In a post on Seth’s Blog this morning, Seth points out that “many organizations figure out the resources they’ve got and then work hard to do something good enough.” His argument is that “good enough” means you have no innovative spirit, you’re not taking risks, and you are settling for the same level of creativity as before. I happen to know people who do this for a living, and I agree. There are so many truly creative people that settle for completing projects with work on which they settle. But is this the fault of the designers or stakeholder influence?

It’s important to remember that projects in marketing have many more stakeholders than most other departments or industries. Within an organization, a marketing department basically works with every department in the company, along with the executives. Each of them have a different expectation for how a marketing campaign should be conducted. It’s like voting for a president of a country, where there is rarely a landslide vote. The American presidents in the past who have had landslide victories either took the risks to say what needed to be said or had an opponent who couldn’t live up to the edge the competition had.

It’s important to realize that, at some point, settling is all you can do. Stakeholders who are funding your project or have contractual decision-making rights will often make you settle for something without risk to ensure the project has a positive return on investment of funds and time. And feeling that you are inadequate or a sellout because you went with something you didn’t want to is not necessary. Corporations who have in-house marketing departments are slowly realizing that outside resources tend to be better, more neutral coordinators of marketing efforts. I have said before to small business owners that, eventually, we will see the US economy change from oligopolies and huge corporate takeovers to a matrix exchange between small businesses, with corporations being umbrella organizations that join multiple small businesses in a cooperative effort towards a common goal. It’s the same as any traditional organization where each individual is (or should be) working towards the same goal, such as shareholder wealth, influencing the community, or improving market diversity. Marketing will follow this trend, where small marketing firms will take the place of in-house departments, and clients will pay because the return is typically higher.

In the mean time, don’t beat yourself up because you weren’t on the cutting edge of marketing. Like Seth hinted at, you can’t be superbad all the time.