Do You Have Something to Say?

Friends,

Below is something slightly different. I had to write a short essay for a job application, and I wanted to expand on the research that I had been immersing myself in.

Enjoy

When you remove the technical barriers to creation, you're left with the essential question:

Software is stripping away the technical components of the creative process, and what remains exposed is the core of what makes advertising work: a distinctive perspective that connects with people on a human level. This isn't about replacement, it's about rediscovery. AI isn't threatening human creativity; it's forcing us to articulate what made advertising effective in the first place, that delicate intersection of art and commerce, emotion and data.

There seem to be 3 distinct approaches to its integration into creative work:

• The Factory Model: Digital Intelligence is essentially your production line, maximising output whilst minimising human labour.

• The Jazz Duo Model: Technology is your improvisational partner, trading ideas, building on each other's strengths.

• The Orchestra Model: Humans conduct while agentic systems play specific instruments, each handling what they do best under unified creative direction.

The difference isn't just in how much AI they use, but in their fundamental philosophy about where human creativity adds the most value.

The Efficiency Paradigm

In the Factory model, the machine is running the show, and the results can be impressive, but there's a problem lurking in this approach. I call it the "dormant fallacy," the assumption that making creative processes more efficient automatically leads to better results.

The tangible benefits are clear: AI image generation can produce visuals at a fraction of the cost of traditional photoshoots, with estimates suggesting an AI-generated image might cost pennies compared to the £2,000-6,500 for a professional studio shoot. The time savings are equally compelling, with AI enabling the rapid visualisation of concepts that would take days or weeks through traditional means. These efficiencies aren't trivial—they represent real resources that can be reallocated elsewhere.

However, in creative work, the journey matters. Those seemingly inefficient brainstorming sessions and discarded drafts often contribute crucially to the final product. By streamlining these processes, we may accidentally eliminate the conditions that produce breakthrough ideas. This becomes painfully evident when seemingly impressive AI-generated content fails in the market. The visuals might dazzle, but the typography is off, the layout ignores how the human eye naturally moves across an image, and the strategic insight—that nuanced understanding of what will emotionally resonate with a specific audience—is missing.

This pattern directly mirrors what happened when photography disrupted painting in the 1800s. When cameras arrived, critics declared painting obsolete. Instead, we got Monet's water lilies, with their shimmering, subjective impression of light. We got Van Gogh's Starry Night, where emotional truth replaced literal accuracy. We got Picasso breaking reality into fragments to show multiple perspectives simultaneously.

Just as impressionism wasn't about technical precision but about capturing a feeling, advertising's future will be less about metrics and more about creating genuine human connections. The most efficient path rarely leads to the most effective destination in creative endeavours.

The Augmentation Approach

The Jazz Duo approach treats AI differently: not as a replacement but as a creative collaborator. For example, I use LLMs to generate podcast questions, not to replace my thinking but to expand the possibilities, suggesting angles I hadn't considered.

This partnership model shines in visual creation, where AI excels at generating backgrounds and foundational elements that human designers can then refine using traditional tools like Photoshop. The AI handles the heavy lifting of creating the base imagery, while human creatives apply the precision work of adding brand elements, perfecting typography, and ensuring strategic alignment. This division of labour doesn't just save time—it creates a new workflow entirely.

What's especially promising is AI's facility with non-photorealistic concepts and artistic exploration. Need to visualise a toy packaging concept? Want to explore different aesthetic styles for a campaign? AI can rapidly generate these options, allowing creative teams to iterate quickly and explore directions that might have been prohibitively time-consuming before.

What's interesting about this approach is that it creates entirely new possibilities rather than just making existing processes more efficient. Interactive advertising that adapts in real-time to user behaviour represents creative formats that simply wouldn't exist without this human-AI partnership. Imagine dynamic user interfaces merged with advertising, where every user interaction shapes a uniquely personalised narrative, with AI handling the technical execution while humans provide the emotional intelligence that guides the overall experience.

Strategic Division

The Orchestra Model takes a more segregated view. I've come to think about this through what I call the Dual Purpose framework: AI excels at short-term performance marketing, while humans remain essential for brand-building.

This orchestration approach recognises the emergence of what some call "super designers", creative professionals who leverage AI tools to enhance their capabilities and work more efficiently. These individuals don't just use AI, they direct it with precision, knowing exactly where the technology excels and where it falls short. And fall short it does: typography, brand guidelines, ad layout—these are areas where human expertise remains irreplaceable. Understanding how the human eye works, how visual hierarchy guides attention, and how subtle design choices trigger emotional responses, these remain firmly human domains.

Cultural orchestration recognises that while AI can optimise click-through rates, humans must conduct the broader cultural narrative, arranging technological capabilities around authentic brand stories that resonate on a deeper level. It's not about asking AI to replicate human creativity, but rather to express creativity in ways that complement what humans already do well. The conductor doesn't play every instrument; they coordinate the whole, ensuring each element contributes to a cohesive vision that's greater than the sum of its parts.

This approach isn't just pragmatic, it's strategic, acknowledging that different types of creative work have different requirements, and that the optimal solution often involves knowing when to deploy AI and when to rely on human insight.

Conclusion

The most interesting implication of all this isn't about advertising specifically, but about the nature of attention and "trust" in an AI-saturated world. We may be moving toward a two-tier content ecosystem: free, algorithmically optimised content versus premium, verified human-created content. This explains something that initially seems contradictory. Studies show AI-generated ads can be quite effective, particularly with younger audiences. Yet the importance of a distinctive, human-driven creative strategy remains paramount. Both can be true if we're entering a world where authenticity and creativity become the premium feature.

The emergence of a "human-made" label as a marker of value suggests we're already seeing this division take shape. As AI-generated content saturates the market, brands will need new ways to stand out and human creativity, with its quirks and emotional intelligence, may become the differentiator.

For young professionals entering this landscape, the path forward isn't about racing to master every new AI tool. Rather, it's about deepening their understanding of consumer psychology, mastering the fundamentals of design and marketing, and developing the ability to discern truly effective creative work. These timeless skills will only grow in value as AI handles more routine tasks.

The thing about these technology shifts is they strip away the unnecessary and reveal what's essential. What's happening with advertising and creativity isn't about replacement, it's about rediscovery. Great creative work has never been about the tools.

The tools change.

They always have.

What doesn't change is the need for a clear, distinctive point of view.

So do you have something to say, not something that's merely correct or optimised, but something that creates a feeling, that shifts how someone sees the world? Technology can't give you that. What makes creativity powerful isn't perfection. Often it's the opposite—the particular human limitations, the specific angle of vision, the deliberate choice about what matters and what doesn't. AI doesn't have limitations in the same way. It doesn't make choices about what matters.

So as we move forward, the interesting question isn't about what this intelligence can do. It's about rediscovering what makes human creativity necessary in the first place. The technology is just helping us see more clearly what was always true.