How many times have marketers been told—mostly by other marketers—that the new tech is the best tech? So many times…remember when every brand had to have a home in Second Life? It was an absurd thing to say then, as it is today when the new new thing has to be tested, twisted, and made useful to real people.
Nevertheless, promoters gonna promote. And Fast Company is a favorite media vehicle of promoters. For instance, I was just reading in Fast Company how Marla Kaplowitz, president and CEO of the 4As, recently stated, “Gen AI is here to stay, leaving the advertising industry with a stark choice: adapt or become irrelevant.”
Those are serious words. Sounds to me like a command from on high. It also sounds prescriptive. As in someone’s reading from a script (sent from The Valley).
Irrelevance is entirely subjective. For example, some people think that the 4As are irrelevant. What I believe is advertising that lacks true human insight is a waste of everyone’s time and money because it’s irrelevant.
Most AI tools for communications pros act as powerful assistants that can help chase down details and offer a host of prescriptive answers and known frameworks. Part of the advertising industry runs on these things, and much of the industry today is clearly formulaic. It was before digital and the introduction of generative AI, and it is now.
The other part of the industry—the art part—is the intangible piece that makes brilliant communications so hard to create, and legendary agencies so rare. Only through the practiced synthesis of science and art is something new and impactful made. The best ad makers know how to do this well and regularly, which is why the service remains valuable to brands.
The advertising business will be irrelevant if and when it gives up on the big idea and starts to value fast over famous. Human insights and big ideas can be aided by AI assistants, but there’s nothing new in the machine, just new formulations and iterations of everyone else’s work.
The advertising business will prosper when it remains a place for weirdos, eccentrics, and raconteurs with lots of big ideas and a burning passion to express them. The client team and data scientists can run the numbers all day, but someone else has to dream. If that someone is never encouraged to dream and never given the space to do so, that is a real and present danger to the ad industry, not AI.
