PSG’s long-awaited Champions League victory carries more than just athletic significance. It offers a compelling lesson for the world of communication: with stars and creativity, you can win matches. With teamwork and effort, you win championships.
Beyond individual brilliance and flashes of genius, it’s training, discipline, and collective mindset that lead to the greatest victories.
As golf legend Gary Player once said, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” Success is never just luck. It’s built through years of work and preparation.
The myth of the creative spark
In the communications world, where immediacy rules and creation is often reduced to a single dazzling moment, it’s time we rethink how we value our craft. For too long, we’ve allowed the idea to spread that everything hinges on a lightning strike of talent, the famous “creative leap” that supposedly solves it all.
But behind this illusion of magic lies a less glamorous, yet equally essential reality: hard work, persistence, and determination. It’s time to put that reality back at the center of our industry and reassert that work is the true foundation of everything we do.
“It’s just comms” really?
Let’s say it plainly. The myth of the lone genius has long fuelled the damaging cliché “It’s just comms.” Once a casual remark, today it lands like an insult.
It diminishes the immense work that communication professionals put in: months of refining ideas, testing, launching, adjusting. It erases the long hours and late nights of the people who build the conditions for that tiny spark to ignite into something real.
We’ve let the figure of the inspired creative dominate our image of the profession. But creating is not enough. Bringing an idea into the world is only the beginning. Like every serious discipline, communication depends on methodical, collective, and meticulous work.
Creation is a spark and a system
Let’s stop pretending that creativity is divine inspiration. Behind every so-called “killer idea” is sustained effort, accumulated experience, and technical precision.
An idea, no matter how brilliant, only matters if there’s a team ready to dig in, do the work, and bring it to life. Without that, it’s decoration.
Rediscovering craft and mentorship
Our profession is built on blended expertise. It’s an alloy of skills that often work in the shadows, down in the engine room, pushing campaigns forward, turning raw concepts into finished products with real-world impact.
The challenge today is to restore the dignity of that work. To elevate the behind-the-scenes efforts that power every campaign, every object, every idea. We might take inspiration from the Compagnons du Devoir, a French tradition that unites mastery and mentorship through hands-on training and deep respect for the craft.
Our field needs something similar. A structure that allows young talents to develop mastery not just through theory, but through real-world practice. This isn’t just about transmitting know-how. It’s about embracing a culture of care, high standards, and operational excellence.
Communication isn’t something you improvise. It’s a demanding field, one that requires rigor, preparation, and relentless commitment.
Restoring value to the work behind the message
We need to change how we see our profession. Not as a series of inspired moments, but as a process, one that includes preparation, execution, and follow-through. Valuing the labor of communication means honoring every stage of value creation, from the first idea to the final rollout.
It also means reclaiming legitimacy for the sector. If we want to attract the next generation of talent, we must show that communication is both exciting and demanding. A field built on excellence, discipline, and deep engagement. One where effort meets impact, and where even the smallest, most invisible task contributes to the bigger picture.
Work is not the opposite of creativity. It’s the key to making it last. And in our field, that work must be recognized for what it is: essential, structural, and at the heart of success.
Let’s restore dignity to effort, perseverance, and the ability to turn ideas into reality. In doing so, we may finally give our profession the recognition it deserves and shine a light on the value it truly creates.
So here’s to the hard workers.
Assaël ADARY, CEO of Occurrence, Communications Strategist, Story School Expert
Feeling inspired ?
Take some time to write a paragraph about something you’re proud of and sometimes find underestimated and share it with us at storyschool@um6p.ma
