ON MARKETING AND CREATIVE PROFESSIONS
What I Learned About Marketing From A Musician
How Rick Rubin’s podcast with the DOAC channel taught me more about creativity that all the posts on LinkedIn could not.
So two days ago I heard this podcast (DOAC happens to be one of my favourites) and man I didn’t know this person at all because he never came up on my marketing-related feed on Linkedin, never saw him in any bigtime marketing or creative awards, never saw him giving gyan on Linkedin, never came up on any of my Medium and Substacks I follow, etc.
And it just happened the other day I was on youtube (oh i love my podcasts, especially in the evenings after work, and you should too!) and there he was Rick Rubin.
Sitting in a cross-legged position across the table in the most casual of shorts and a basic solid tshirt, with a very Burning-Man-esque long, white beard. Looking half like a guru and half like an old rock artist.
Yet, the man in the frame had all the wisdom on people behaviours, psychology, audience perception that no amount of LinkedIn posts have ever taught me.
I especially loved his concept of a “diary entry” — how as creative marketers and brand builders, we try a lot of things before something actually clicks and we only give it out and share it with the world when we are satisfied with it.
And then there is this concept of “indefensibility”. When does a creative work become great?
It’s a pretty long podcast and there’s a lot of interesting, real and hard conversations to unpack, so you may want to listen in parts or go 1.5x.
But if you don’t have the time to sit through the whole thing, I’ve tried to summarise some of the ideas that stayed with me here.
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The full conversation is here:
YouTube link
The ideas that stayed with me
- Creativity gets beaten out of us. We start out curious and experimental, and somewhere along the way we learn that we’re “not good at” certain things. We internalise those judgements and stop trying.
- You don’t have to be a “creative person” to be creative. Artist, writer, marketer, entrepreneur — these labels can become boxes of their own. Creativity is a way of being, not a job title.
- Apple does Apple. Amazon does Amazon. The moment you start looking sideways at what everyone else is doing, you risk losing the very thing that makes your work yours.
- Make the thing, not what you think people want. Great artists create their favourite work, not necessarily the work they think their audience will like. The audience comes later.
- The best ideas can be indefensible. If you can immediately explain why an idea will work, perhaps you’re still operating inside what’s already known. The interesting stuff may begin where the logic ends.
- Everything you make is a diary entry. It is your record of how you saw something at that particular point in time. It doesn’t have to be universally understood or liked.
- Don’t put deadlines on discovery. There is a difference between creating and finishing. Find the thing first. Put a deadline on finishing it once you’ve found it.
- Creativity is iterative. You don’t always know what you’re making when you begin. You follow the interesting thread, allow it to evolve, and sometimes the original idea turns into something completely different.
- Risk is part of great creative work. If there is no possibility of rejection, misunderstanding or failure, there may also be very little possibility of surprise.
- Stop comparing creative work. There isn’t a universal scoreboard for creativity. Different people are solving for different things. The better question is perhaps not “is this better?” but “does this taste better to me?”
- Your identity can become your biggest constraint. Calling yourself an artist, marketer, designer or entrepreneur can create an idea of what you’re supposed to be. Sometimes you need to hit the reset button and allow yourself to become something else.
- AI changes the tools, not the need for a point of view. AI can help people who don’t have traditional creative skills bring ideas to life. But the idea, taste, lived experience and choices behind the work still have to come from somewhere.
- The human resonance still matters. Knowing that something was created by a human being can change how we experience it. The story, intention and lived experience behind the work are part of the work.
- Meditation and stillness can create space for intuition. Rubin talks about meditation not simply as a productivity or wellness tool, but as a way of quieting the noise enough to notice what is already there.
- Creativity isn’t separate from life. The same process applies to art, business, relationships, parenting, cooking or anything else: stay open, pay attention, experiment, follow what feels interesting and allow yourself to not know the answer immediately.
- And perhaps the biggest one: stay curious. A lot of Rubin’s philosophy seems to come down to being receptive enough to notice something you weren’t looking for — and having the courage to follow it.
He has also written a book on The Creative Act: A Way of Being. I’m definitely going to pick it up.
And if you have almost three hours to spare, go listen to the actual conversation. I have a feeling I’ll be going back to it myself.
