metaphor, music, emotion and distinctive brand worlds to make a brand recognisable and memorable. Imaginative creativity is expansive. It creates associations beyond products and features. It gives audiences something to notice, feel and remember before they have any immediate reason to buy. This matters because most potential buyers are not actively shopping for a solution today. But they are still forming impressions of the brands they may consider tomorrow. Imaginative creativity helps a technology brand become familiar before the buying moment arrives.

What is Systematic Creativity?

Systematic creativity removes friction and helps people act. It includes positioning, proposition development, messaging, user experience, product demonstrations, performance content, landing pages, nurture journeys and sales enablement. Systematic creativity is logical, reductive and highly effective when an audience is already paying attention. It helps buyers understand a product, evaluate its value and move confidently towards a decision. Technology companies are usually very good at it. The problem comes when systematic creativity is expected to do a job for which it was not designed: attracting cold audiences and building memory. Systematic creativity can convert existing demand. On its own, it is less effective at generating new familiarity.

How do imaginative and systematic creativity work together?

Competitive Creativity® deliberately sequences the two across the buyer journey. Imaginative creativity builds familiarity and generates demand. Systematic creativity turns familiarity into understanding and captures demand. The two approaches are complementary rather than competing. Without imaginative creativity, systematic marketing may attempt to convert people who barely know the brand. Without systematic creativity, memorable advertising may attract attention without giving interested buyers enough clarity, evidence or direction.

The commercial opportunity lies in joining them together. Imagination creates the memory. Logic makes the case.

Is Competitive Creativity® just another name for brand and demand?

No. Brand and demand describe broad marketing objectives. Competitive Creativity® examines the types of creative devices being used to achieve them. 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, a story, an original sound and an ownable visual world.

They are not equally likely to attract attention, encode memory or become associated with the brand. Competitive Creativity® provides a more practical way to assess the creative assets being deployed, the jobs they are being asked to perform and the order in which audiences encounter them.

What is the Competitive Creativity® Matrix?

The Competitive Creativity Matrix maps creative assets across two dimensions:

Memorable ←→ Forgettable

How effectively is the asset likely to attract attention and encode a memory?

Ownable ←→ Unownable

How effectively can the asset become uniquely associated with one brand? The most valuable assets sit in the memorable and ownable quadrant. They are both easy to recall and difficult for competitors to appropriate. A celebrity may be highly memorable but difficult to own.
A colour palette or geometric pattern may be consistent and relatively ownable but struggle to create memory by itself. Characters, sonic identities, distinctive brand worlds, recurring stories and proprietary creative platforms have the potential to be both memorable and ownable. The Matrix helps technology marketers see their brand as an audience sees it: alongside every competitor fighting for the same limited share of memory.

Which creative assets are most effective?

No creative asset is automatically effective. Quality, relevance, consistency and investment all matter. But some devices provide richer raw material for memory than others.

Strong imaginative assets can include:

  • Brand characters

  • Sonic identities and original music

  • Ownable visual worlds

  • Recurring narrative platforms

  • Metaphors with strategic meaning

  • Humour and emotional storytelling

  • Distinctive language and verbal devices

Systematic assets remain essential and can include:

  • Positioning and propositions

  • Messaging frameworks

  • Brand identity systems

  • Product demonstrations

  • Websites and landing pages

  • Demand generation content

  • Nurture journeys

  • Sales enablement

Competitive Creativity® does not suggest abandoning systematic assets. It ensures they are supported by imaginative assets capable of attracting audiences in the first place. You cannot graphic design your way to fame. But you do need excellent design once people arrive.

How does LogicLogicMagic apply Competitive Creativity®?

We begin by analysing the public marketing activity of a technology brand and its nominated competitors. We assess which imaginative and systematic devices are being deployed, how memorable and ownable they appear, and whether the category is converging around the same visual and verbal conventions. This creates a map of the marketing battlefield. From there, we identify opportunities to:

  • Preserve existing assets that already carry recognition

  • Strengthen or reinterpret underused brand assets

  • Create distinctive imaginative devices

  • Clarify positioning and proposition

  • Connect brand-building activity with demand generation

  • Carry recognisable assets across campaigns, channels and sales activity

  • Build familiarity without continually reinventing the brand

The result is not creativity for creativity’s sake. It is a more competitive marketing system.

Does LogicLogicMagic practice what they preach?

Yes. As a B2B brand ourselves, we deploy a full range of imaginative and systematic creativity across our communications. In terms of imaginative creativity we have a brand character – Mogic the 'white knight' unicorn chess piece. Mogic represents the fusion of Logic (chess) and Magic (unicorn). He speaks with a Scottish accent—a distinctive voice that gives the character another memorable cue and because the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland. Mogic stars in our brand film, "The Musings of Mogic." This is set in our visual brand world - the technology Zen garden. A place that visually reflects growth and calm under a distinctive dark green starry sky. We have sonic assets too in the form of various versions of the LogicLogicMagic song which tell our story and accompany our showreel.

In addition to these assets, our proposition of two parts Logic to one part Magic comes alive in our original storytelling card game which is now in its third edition. We understand the power of experiential activities and our card game was designed to allow clients, prospects and their families to have an entertaining insight into how we think for themselves.

We of course have a collection of systematic creativity assets too. Fonts - Gotham and Book Antiqua for Logic and Magic. Colour palette - we are a light out of dark brand. Golden yellow and ivory shades against a dark forest green. We have squares as a design language - inspired by the chess board of our brand character chess piece. We have content pieces of different formats including the eighteen chapter 'Mogic's Guide'. A balanced branding arsenal that together epitomises Competitive Creativity®..

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:

  • Prompted brand awareness increased by 625%

  • Demand generation pipeline increased by 252%

  • Net promoter score increased by 36%

  • 90% of pipeline came from net-new prospects

Imaginative creativity built familiarity. Systematic creativity captured the resulting demand. You can see the full case study here.

Who created Competitive Creativity®?

The term Competitive Creativity® was coined by Alistair Ross, Creative Partner at LogicLogicMagic. It builds on decades of experience working with challenger brands across multiple sectors and understanding how to outperform the competition by making the creative choices that will be most memorable. The methodology is also informed by established research into mental availability, creative effectiveness, distinctive brand assets, emotion, attention and memory from organisations and thinkers including Ehrenberg-Bass, Ipsos, System1, Les Binet, Peter Field, Byron Sharp and Orlando Wood.

Is Competitive Creativity® only for large technology brands?

No, any brand can benefit from adopting the learnings within Competitive Creativity®. Large brands can use it to identify fragmentation, inconsistency and underused assets across complex organisations. Smaller brands can use it to concentrate limited budgets on creative assets that compound over time rather than producing disconnected campaigns.

Competitive Creativity® is particularly valuable when:

  • Competitors look and sound increasingly similar

  • Product superiority is difficult to communicate quickly

  • Brand awareness is low

  • Demand generation performance is declining

  • Marketing investment needs to work harder

  • A rebrand risks discarding valuable recognition

  • Brand and performance activity feel disconnected

  • 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 or existing metaphor may offer more value than an entirely new identity. Familiarity compounds through consistent exposure. Continually replacing assets can destroy the memories marketing has already paid to create. Evolution is often more competitive than revolution.

How can we assess our own Competitive Creativity®?

Start with four questions:

  1. What would someone remember if our logo were removed?

  2. Which of our assets could only belong to us?

  3. Are we using imaginative creativity to attract future buyers?

  4. Does our systematic creativity make it easy for interested buyers to act?

If the answer to the first two questions is “very little,” your brand may be consistent without being distinctive. If the answer to the third is “no,” demand generation may be trying to convert unfamiliar audiences. If the answer to the fourth is “no,” attention may be escaping before it becomes commercial action. LogicLogicMagic conducts Competitive Creativity® analyses comparing your marketing assets with three nominated competitors. The result is a clear picture of what to preserve, what to strengthen and what to create next.

Make your marketing more competitive

Technology buyers cannot choose a brand they never notice, remember or trust. Competitive Creativity® helps technology brands build familiarity before the buying moment and convert it more efficiently when it arrives. Imagination generates demand. Logic captures it.

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