Creative is making the mistakes that media has just learned from

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by Jacob Solomon Jun 1, 2023 News
Creative is making the mistakes that media has just learned from

Everyone is not suited for democracy. It is not good news for autocrats who seek power for personal gain or glory. The rise of artificial intelligence and its potential to democratise the process of content creation is being met with resistance.

If you have played around with an artificial intelligence platform for a while, it is hard not to think that it can make us all more creative. Every workshop that we have been to has promised us that we can have good ideas.

Almost half of businesses have adopted artificial intelligence for content production, according to a report.

Even as we master its artistic potential, it's hard not to wonder if it's making us look a bit silly.

The problem with ‘thinner and thinner margins’

According to McKinsey, artificial intelligence is a machine's ability to perform the cognitive functions we associate with human minds.

I came back to this definition after reading about the use of artificial intelligence in ads.

Over 20,000 pieces of content are produced by the company. When you think about it, 20,000 different executions isn't as dramatic as it initially sounds, but artificial intelligence is helping to improve the performance of each piece of content. The McKinsey definition is similar.

It is smart, but it is also an exercise in pursuit of thinner margins as it allows every brand to present on every channel. As the technology determined how best to present the products, the 5% increase in view-through rate was achieved by using artificial intelligence. These gains amount to millions of additional eyeballs when combined with the rest of the world.

The niggling worry is that we are sending the same cul-de-sac that media has just reversed out of. We have been sweating the small stuff for the last 20 years because of our fascination with technology.

It's possible that we're aiming at the wrong thing. According to the advertising industry, who doesn't want lots of cool stuff? Those annoying humans would be back.

Strategy is about not doing stuff, too

There are times when artificial intelligence can be used to improve advertising, but we don't always need to use it. Sometimes, we don't need to publish. McKinsey says that artificial intelligence is the greatest contribution to the advertising industry because it helps the other cognitive functions. I would like to see the use of artificial intelligence to provide a client with concrete proof to run with the bravest work.

We have to ask how many assets we really need. How many changes are needed to make the program work? We are in danger of pushing creativity down the same path as media has done in the past.

The instruction to make more stuff or to simply make the pack shot longer seems ridiculous when we are losing our focus.

Artificial intelligence can be creative, but it can't be restrained. To do that, it needs an autocrat to tell it.

David is a strategist at Mindshare.