Having Canva Doesn't Make You a Creative Director

There’s a great story from Ancient Greece about a celebrated painter named Apelles. Think of him as an old-school marketing genius—he’d display his paintings in public to get feedback. A real-time focus group.

One day, a shoemaker points out that the sandal on one of the figures is painted incorrectly. The strap is wrong. Apelles, being a smart leader who respects expertise, takes the feedback and corrects the mistake that very night.

The next day, the shoemaker, puffed up with his success, comes back. But this time, he doesn’t stop at the shoe. He starts critiquing the subject’s posture, the lighting, the entire composition.

Apelles cuts him off with the ancient Greek equivalent of “Stay in your lane”: “Shoemaker, not beyond the shoe.”

This story is thousands of years old, but it’s never been more relevant, especially in marketing. Today, the shoemaker has an AI writing tool, a social media scheduler, and a Canva account. The accessibility of tools has created an epidemic of false expertise.

Everyone thinks they can be a marketer because the tools seem easy.

But having a paintbrush doesn’t make you the painter. Having a scheduling tool doesn’t make you a social media strategist. And having Canva definitely doesn’t make you a creative director.

Hiring marketing experts and then handing them a strategy you cooked up over a weekend is the fastest way to waste money. The tools are easy. The strategy, the deep understanding of an audience, the craft of building a real narrative,

that’s the hard part. That’s the expertise you’re paying for.

Your job as a leader isn’t to know how to use every tool. It’s to assemble a team of brilliant “shoemakers” and then trust them to do the work.

The tools are cheap. Expertise is priceless. And strategy is everything.

To trusting the experts,

Lara