Creative License in Marketing: How to Balance Rules and Whimsy

In marketing, we walk a strange tightrope. On one side are design rules, industry standards, and cultural expectations. On the other side is the urge to do something unexpected, funny, or memorable.

The expected builds trust. A law firm’s website needs to look like it belongs to a law firm. If it looked like a plumber’s website, people wouldn’t take them seriously. And if a plumber’s site looked like it belonged to a law firm? Same problem. Familiar signals help people trust they’re in the right place.

But “building trust” is only one of several obstacles that marketing aims to overcome. We also need to get attention, spark emotion, and be memorable. That’s where creative license comes in.

The 80/20 Rule

You’ll remember this if you came to my branding workshop for Sooke Women in Business 🙂

I think of it as an 80/20 split:

• 80%: What people expect. Familiar design cues, industry conventions, clear messaging. This is the foundation, and it’s built on experience, continual learning, and technical know-how.
• 20%: The unexpected. A twist, a wink, a moment of play. This is where you capture attention, and make people want to engage and remember your product or service.

One of my favourite stories comes from a real estate agent. She said: “When people view several houses and go home to discuss, they don’t say ‘the one with two bedrooms and three bathrooms.’ They say ‘the one with the cats on the shower curtain.’”

That same agent once put a giant yellow duck in the pool before photographing a house listing. I couldn’t track down the pictures, so I assume that the house found its new owner and sold right away.

At Almostronaut, we love finding those 20% moments. The gimmick for your business card that turns it into a conversation starter, the treasure map for your community event, the big mascot for your plumbing truck, and so on. In each of these examples we built on a solid foundation of strategy, design, and technical execution rooted in many years of experience. But what people remember is the playful aspect.

Artistic License on My Desk

To remind myself of this balance, I keep an actual “Artistic License” on my desk. (You can get your own from Culture Hustle). It’s a little joke, but it also makes a point: rules matter, but so does giving yourself permission to bend them with intention.

And especially where we’re located, creativity is woven into everyday life. Here in Sooke, we are surrounded by a community of artists, with events like the Fine Arts Show and the Beach Art Festival setting the tone. Almostronaut Devyn, meanwhile, works out of New Orleans, one of the most uniquely creative cities in North America. I feel like in both of these places, the expectation for imagination is a little higher than average. We are very motivated to draw out what is authentically unique about every business or project, and play with that.

I want to close with the old and true statement:

If you advertise to everyone, you advertise to no one.

Dare to stand out with authenticity and personality so that the right clients can find you, without compromising on quality and trust.