Disruption is a way of thinking. It’s a way of challenging the conventional wisdom and in doing so, creating new visions and faster growth for clients and their brands.

You can’t outperform a marketplace if you stick to its conventions. Disruption is created when convention butts up against a bloody good insight and is then unlocked by creativity.

So how do you codify a system that’s not a system, a system for people who hate systems, to ensure the work being created for a brand is going to be of a high standard?

Well, us creatives need to remind each other to do as many small disruptive things each day - before you know it, these small disruptions start to add up to something much, much bigger. There are always questions we can ask ourselves. Did I write a proposition that felt different enough? Did I select a filming technique that felt fresh in this context? Was the casting choice unconventional? Did we pick a font that felt original and ownable?

When it comes to creating and reviewing work, I always ask myself three important questions to lead myself in the direction of the most disruptive thinking:

Is it right for the brand?

Is it right for the audience?

Is it creatively disruptive?

These questions make sure we are always on track to make ownable, insightful and original ideas that matter to our audience. But, work is not created in a vacuum and context is key.

It’s nothing without context

To break patterns, you need to see them. Context really is 50% of the job. Before putting your thinking caps on, you need to have a good look at the sector, at the competition, the context, to see what rules can be broken. Many of these rules are just obeyed on autopilot and you can easily see where the conventions are. If the world of gardening advertising is wall-to-wall greenery and plants, don’t make ads full of greenery and plants. If sofa ads are fully of smiley happy people, then…well, you get the picture. Convention hunting is everything. Without it, your brilliant creative idea might just be wallpaper. The worst words a creative person can ever hear (Other than ‘can you do the weekend?’).

Keeping an eye on the competition

Looking at the competition quickly gives you a good idea of how to stand out in the category. Sometimes it can be visual - everyone else is blue, what if we were orange? Sometimes it's the tone of voice – the competition is as dry as a bone, let’s use humour. Maybe it’s standing for something – no one has a point of view, so how do we really say something about ourselves? Or it can be all the above. There are many ways to break patterns in a brand’s category. But aim bigger than that - strive to disrupt culture.

That’s ultimately more important than ever as we are all competing with culture. With eyeballs addicted to TikToks, YouTube Shorts, and TikToks on YouTube Shorts, we must find ways to interrupt these uninterruptable patterns by saying something fresh in a distinctive way that stands out.

Disruption on different levels

Apple famously went against the computer comms convention of product-spec focussed ads. Their legendary ‘Think different’ campaign redefined the market as ‘creative tools for creative minds’. Who can forget their ‘Here’s to the crazy ones’ ad? Game changing. Since that day they’ve lived out that vision in everything they do, from their product ideas - the i-pod wasn’t an mp3 player but 1000 songs in your pocket - to their people, to the way they market themselves.

A recent disruption success story for TBWA\MCR was our IPA Effectiveness Award-winning work for David Lloyd Clubs. In a sector full of get-fit-fast gyms (or as we called the convention, ‘harder, better, faster, stronger’) our disruptive vision was to turn DLC into a holistic wellbeing brand - setting it apart in a sector full of get-fit-fast gyms (or as we called the convention, ‘harder, better, faster, stronger’). As the category convention was all-out noise, our approach was to fight that with peace, quiet and feelgood. Our ‘Elevate your Everyday’ campaign featured people floating on air at the club, a relaxing and refreshing change from the hugely intimidating world of gym advertising.

If we turn to the enormity of the Christmas marketing period, we have to acknowledge how John Lewis changed the game for the whole genre of Christmas advertising. All of a sudden, the company shifted from the convention of packing an entire conveyor belt of information, product and design into an ad, to using storytelling. It turned its gaze to spotlighting the true emotion of how people feel through giving and receiving - truly capturing the mood of the nation. It’s become such a stand-out moment that it’s now the signal that the festive season is about to begin.

It's tradition for brands to only ever talk about the festivity in the run-up to the big day and it was ‘humbug’ to anyone that marketed earlier than the end of October. Our ‘Sorry not Sorry’ campaign for Park Christmas Savings hit the taboo head-on and unapologetically advertised Christmas in January - the earliest Christmas ad ever - to make sure people could save towards a great time much later in the year.

You should never create change for change’s sake. But, by questioning the way things are, changing mindsets and creating new points of view, we can create ideas that really matter - and haven’t been done by anyone else.

Disruption shouldn’t just be an industry buzzword. It’s a way of life.