Creativity in Marketing

Marketing is an inherently creative endeavor that generates new value through interactions with customers and society. This process cannot be understood simply as adaptation to the environment. As Junzo Ishii, the founding president of the Japan Marketing Academy, argued in Marketing no Shinwa (The Myth of Marketing), the notion of marketing as a rational and orderly process is itself a constructed myth; in practice, marketing relies on trial-and-error, contingency, and creativity. Creativity, defined as producing outcomes with novelty and usefulness, encompasses a wide range of marketing activities, from product development and positioning to building new relationships with customers and partners. This special issue examines creativity from multiple angles in four articles that address new market creation, reconfiguring relationships with distributors, the evolving role of creative work, and everyday innovation within organizations. The first two articles show how marketing theory can address challenges arising from uncertain and complex market environments, drawing on effectuation, Blue Ocean Strategy, and analyses of shifting power structures in distribution. The latter two articles build on Ishii’s concept of evolving brands, redefining brands from “objects” to “events” and exploring how organizations can continually reinvent themselves while maintaining their core identity. In an era in which generative AI prompts have renewed reflection on human creativity, these contributions offer an opportunity to reconsider how marketing theory can support value creation.