Did you know there is a “formula” for hits in the music space. Researchers have built algorithms like the University of Bristol’s “Hit Potential Equation,” which analyze tempo, loudness, energy, and duration to predict whether a track is likely to chart. And these models forecast hit potential in the neighborhood of 60% accuracy. And let’s not get into the whole AI discussion.

Prince didn’t listen. Prince didn’t use a “formula” other than “be Prince.”

He famously wrote “SLAVE” on his face in the 1990s to protest Warner Bros.’ control over his music, he was the first major artist to sell albums directly to fans online in 1997 with Crystal Ball, and gave away his 2007 Planet Earth album as a free cover-mount CD with a UK newspaper.

Today, buying back catalogues of music from the labels, streaming over the internet and “free” music as a hook – are now all “best practices for most artists.

Prince didn’t follow a map. Prince was an explorer.

When You Only Follow the Map, You End Up in the Same Town

Marketing innovation doesn’t come from map readers. It comes from explorers. But most marketers love “best practices” the way hikers love trail markers. They make them feel safe. The old “nobody got fired following McDonald’s ideas…” (paraphrasing an old IBM saw… )

The problem is a map only takes you where someone else has already been.

If your strategy is built on other people’s coordinates, the best you can hope for is to arrive at the same crowded tourist trap as every other brand. Remember, best practices are someone else’s breakthrough… from years ago.

But if you think about it… almost every “standard playbook” move started life as an insane idea somebody had to fight to get live.

  • Couponing and supermarket loyalty once rewired how shoppers behaved, turning anonymous transactions into trackable, repeat behavior. Today, your generic points program is just table stakes.
  • Email sequencing and marketing automation were once radical—triggered, behavior-based messaging instead of batch-and-blast. Now, half of your competitors are running the same nurture flow templates with the same subject lines.
  • Influencer marketing began as a scrappy, almost embarrassing line item—“we’re going to pay who on YouTube to do what?” Now it’s so baked into the plan that “always-on influencer” has its own budget line and standard CPMs.

Each of these things felt weird, risky, and career-limiting at first. Then they worked, got standardized, rolled into benchmarks and certification courses—and instantly stopped being differentiating.

Best practices are just fossilized innovations.

From the inside, your strategy deck looks smart and nuanced. From the outside, your customer sees:

  • The same sign-up bonus and “10% off your first order.”
  • The same cart abandon email with the same faux-conversational copy.
  • The same loyalty “earn and burn” mechanic with bronze/silver/gold tiers.
  • The same “thought leadership” webinar with the same speakers on the same topics.

That’s what happens when everyone uses the same:

  • Benchmark reports
  • MarTech feature sets
  • Agency playbooks
  • Conference case studies

In other words – if all hold the same map you all end up in the same destination: undifferentiated.

B2C Is the Lab; B2B Is the Fast Follower

This applies across the marketing spectrum but B2C usually takes the first punch. Retail and QSR invented much of what we now consider “customer engagement”: loyalty tiers, surprise-and-delight, behavioral targeting, omnichannel journeys. Direct-to-consumer brands pushed heavy into social proof, authenticity, and creator-led content before B2B would touch it. But now B2B SaaS marketing leverages “Community-led growth, and ABM plays are just hyper-targeted, high-CPM media with a fancier dashboard and usage-based pricing and PLG are consumer-style trial behaviors dressed in enterprise language.

In other words, B2C explores and B2B follows maps.

If you’re leading B2B marketing and your only input is other B2B benchmarks, you’re reading photocopies of photocopies. Your next edge is probably hiding in some messy, experimental consumer play that hasn’t yet been sanitized for your category.

When to Follow the Map vs. When to Blaze Trail

The point isn’t “burn the playbooks.” It’s “be intentional about when you’re using one.” I believe you should follow a map the stakes are high and the upside of novelty is low (e.g., deliverability, basic funnel instrumentation, brand safety), or if you’re in a category where trust rests on consistency (e.g., financial services disclaimers, healthcare compliance).

But be an explorer when your category has settled into “sea of sameness” messaging (pretty much everyone now), or your media mix, offer structures, or loyalty mechanics look indistinguishable from competitors.

Maps prevent disaster. Exploration creates advantage.

You need both—but they should not be weighted equally.

Three “Ridiculous” Ideas That Might Be Tomorrow’s Best Practices

Just spitballin here but … what if …

  1. You designed campaigns that are worse for the algorithm but better for human memory: slower, longer, weirder formats, or intentionally irregular cadences that interrupt pattern fatigue. Someone once said we have an “attention economy” – this could solve for that…
  2. You changed your thinking around measures of impressions per person from frequency management and invest all incremental budget into one unforgettable, uncomfortable, story-first asset.
  3. You drove loyalty without points (or purchases) – where customers can’t can’t earn through transactions at all—only through participation, helpfulness, and creativity: fixing bugs, teaching other customers, suggesting product improvements, creating content.
  4. Higher tier status is driven by contribution to the ecosystem, not by spend, making your best “customers” the people who make the experience better for everyone else—even if they’re low revenue in the short term.
  5. “I don’t think you’re for us campaigns…” A full-funnel strategy that aggressively filters out the wrong customers with brutally honest “reasons not to buy,” saving you CAC and retention problems later. Picture a homepage section titled “If this is you, we are a terrible choice” with real behaviors, constraints, and expectations that misalign with your product—and then optimizing media to amplify that filter, not hide it.

All of these sound borderline irresponsible in a standard best-practices deck.

And that is exactly why they’re interesting.

But Paul – What Do I Do?

Host a Trailblazing Workshop.

A Trailblazing Workshop gives my clients a safe space to “simulate some of the exploration” without the risk. Like all explorers you test the waters – find places to ford the stream – ask locals what the best way to get from A to B based on their inside information vs. the Rand McNally road maps (I think I dated myself there – ok – or google maps.)

Here’s my outline for clients:

  • Bring in cross-functional and non-marketing people—ops, finance, product, frontline teams, even a few contrarian customers.
  • Map your current “safe bets” and explicitly label where you’re following the map.
  • Then ask two questions:
    • Where is the risk of not exploring now greater than the risk of trying something different?
    • Where should we keep the map because failure would be fatal, not educational?

If you want help designing that kind of session—and turning “ridiculous” ideas into controlled experiments instead of career-ending bets—schedule a Trailblazing Workshop.

I believe the next wave of best practices will be written by the teams willing to step off the trail into the unknown.

Into the exciting.