A very interesting look at one of America’s most iconic fashion and retail traditions from an insider’s perspective. Enjoy the intake and the share.
Opening Hook
Most people will remember Neiman Marcus as a department store.
She remembers it as one of Dallas’ greatest creative institutions.
Long before she became a designer, Bucki Rogers visited the downtown flagship not to shop—but to study.
Every season brought new window displays, new visual stories, and new reasons to stop and look.
Looking back, I realize those visits influenced my creative career far more than I understood at the time.
The Breakdown
For many people, Neiman Marcus was retail.
For creatives, it was inspiration.
Stanley Marcus and Ken Knight understood something many brands still struggle with today:
People don’t remember products. They remember experiences.
The windows weren’t displays. They were theater.
The store wasn’t a destination because of what it sold.
It was a destination because of how it made people feel.
Long before experiential marketing became a buzzword, Neiman Marcus was practicing it every day.
My Creative POV
I’m not a retail designer.
But I often find myself borrowing the same principles that made Neiman Marcus unforgettable:
Create anticipation
Reward curiosity
Make people feel something
Design the experience, not just the object
Some of the most important creative lessons I’ve learned didn’t come from a classroom or agency.
They came from places like Neiman Marcus.
Places where creativity was visible.
Accessible.
Public.
Why It Matters
As Dallas prepares to say goodbye to the flagship in September, I can’t help but think about the generations of designers, photographers, artists, merchandisers, and creative thinkers who walked through those doors and left inspired.
The building may close.
The influence won’t.
Great creative work doesn’t just sell products. It shapes future creatives. Sometimes the most influential design isn’t found in a studio. It’s found in the places that inspire us before we even know we’re looking for inspiration.
Thanks to Bucki Rogers, VP, Creative at X-Caliber & Affiliate Companies | Corporate Branding, Brand Marketing Strategy
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
I found this interview quite interesting and thought you might, too. Enjoy!
Surely a legacy brand like Crayola has done all it could to grow, right? Wrong.
In this episode of the Marketing Vanguard podcast, recorded live at Brandweek in Atlanta, Victoria Lozano, then-CMO of Crayola, proves that the growth work of even the most iconic brands can and should never stop.
From how nostalgia can be leveraged to the advantage of expanding into unexpected categories, this conversation covers it all.
What you’ll learn:
How to merge nostalgia with future-forward relevance
Why a CMO’s role with high-awareness brands requires category expansion
The framework for segmented messaging across stakeholder groups
How to unlock hidden revenue streams in plain sight, like recognizing that 57% of Crayola purchases are made by adults without children
The power of branded sensory identity as a defensible competitive advantage
Why ecosystem thinking matters more than individual business unit performance
Victoria Lozano, former CMO of Crayola, is renowned for her expertise in brand strategy, category expansion and omnichannel marketing across iconic consumer brands. With a career spanning Fortune 500 CPG companies including HBC, beverages and confectionery, she has built a diverse track record in product innovation, location-based entertainment, and educational strategy.
Her work at Crayola demonstrates how legacy brands can evolve, redefine brand categories, unlock new consumer segments, and build enduring marketing strategies that transcend traditional product boundaries, all while maintaining emotional resonance.
Episode Highlights:
[00:26] Merge Nostalgia with Cultural Relevance to Stay Top-of-Mind — Victoria articulates the strategic tension facing iconic brands: leverage the emotional power of nostalgia while simultaneously showing up in current cultural conversations and proving relevance to today’s consumers. Nostalgia alone creates brand warmth but risks positioning the brand as a historical artifact; relevance alone without emotional resonance feels opportunistic and inauthentic.
The solution is to actively design products, experiences, and content that honor the brand’s heritage while addressing present-day consumer values. In Crayola’s case, that’s creativity as essential skill, wellness, self-expression and mental health.
[06:18] Redefining Your Use Case, Expand Revenue — Victoria highlights a counterintuitive but telling statistic: 57% of Crayola purchases now come from households without children, a massive untapped segment driven by adult wellness and self-expression rather than childhood nostalgia. By repositioning coloring from a kids’ creativity tool to an adult therapeutic escape (competing against wine, meditation apps, and wellness products), Crayola unlocked an entirely new growth category that’s expanding three percentage points year-over-year.
This insight reveals that growth for mature brands lies not in market share cannibalization but in redefining what problem the product solves for new audiences.
[07:50] Craft Differentiated Value Promises for Each Audience Segment — Victoria demonstrates that premium brands must make fundamentally different promises to distinct audiences, whether it’s kids, parents, teachers or adults. In Crayola’s case, for example, for kids, the promise is simple joy and fun; for parents, it’s skill development and childhood enrichment backed by research. CMOs can operationalize this by mapping each audience segment’s core motivation, then reverse-engineering messaging and channel strategy from that single, clear promise.
The result is messaging that feels authentic to each group while maintaining consistent brand identity, increasing conversion likelihood across the entire customer ecosystem. This approach transforms competitive pressure from a distraction into a reinforcement of positioning, since each segment’s promise is so precisely calibrated to their unique needs.
[13:41] Shift Societal Conversation Around Creativity as a Core CMO Advocacy Role — Victoria positions the CMO role as not merely a growth driver but as a cultural advocate responsible for shifting how society values and nurtures creativity in both children and adults. Rather than treating this as brand marketing theater, she frames it as a substantive strategic priority that shapes product development, partnerships, education strategy, and media investment.
CMOs can apply this by identifying one core societal value or belief that aligns with brand purpose and then systematically deploying marketing resources, research, partnerships, and content to shift public perception of that value. This approach generates earned media, attracts mission-aligned consumers, builds employee pride, and creates barriers to entry that pure product competition cannot match.
JENNY ROONEY is Chief Brand and Community Officer, leading strategy for the overall ADWEEK brand as well as the ways in which we serve and support our audiences with high-value content, products, partnerships and experiences, notably through our community programs such as Marketing Vanguard.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
After the Cannes Festival ended a few weeks back, I read an interesting interview with Richard Edelman about trust. Below are just a few questions slightly edited for clarity that I think you’ll find enlightening. The interview was conducted by Jeanine Poggi, AdAge Editor-in-Chief.
Trust is a recurring theme at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this year, and Richard Edelman, the CEO of Edelman, thinks the challenge runs deeper than declining trust in institutions or the rise of AI-generated content.
Consumers are becoming more insular, relying on smaller networks and trusted voices to make sense of the world around them, Edelman argued during a conversation with Ad Age. The impact for marketers, he said, is a shift from “we” to “me”—from broad messages designed to reach everyone to more personal connections that make consumers feel seen, understood and represented. That shift has major implications for how brands communicate, who they partner with and what it takes to break through.
Edelman, who has led the agency since 1996, shared his views on why creators are becoming more influential than celebrities, what marketers are getting wrong about audience connection and why he believes brands need to stop talking at consumers and start meeting them where they are.
Jeanine Poggi: How do you build trust today?
Richard Edelman: The first is, we have to do information from the bottom up. Bottom up means we have to talk to friends and family, we have to talk to people like pastors, pharmacists. It can’t be top down. That’s change No. 1.
Change No. 2 is brands have to do something, they can’t just say something. So if you want to be successful, you need to be in action mode. Some of it can be fun action but you can’t just get attention. You can’t just be living in culture.
Third is, and that’s why I think our research at Cannes is important, we have to recognize that people are in a very insular mindset, that their groups have become very small. And that if you’re insular, if I see you selling to people who are different than me, I’m going to reject your marketing. So I’m gonna say you’re not for me.
Poggi: So then how do brands build broad appeal when consumers are becoming more insular?
Edelman: We have to stop having campaigns that are about we and be about me.
How do I benefit you? I benefit you because I see you, I’m helping you, I’m making you feel better, I’m giving you a chance to talk back to me.
I think, for example, science needs to have a new deal with society. Science was always just accepted—we have a polio vaccine. Now it’s well, were the clinical trials biased? People are asking different questions. And so we have to take information down to a level. It has to be not only in local market, but even the micro market.
Poggi: Are brands putting too much emphasis on celebrity influencers?
Edelman: They should be looking to creators. They should be looking to people who have feet on the street. We want trusted creators. We want people who speak with authority to smaller audiences, because it’s more credible.
That’s the job for PR, is to find them, speak with them, involve them with the clients and have 50 of them go to Korea and be part of the process of developing a foldable phone. And then they’re on the journey.
Poggi: What’s the biggest shift marketers need to understand right now?
Edelman: I want people on the brand side to understand that the glass mirror is shattered on the ground. And that we’re lots of little shards and we have to talk to the shards and we have to talk to people in the way that they want to speak. And that’s with ordinary folks who have experience with the product and who are therefore believable.
Poggi: What do you think CMOs are getting wrong?
Edelman: I think they have to play offense. I think they can’t play defense. I think they can’t hide. I thought the Super Bowl stuff, a lot of it, was not penetrating to me because it was not memorable.
I think what’s going to stand out is brands that really inform me and value me as a voice, and they do it in part by letting go of their power.
Why are e-commerce brands succeeding? They’re succeeding because it’s a person like me. It may be someone a bit more celebrity, but big brands have to disperse their power and can’t feel big. They have to act small.
And I’m nervous that brands go, “I don’t want to be in politics.” Fair enough. I don’t want you to be in politics either.
But I want you to be relevant, and I want you to listen to people—the fears, inflation.
The second is fear of AI. This is crazy: two-thirds of people think they’re going to be sacked because of AI.
And the last and most problematic is: people have no sense of what the truth is. And so they’re withdrawing.
The brand has to find that withdrawn person and say, “come out, let’s talk about what you care about. And here’s something that’s going to make you feel optimistic.”
Richard Edelman speaking at the 2026 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. (Edelman)
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Just a week or so ago the Cannes International Festival of Creativity was held in Cannes, France. Below is a write-up from AdAge’s Editor-in Chief on her impressions. Interesting reading!
It’s me! (at right) Moderating a panel at this year’s Cannes Lions
On my way to Cannes, Delta offered a $7,000 voucher to switch to a later flight because my red-eye was overbooked. I almost abandoned the festival altogether. In truth, I was already exhausted by the idea of yet another conversation about AI anxiety and another debate about how the heart of the festival—the creative—has been replaced by data and technology.
I begrudgingly got on the plane (at least I had the rosé to look forward to).
This year, though, Ad Age took a bit of a different approach to the festival. Instead of filling the week with back-to-back panels, we convened chief marketing officers, creators, agency executives and marketing leaders for smaller roundtable discussions. We gave them the space to talk more freely, and they went deep on the challenges they are facing (it wasn’t just AI):
In our CMO roundtable, marketers spent a meaningful amount of time talking about convincing CFOs that creativity matters.
During our creator-brand discussion, creators challenged brands to stop treating them like media buys and start treating them like strategic partners.
At our Leading Women Network roundtable, a conversation about career visibility quickly became one about the invisible work required simply to be in the room.
Each of those conversations, without fail, ended with talking about trust, community and what it means to build genuine connection. It was these conversations that made dealing with what the French consider air conditioning worth the trip.
Here’s what else I’m taking home from the conversations at this year’s festival:
Marketing is becoming more human, not less.
One of my favorite moments from the week came during a CMO Spotlight panel I moderated at the Palais. I asked each of them the same question:
In one word, what’s the future of marketing?
Zena Srivatsa Arnold, CMO of Sephora, answered: community.
Tamika Young, CMO of Hinge, said: heart.
Marta Moreno Gómez, senior marketing manager, Heineken and international premium brands, Heineken Company, chose: human.
Three different answers, but the sentiment was the same: the future of marketing is built on stronger human connections.
Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, described a world that’s becoming more insular, where consumers increasingly rely on smaller networks and trusted voices. His advice to marketers: shift messaging from “we” to “me.” Build trust by making people feel seen, understood and represented.
That same thinking surfaced elsewhere throughout the week:
Pinterest’s “Less URL. More IRL.” activation reflected a desire for deeper, real-world connections. Netflix centered its Cannes presence around fandom. Even conversations about creators weren’t really about creators—they were about the communities they’ve built and the trust they’ve earned.
Again and again, technology was discussed as an enabler, not the strategy itself.
The creativity conversation has changed
For years, one of the recurring debates at Cannes has been whether creativity—the very thing the festival was built to celebrate—has taken a back seat to performance marketing.
That conversation is still happening.
But this year, it felt secondary to a different one: how marketers can convince the rest of the organization that creativity is a business driver, not just a marketing function.
It showed up in different ways throughout the week. The new Creative Brand Lionsrecognized companies that have built creativity into the way they operate, not just those that produced a standout campaign. Procter & Gamble’s Marc Pritchard spoke about using AI to accelerate creativity, not replace it. And across conversations with marketing leaders, the focus was less on choosing between brand and performance and more on building organizations where creativity can consistently drive business results.
The question is no longer whether creativity matters. It’s how organizations create the conditions for it to thrive and how marketing leaders make the case for it across the business. Creativity is increasingly being viewed not as a campaign outcome, but as an organizational capability.
Creator marketing has grown up
Five years ago, most creator conversations revolved around reach, engagement and follower counts. That isn’t what I heard this week.
Brands talked about bringing creators into annual planning before a brief exists. Creators described themselves as consultants, product advisors and entrepreneurs. Compensation discussions extended beyond sponsorships to licensing, equity and long-term partnerships.
Edelman argued that brands should be investing less in celebrity and more in trusted creators with deep credibility inside smaller communities. The common thread was trust.
This year, marketers were asking much more practical questions: How should teams be organized? What work belongs in-house? Which workflows should AI handle? Where does human judgment still matter most?
Pritchard described AI as a way to uncover insights faster and accelerate creative development, not replace it. One participant in our roundtable captured the sentiment in a single sentence: “You still need people with excellent taste.”
That may have been my favorite quote of the week because it recognizes what technology still can’t replace.
Leadership isn’t just built at work
But the conversation that personally had the biggest impact on me came during our Leading Women Network roundtable.
We started by talking about networking, personal brands and career visibility. We ended up talking about everything it takes just to be in the room.
Women shared stories about partners rearranging schedules, grandparents flying in to help with childcare and the weeks of planning required simply to spend a few days in Cannes. One participant admitted she rarely talks publicly about those realities because she worries they’ll be interpreted as a lack of commitment. I suspect that’s true of many women leaders in this industry.
We spend a lot of time talking about how people become leaders. We spend far less time talking about what it takes to make leadership possible in the first place.
That conversation was a reminder that visibility isn’t just about raising your hand or building your network. For many leaders, it’s supported by an invisible layer of planning, tradeoffs and care work that rarely gets acknowledged but makes showing up possible.
The conversation that matters: Trust
If there was one thread running through nearly every conversation I heard, it was trust.
Edelman talked about consumers relying on smaller circles and trusted voices. CMOs talked about community, heart and being more human. Brand leaders talked aboutgiving creators more ownership. Marketers also talked about earning buy-in from their own organizations.
As the industry becomes more complex, technology alone isn’t going to solve the hardest problems. Those solutions come from people sharing ideas, challenging one another and learning together.
That’s why Ad Age keeps bringing this community together—not just to report on what’s changing, but to create space for people in the industry to make sense of it with one another.
I’m glad I didn’t take that $7,000 voucher.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
The art world has succumbed to controversy via a graphic outdoor display of the menstrual period. Continuing education of health issues is in the public interest so why is this display so disturbing to some?
Singapore – Kotex has launched a global campaign highlighting the absence of menstrual blood in mainstream art, positioning it as a long-standing form of cultural censorship.
Developed with DAVID London and Ogilvy Singapore, “Art’s Missing Period” brings together works that were previously rejected by galleries or removed from public display due to their depiction of menstruation.
The campaign reframes the issue as one of visibility, arguing that while violent imagery involving blood is widely accepted, menstrual blood remains excluded.
Kotex revives banned art showing period blood
“Visibility shapes culture, and we set out to change both,” said Genevieve Gransden, Executive Creative Director at DAVID London.
“This is not just a campaign. It is a restoration of voices, narrative and art that deserves to be seen,” said Selma Ahmed, Executive Creative Director at DAVID London.
The campaign includes a short documentary directed by Emmy award-winning filmmaker Kathryn Everett and narrated by journalist Noor Tagouri.
The film examines how depictions of blood tied to violence are widely shown, while menstrual blood is treated as taboo, and features accounts from artists who have faced rejection linked to the theme.
Beyond film, Kotex has rolled out mobile billboards and street posters outside major museums, including the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
The placements position the campaign directly at the doorstep of institutions central to shaping public art discourse.
QR codes embedded in these placements direct audiences to a virtual gallery hosting more than 40 artworks centred on menstruation.
The online platform, launched on April 6, 2026, will run for one year and is designed to provide a dedicated space for artists and exhibitions exploring the subject.
The campaign marks Kotex’s latest effort to address stigma around periods, shifting the conversation from product messaging to broader cultural representation.
Thanks to Sharona Nicole Semilla of Marketech APAC for contributing this article
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Svedka, the vodka brand, addresses both digital burnout and Y2K nostalgia with the Svedphone, a stripped-down flip phone designed to encourage real-world connection. With only call and text functions, the device playfully rejects smartphone overload in favor of being present during social moments.
Positioned as an extension of the brand’s “Fembot” platform, it turns anti-tech sentiment into a physical product tied to nightlife and festival culture. Released in limited drops, the campaign reframes “less technology” as a more social, and more fun, experience.
Svedka’s Fembot may be a robot, but she’d prefer you mostly interact with other humans.
Stripped-down flip phone designed to encourage real-world connection
Looks like “fembots” may be with us for a while. This is really going back to simplicity but how will it play in today’s smartphone environment? Will it be taken seriously by folks who want just a really simple phone or be viewed just as a promotional stunt by the vodka maker?
Who knows. The buying public can be very fickle at times.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Late last year ADAge’s Tim Rudd penned an article about the alleged death of creativity. Well, some argue that its death may be premature. The campaign described below illustrates that point of view. As Tim reports . . .
Creativity may not be six feet under, but D&AD (Design & Art Direction) is still here to poke it with a stick.
The global creativity nonprofit is kicking off its 2026 award season with a global campaign from Uncommon Creative Studio that pushes the industry to stop hovering over the “think” button and start hitting “make.” Its centerpiece is a manifesto that challenges the too-common habit of watching ideas drift by rather than shaping them into something tangible. The work signals a shift toward more hands-on creative energy at a moment when the industry seems increasingly cautious.
The campaign leans on stark visuals and a single provocative question: Is creativity alive or dead? It stretches across D&AD’s awards, learning initiatives and talent effort, inviting practitioners to respond through action instead of commentary. The rollout also introduces a refreshed identity for the 2026 awards, turning the manifesto into a design brief for the entire program.
(D&AD) A massive Times Square billboard displays a bold message about misjudging bad ads as the death of creativity, illuminated above the city at night.
Alongside the identity comes the reveal of the 2026 jury presidents, a slate of creative leaders drawn from a mix of global brands and agencies such as Dentsu Tokyo, Airbnb, FCB Global, 72andSunny, Havas Health & You and others. Their remit is to steer the judging with the manifesto’s call for experimentation and decisiveness in mind. D&AD positions the jury presidents as creative figures who already operate with a bias toward making.
“Creativity doesn’t die, it drifts. It gets buried under deadlines, data and fear of taking risks,” said Lisa Smith, D&AD president and Uncommon’s global chief design officer. “This manifesto is a reminder to the industry that ideas are only as powerful as the people brave enough to make them real. As creative leaders, we have a responsibility to protect that spirit—to keep making, experimenting and proving that bold, human ideas still matter. D&AD exists to champion that pulse. To show that creativity isn’t just alive—it’s vital.”
(D&AD) A storefront covered in black-and-white posters displays bold gothic text declaring “Creativity is Dead” and “Creativity is Alive” alongside graphic logos.
(D&AD) A row of black-and-white street posters on a graffitied wall presents stark slogans about creativity and work beside the D&AD logo.
This year’s D&AD awards also introduce new categories meant to reflect the ways ideas move through culture. Brand Transformation spotlights work that blends strategic thinking with the craft of execution. Cultural Influence highlights projects that shape conversation or find a place in the wider cultural bloodstream. Sports Entertainment covers creative output tied to sport from campaigns to content to fan engagement.
“Creativity today is more decentralized than ever, coming from makers, creators, in-house teams and a new wave of independent studios. Our role is to ensure all these voices are equipped and inspired to keep pushing creative excellence forward,” said Donal Keenan, D&AD’s chief operating officer. “Yet in this abundance, creativity risks becoming diluted. Brands are finding it harder than ever to cut through and truly engage audiences, which is exactly why this provocation is needed.”
D&AD is also launching an editorial hub that digs into the same big question at the heart of the campaign. The platform collects commentary from designers and advertisers who are looking at how creativity has changed in a landscape of nonstop feeds and constant distraction.
(D&AD) A minimalist white typographic poster lays out a manifesto proclaiming “Creativity is Dead” before urging readers to revive it with intention.
As long as there are people who continue to push boundaries, creators who are never satisfied, folks who are always curious and a consuming public who always want refreshing and innovative ideas, creativity will never die. It will always be alive and thriving.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog,Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
Canadian graphic designer Jean-Pierre Lacroix explains how creative agencies and brands can make better use of generative AI by using it to expand team creativity.
As in the past I came across this article on the Web and thought it both interesting and inspiring. Given our challenging times, I think you will too. Enjoy!
The concept of generative AI technology creating content from user prompts using advanced algorithms. Adobe Stock
Every brand and agency is trying to tap into the promise of generative AI. So far, the results don’t always meet expectations. Is that so surprising? AI is brand new technology that no one fully understands, including its creators. Right now, we’re in an era that calls for experimentation. Results will come, but maybe not how we imagine. In the meantime, we must adopt a human-centered approach to AI, enabling creative teams to use AI as a platform for thinking differently and learning.
So far, the best AI brand activations aren’t AI-generated ads or design. Successful examples of creatives using AI have a distinctly human perspective. For example, Heinz created an ad showing the audience what happens when they prompt AI to create images of ketchup: it reproduces hundreds of variations of the iconic Heinz bottle design. No matter how they try, according to the ad, they can’t get AI to drop the Heinz label because it’s synonymous with ketchup.
Although the ad shows AI-generated imagery, Heinz is cleverly using AI to make a point about their brand rather than to generate and execute a creative idea.
On the other hand, when companies try to generate creative using AI, even the best work requires enormous human effort and it doesn’t always come off well with consumers. That may change, but today, AI-generated material just doesn’t look and feel right. The fear that AI will take jobs away from humans causes concern in some scenarios, for example with the use of AI-generated models.
How should creative teams be using AI today? It’s about testing and learning to develop skills and confidence. No one can say for sure how AI models will evolve but being prepared means teams need to start experimenting now.
Key considerations for AI experimentation
Create a cross-functional team assigned to explore AI tools relevant to their roles. Tracking and testing new models, staying informed about potential legal concerns and gathering case studies will ensure you have a strong foundational knowledge to guide decision-making.
Establish guidelines for AI use at your company. You’ll need someone who’s on top of legal matters, keeping in mind that various legislation is pending in many regions. You also need to understand how your consumers or clients perceive AI. Although there are some who hate AI no matter the circumstances, for most people, context matters. Conduct research with your stakeholders to make sure your intended uses align with their preferences. Provide your team with an approved list of licensed tools to use and establish a process for testing new ones.
Try, fail, try again. At our company, we created an AI self-assessment platform that allows brands to evaluate their design against a competitor through the lens of our branding philosophy. This was a test-and-learn scenario that resulted in numerous unsatisfactory iterations, ultimately leading to a beta model that runs well, albeit with some caveats. (You can test it for yourself.) As we continue to improve the tool, our team continues to learn. Don’t expect perfection because you won’t get it. Building confidence, knowledge and skills should be the goal.
Be transparent. If you work with clients, gauge their comfort level with AI and give them the option to opt out if you intend to make it part of your workflow. Something as simple as AI notetaking may run counter to privacy policies, for example.
Protect your privacy and the privacy of clients. Before using any AI platform, ensure your IT team reviews their data policies. This brings us back to establishing guidelines. Ensure that everyone at your company is aware of which platforms they’re permitted to use, and that the appropriate people have licensed accounts where data will be kept confidential.
Better, faster creative? Not yet
The hype around AI may lead some to think creative work can be completed faster and at a lower cost. At this stage, efficiency-finding with AI is only possible if you significantly lower your standards. Most creative agencies and brands would likely agree that AI can be useful in ideation but isn’t as helpful in execution.
For example, we’ve found that even when given clear design guidelines, it’s very difficult for AI to create final art for packaging that works in real life. We’ve found it useful for editing images, brainstorming a hundred ways to depict a watermelon and general ideation. But so far, human creatives are still significantly better at everything else.
AI does a decent job writing emails and copy for social media, but that too is bumping up against some limitations. Consumers are starting to recognize the tone of AI-generated copy and they find it grating.
AI is best suited to help structure content, create headlines and keywords and clean up copy. Marketers shouldn’t let their writing skills decline! AI can decipher what makes a clickable headline, but it doesn’t have any fresh ideas – it’s a solid Beatles cover band, but it’s no Lennon or McCartney.
Where we’ve found it most useful is with coding, where it helps us do more in a shorter time frame. However, teams still need to be proficient enough to know how to prompt for the right code and how to correct mistakes.
The human connection gap
One of the most common consumer-facing uses of AI is chatbots. They give us insight into the human connection gap that can occur with AI. Although serviceable and polite, AI chatbots annoy people. We know they’re not human and this changes the way we treat them.
Consider the Taco Bell drive-through incidentwhere a customer derailed an AI chatbot by ordering thousands of glasses of water. In cities with fleets of self-driving cars, they often get stuck and cause traffic jams because drivers won’t let them in the way they would a human driver.
Then there are the many incidents of people assaulting robots, especially humanoids. As much as we love a fun tool to play with, creatives can’t ignore the dehumanizing potential of AI.
How do we deal with this? The answer isn’t ignoring AI but learning how to use it to support human ideas and interactions. If what the utopia tech companies are selling is achievable, it will be because users engage with it thoughtfully. Creative teams are in a great position to lead this kind of conscientious, intelligent use of AI.
Jean-Pierre Lacroix is president of Shikatani Lacroix Design, a global branding firm specializing in transforming customer experiences for consumer packaged goods companies, financial institutions and retailers. He is a member of the Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario, and has sat on the board of the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers, Packaging Association of Canada and the Association of Professional Futurists.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
In a world where everything can be personalized and optimized, there’s only one true differentiator left: ideas. (Adobe Stock)
AI will undoubtedly shrink the marketing services industry. Or so that’s the opinion of industry paper Ad Age via author Barry Lowenthal in a recent piece a few weeks back. Thought it worthwhile to share again especially to those of you who may not have seen it yet.
Many of the functions agencies are paid for today—targeting, media planning, asset versioning — are already being handled faster and cheaper by machines.
Yet the most successful agencies in 2030 won’t be those with the biggest AI budgets; they’ll be the ones still capable of original thought.
Since the explosion of generative AI, holding companies have raced to future-proof themselves, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the technology. They’ve hired engineers, signed vendor deals and built proprietary tools. The logic is that automation improves margins by enabling more work to be produced with less overhead, and it’s attractive to clients.
But here’s the problem: Everyone is doing the same thing.
AI platforms might look different, but they’re powered by the same foundation—similar models, trained on similar data, offering similar outputs.
AI is a great equalizer. While early investment and enterprise deals offer short-term advantages, the tools are ultimately accessible to all. As technology becomes commodified, there’s only one true differentiator left: ideas.
In a world where everything can be personalized and optimized—where every ad element, from celebrity to color palette to music cue, is engineered for conversion—what cuts through is the unexpected.
Zany, emotional, human ideas. The kinds that make people laugh out loud, tear up or text a friend because it hit a nerve. The kind no algorithm can predict because they come from life experience, not data.
Those ideas aren’t born from prompts or dashboards, but from humans living messy, interesting lives—wandering museums, walking unfamiliar streets, swapping stories at a dive bar.
The agencies that stay relevant in an AI era will be the ones that protect this kind of cultural immersion. They’ll hire for life experience, not just technical literacy. They’ll measure inspiration like they do performance, instead of grinding their teams into creative exhaustion. They’ll reward originality over speed and efficiency.
If the goal is to survive the next five years, curiosity and creative instinct must be treated as core competencies.
That means rethinking workflows to allow time for discovery, not just delivery. It means protecting those unproductive long walks and deep rabbit holes.
The payoff won’t always show up neatly in a dashboard, so it will be a challenging pitch to the CFO. But in a world where AI devours everything else agencies in once thought made them valuable, it’s the only bet worth making.
That’s the future. And no, you can’t buy it; you have to nurture it.
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I agree with Mr. Lowenthal, original thought leading to creatively inspired ideas will and must lead the way. I’ve been involved in this business for several decades and I realize that the industry has turned into a young person’s game. Most have grown up with AI and consider it the “standard.” That is unfortunate. It still must be considered a tool in the work belt of the creative person who’s developing the idea. It can’t be used as the end-all. That is unless sameness is one’s idea of creative thought.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
An unlikely pairing some would surmise but they’re actually made for each other. In another of various selected articles from AdAge, this article I read recently by Matt Kaupa discusses how best for brands to align data with creative and do so from the beginning. Developing and studying one or the other separately won’t do any good.
At first glance, “data” and “creative” feel like opposites. One loves structure, the other color. One obsesses over decimal points, the other ellipses. But when they team up, the results can be surprising. And the best work happens when they collaborate from the start—not when data shows up at the end to judge. Here’s how to get there.
Don’t wait until after launch
Too often, data gets invited to the party only after a campaign is out in the world. At that point, it’s just there to grade the work, not shape it. Data and creative are two ingredients in the same dish. If you taste the soup only after it’s served, you can complain about the flavor—but you missed your shot to add the seasoning.
Strategy: Bring analysts into the creative kickoff. Audience insights—demographics, psychographics, behaviors, even reactions to past campaigns—can shape tone, format and story direction from day one. If you want to measure success, then why wouldn’t measurement help guide the strategy?
Example: Want to talk to busy moms in Charlotte? Don’t guess. See what they actually engage with at 10 p.m. Trying to position a brand as “premium” but still “relatable”? Let sentiment data show the words they use—not the words you wish they used.
Speak in the audience’s words
Every brand has its own vocabulary, but if your audience doesn’t speak that language, you’re basically shouting into the void. It doesn’t matter how clever your copy is if no one understands it—or worse, if it feels out of touch.
Strategy: Pull top organic search terms and social comments into the copy deck. Use their words, not yours.
Example: In industries like health care or finance, expert language doesn’t always translate. Otolaryngology? That’s just an ENT.
Don’t ignore A/B test losers
Everyone loves a winner, but the losing versions of a campaign are often way more interesting. They show you where instincts clashed with reality—and that tension is where new ideas live.
Strategy: Treat every test as a learning lab, not just a scoreboard. Every version has a story to tell—whether it’s what to do, or what to avoid.
Example: Sometimes insights come from a single weird data blip. Why did that version spike in Wisconsin? It didn’t have anything to do with cheese—or overrated football teams (skol!).
Let dashboards tell a story
Dashboards don’t have to be painful. But let’s be honest: They usually are. They’re dense, ugly and built for people who already live and breathe numbers. For everyone else? They’re more like a punishment than a resource.
Strategy: Co-build reporting visuals with designers so your dashboards are as compelling as your campaigns. When data looks like a story, people actually use it. Also, dummy-proof your insights: structure data and visuals in a way that reduces the number of assumptions—especially wrong ones—that your audience has to make.
Example: Imagine if your media dashboard looked less like a spreadsheet exploded and more like an infographic—highlighting trends, telling a narrative, and pulling out the “so what” at a glance. One client stopped ignoring their reports entirely once we reframed their monthly dashboard like a campaign storyboard. Suddenly, the CFO wasn’t just tolerating the data—he was quoting it in meetings.
Flip feedback into fuel
Brands collect mountains of feedback but rarely use it for anything more than “good job” or “try again.” What if, instead of treating it like a report card, you treated it like raw material? Customers are basically writing copy for you every day.
Strategy: Use real-time listening tools to turn survey responses or social reactions into iterative campaign content.
Example: Imagine a spot stitched together directly from customer feedback. Or a campaign whose copy comes entirely from what people are saying online.
Wrap smarter
When the campaign’s over, most people move on to the next thing. But the wrap-up is where the hidden treasure lives. Go beyond “what performed” and dig into why—because those answers set you up for the next win.
Strategy: Cluster analysis can reveal new audience segments. Performance patterns can challenge assumptions. Maybe Gen Z does like long-form after all—just not when you lead with product shots.
Data shouldn’t chase creative, and creative shouldn’t wait for data. The smartest work happens when both teams co-own the problem from day one. Remember that data isn’t just numbers. Just as we need to speak our audience’s language, we also need to speak the creatives’ language. Incorporate qualitative data—social comments, organic searches, reviews, surveys—to make sure we don’t lose the forest for the numbers.
Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!
Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for selected short stories and personal insights on life and its detours.
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