The Secret to Creativity in PR? Get Boring First.

Taylor Scott, Senior Vice President of Client Services at DEY., featured in Ragan Communications and PR Daily today, sharing a perspective that hits home for every communicator navigating the age of AI.

In “The Secret to Creativity in PR? Get Boring First,” Taylor reminds us that the most brilliant ideas don’t come from chaos: they come from clarity, consistency, and process.

Original text from PR Daily posted below:

The secret to creativity in PR? Get boring first.

Structure isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s the foundation of it.

Everyone loves to talk about creativity in communications — the big ideas, the clever pitches, the brainstorms that feel like magic. What nobody wants to admit is that you cannot get to that magic if you do not first get very, very boring.

By boring I mean process, policies, organization — all the stuff that makes most creative people’s eyes glaze over and gives my little brain the dopamine rush it craves.

But here’s the thing: structure isn’t the enemy of creativity. It’s the foundation of it.

People love to say process kills ideas, but research says the opposite. When structure is built to support freedom — like clear roles, transparent systems and solid workflows — it actually frees people to think bigger.

And this matters now more than ever. So much of the busywork of PR — drafting press releases, pulling media lists, building briefing books, even writing first-draft content — can now be handled or at least accelerated by AI. Who knows how fast things may change in a matter of mere months?

That means the real value of comms professionals is not execution. It’s creative thinking, strategic counsel and the ability to connect dots in ways that machines cannot. And if we do not carve out the time and space to be very creative, we will get left behind.

Which brings me to the unpopular truth: creativity doesn’t come from chaos — think images of brilliant, often drunk writers mining bits of genius ad nauseam. It comes from structure. It is not glamorous (well, it might be to me, who has literal dreams about Google Sheets), but it works.

Why process unlocks creativity

Think about the daily grind. Say your team is supposed to be coming up with fresh pitch angles for a client in a crowded space. If you walk into the meeting already flustered because you realized at the last minute that another client needs a 10-page deck for tomorrow, you are not thinking about smart hooks or original storylines. You are wondering who you can beg to pull slides together, or whether you are going to be the one staying up late to do it yourself. Suddenly there is no room left in your head for creativity.

And this plays out on a bigger level too. In PR, the teams that are consistently creative are not the ones running on adrenaline. They are the ones that have the space to think strategically. If knowledge is centralized, if project tracking is routine, if responsibilities are clear, then you can spend time testing bold campaigns, building cross-team collaborations and pushing ideas that actually stand out. If those basics are missing, you are constantly reinventing the wheel, recycling the same tired ideas because nobody has the bandwidth to do anything else.

Why this matters even more in the age of AI

The irony is that now is the easiest time in history to get organized. With AI tools, we can automate the repetitive and administrative parts of comms that used to eat our time. Drafting first versions of briefs, structuring meeting notes, even building basic media trackers can be done in minutes. That means if we are still scrambling, it is not because the tools don’t exist — it is because we have not built the process to use them consistently.

And the payoff is huge. The more we can systematize the basics, the more space we create for the kind of thinking AI cannot do. And that is the work that makes comms indispensable.

Leaning in to a few practical (AI-supported) habits

1. Just get a project management system already.
   It still amazes me how many agencies and organizations are running entirely on emails, chat threads and spreadsheets — no central place to see what’s going on, no clear deadlines, no visibility into who is doing what. If every single project and every single client just has a centralized, easy list of next steps, with people assigned and deadlines attached, it’s incredible how much more actually gets done and delivered on time. I love Asana because it’s powerful but simple, nicely designed and easy to use.

2. Track, review and follow up.
   Yes, it’s tedious. Nobody ever got into PR because they loved updating trackers. But here’s the truth: tracking is where creative insights are born. For example, a good pitch tracker — manual or through tools like Muck Rack — lets teams see who’s been pitched, who’s responded and what stories landed. Reviewing that data weekly or monthly isn’t just about accountability; it’s about spotting gaps, finding new angles and knowing where to follow up. The same principle applies to proposals, media placements, even internal initiatives. If it matters, it needs to live somewhere visible (which could certainly be your project management tool), and reviewing these trackers needs to be part of your team’s rhythm. Over time, those boring little updates will start surfacing patterns and opportunities that no one would have noticed in the chaos of inboxes and DMs.

3. Admit you were never good at taking notes anyway.
   Let’s be honest. People zone out on calls. People get lazy with taking notes. And then the team forgets key details or action items. AI note-takers solve that. They capture the nuance and the commitments so you can go back and check what was said. Even better, your whole team can access the same notes so everyone is on the same page. Connect those notes back to your project management tool and suddenly nothing falls through the cracks. My personal favorite is Fathom, but the tool doesn’t matter as much as the discipline of using it. You just have to train yourself to keep paying attention because yes, AI can take notes, but it cannot think strategically for you.

4. Train your team to use AI in a way that’s not horrible.
   Here’s where I see the biggest gap. Too many people either ignore AI or use it badly. The key is training your team to use it well — not to produce generic filler, but to accelerate and improve their work. That means building prompt libraries that are hyper specific to your organization, your clients, your values and your voice. If you do that, AI becomes an incredible first-draft partner. It gives you something to react to, refine and elevate. But you cannot just let everyone experiment on their own and hope for the best.

Closing thought

Getting organized will never be as sexy as landing the front page of The Wall Street Journal or pulling off a viral campaign. But in my experience, it is what makes those wins possible. Structure and process are the soil that allows creativity to grow. And in this moment, when AI is poised to change almost everything about how we execute in communications, our ability to think differently and strategically is the thing that will set us apart.