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Cliché vs Creative
Think outside the box - but never, ever phrase it that way
![](https://megan.preston-meyer.com/blog/content/images/2021/08/9.png)
No one likes clichés. No one likes to read things they’ve read a million times before.
And there's no reason they should have to.
It’s 100% true that there’s nothing new under the sun, but there are also only three primary colors and Pantone seems to have done pretty well for itself.
![](https://megan.preston-meyer.com/blog/content/images/2021/08/10.png)
You've heard of Pantone, right? They choose a Color of the Year every year, and have even managed to protect the intellectual property rights to their entire color catalog.
It’s just a matter of keeping things fresh.
For instance, imagine you want to talk about a miraculous rebirth or recovery, like, say, that of a small commercial printing company in New Jersey in the 1950s. Just when every one thought they were done for, they emerged from the ashes of debt and obscurity with a fan deck of patented color swatches with names like Chili Pepper, Greenery, and Living Coral.
Not bad, right? Rising from the ashes? If only there were a metaphor...
![](https://megan.preston-meyer.com/blog/content/images/2021/08/11.png)
I mean, you COULD use a phoenix rising from the ashes... but that’s kind of cliché. Everyone uses that.
Better would be a comparison to a Jack Pine, Pinus banksiana, which grows in my native Minnesota, and whose pine cones remain tightly closed for years and years and years until a forest fire.
Then, the extremely high temperatures loosen the resin that holds them together, releasing seeds so that a new jack pine can emerge and grow, towering toward the sky out of the ashes of the previous trees.
![](https://megan.preston-meyer.com/blog/content/images/2021/08/12.png)
It's the same metaphor – rebirth, recovery, triumph over adversity – but the phoenix is cliché and the jack pine is creative.
Cliché is grey. Creative is teal.
So don't be grey. Don't settle for clichés. Go the extra mile - or round one extra bend - to find the phrasing that will make your message stand out.
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