"What does it look like?"

It used to be that when my three-year old son would draw it was a collection of random lines, circles and squiggles. Only recently have I noticed how he's started to draw actual objects.

At a recent assessment at his school, all the kids were asked to draw a self-portrait. He received high marks for not drawing his arms as if they were coming out of his head.

This weekend, his drawing skills continued to evolve.

"Daddy, I want to paint this bird," he declared, holding a small decorative sparrow.

"Great! Go ahead."

"What does it look like?" he asked, still holding the small decorative sparrow.

"Well, look at it and draw what you see."

As I watched him paint, I was struck by the philosophical nature of his question and my subsequent answer and how it all applied to my career.

In marketing, as visual communicators, we are always presenting consumers with our interpretation of what it looks like. "It" easily translating to the world around us or the products we are representing for our clients.

Yet, when it comes to marketing, the messages and visuals we are crafting are usually universally appealing across several varying demographics. When it's held up to this litmus test, do we limit our creativity and the uniqueness of our voice?

I think it does. So much of what we do is regurgitations of best practices from other past or current marketing initiatives. In creative pitches we bring up visual references from other campaigns to show what we'll do or we'll use the phrase "This worked really well for X client."

There is a unique voice occasionally that breaks through the clutter, but it's rare. It is those rare breakthroughs that might not necessarily have been created for universal appeal, that end up winning that appeal because of their uniqueness.

Maybe what we need to do is step back and approach things differently.

Look at your marketing strategy and create a unique concept around what you see.