Category Archives: Business

Is it Time for Advertising to Try Harder, Again?

It’s not everyday that one reads an article that chastises the industry of advertising as this one does. Upon reading what the vp creative for the New York Times Advertising, Vita Cornelius, has to say about our industry, one wonders how the industry of if the industry will take heart. Advertising has and still is going through a myriad of changes with no true avenue laid out. The influx of AI teachings resembles a second coming of sorts. It may not even be all it’s cracked up to be. On the other hand, it may be more.

Advertising definitely has to try harder. It also has to be smarter. Take a read from the NY Times perspective and see if you agree.

We are 63 years past what advertising historian and author Lawrence Dobrow’s book referred to as “The Golden Age of Advertising.” An era where creativity abounded amidst the backdrop of dramatic economic and societal changes, human rights activism, and a burgeoning interest in alternative lifestyles. What was once the product-as-hero creative style of the 1950s was evolved by creative minds welding the emotive power, persuasion, irony and cynicism of changing times. Bill Bernbach famously penned the word “Lemon” in a single-word headline to describe the Volkswagen Beetle, starting a creative revolution.

Advertising’s creative minds gave birth to the spokesperson, the mascot and the brand personality. These fictitious characters entered our homes, their shiny, smiling faces stared back at us every time we opened our pantry. They took up space in our consciousness, to forever conjure feelings of nostalgia. Even if a mascot had overt racial or sexist overtones, we turned a blind eye to the offense. And it would take decades for the bitter history behind those characters to be challenged. Because in 1960, unlike in 2023, we just wanted to eat those pancakes in the box.

Advertising creativity evolved again in the 1970s and ’80s with the support of consumer insights. It went beyond staking a claim on demographics to owning and manipulating our psychographics. Insights became the fertile ground to plant creative seeds. Pepsi claimed to be for the young and fun, and created the “Pepsi Generation.” This was a defining moment in how a brand and its advertising messages could shift a societal construct—redefining what it meant to be young vs. old, celebrated vs. obsolete, and in the know vs. out of touch. For brands, it made the proposition of owning a mindset, and building brand perception based on that mindset, more coveted than selling the product itself. Continue reading →

Seven Principles for the Future of Creativity

Recently, I came across an article featuring Nick Law, global creative chairperson, Accenture Song, laying out seven principles for the future of creativity. He took a deep dive into the necessity of establishing and embodying principles as a brand. 

Law stated, “Every company needs to have consistent principles and dynamic practices. Sometimes, our industry forgets that it needs to be dynamic.” 

He shared a set of principles that can help brands cultivate a fresh perspective when it comes to generating creative business ideas. 

Nick Law, Accenture Song’s global creative chairperson was speaking at Goafest 2023

The seven principles for the future of creativity, guided by Law, emphasize the importance of embracing creativity, technology, and collaboration.

The principles are as follows:

Consistent principles, dynamic practices

Law’s first principle highlighted the need for organizations to establish robust principles as a framework while adapting to the changing practices of the industry. 

“Without such principles in businesses, scaling becomes a challenge. We need to maintain a strong marketing philosophy while fostering innovation within a company,” he said. 

Singular vision, collaborative culture

The second principle emphasizes the importance of collaboration in the creative process. 

Law shared, “The need for mixing and matching different talents and fostering a collaborative environment within teams is key.”

First, design yourself

Law’s third principle shared the prominence of being sharp at the top level and connecting at the bottom level of the marketing funnel. 

He said, “Organizations should have effective communication and connection between top-level management and employees at all levels. Clear communication and understanding of the company’s goals are essential for a brand’s success.” 

Loose with ideas, tight with execution 

Law’s fourth principle pointed out the need for creatives to be dynamic and adaptable in the face of rapid change. 

He shared, “When it comes to ideation, it is key to connecting the diverse abilities, organization, and consumers to foster creativity within an organization. There should be both generalists and specialists within a business to ensure ideas are executed effectively.” 

Technology is creative 

“Creativity cannot exist without technology. Creatives should work closely with evolving technologies to achieve impactful storytelling,” expressed Law.

Deep simplicity

Law shared an example from his experience working with Nike, where a complex product was simplified to ensure consumers were not overwhelmed with unnecessary complexity. 

“While creating Nike Pods we had complicated the process with too much data. The key is to marry both creative ideation and technology to effectively target a consumer,” he said.

Start in the middle

Law also touched on the evolving marketing funnel, stating that the consideration phase is now key in the consumer journey. 

He concluded, “Businesses should look at human connections and emotions in the bottom level of the funnel. We should aim to create an impactful storytelling approach to engage consumers effectively.”

 

During the past ten to twenty years, creativity has seen a world of change and, yet, there are certain truths that, while tested, always bear fruit. Nick’s seven principles seem to echo those truths. Today’s creatives should take these seven principles to heart. You won’t be sorry.

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for personal insights on life and its detours.

And, check out creative selections from my website.

Jolan tru!

Quotes for May, Graduation and Enlightenment

Tis that time of year again when graduation ceremonies and insightful speeches are given to enlighten the crowd. Other notables are included here for their wisdom and foresight within the advertising industry and beyond. So, take note; it’s time for May quotes!

 

Attract attention, maintain interest, create desire and get action. — E. Elmo St. Lewis, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives. — Theodore Francis MacManus, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. – Isaac Asimov

It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them. – Steve Jobs

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Click on the image to get a better view of the quote

Commencement Address/ Ithaca College May 1972

The place to start in advertising is the basic selling appeal. An appeal that fulfills some existing need in the prospect’s mind, an appeal that can be readily understood and believed. — Morris Hite, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

I have learned that any fool can write a bad ad, but that it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one. — Leo Burnett, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

Art is not just our expression of life and of ourselves. It is not just our internal cry: Art is the lie we need about the world and ourselves. When we write or paint or act or compose, we are imposing an order, yes, but we are also crafting a world we can control, and usually it is one we can admire–or at the very least recognize. Art is not elite; art is not on a high shelf for a chosen few. Art is, like religion, a primary narcotic. — Marlon Brando

We have a need for an enlightened, watchful articulate opposition. We have no need for semi-secret societies who are absolutist, dictatorial, and would substitute for a rule of law and reason an indiscriminate assault on the institutions that must be held sacrosanct. — Rod Serling

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for personal insights on life and its detours.

And, check out creative selections from my website.

Jolan tru!

Artificial Intelligence: A Blessing or Curse?

Artificial Intelligence or AI should have creative people concerned for their jobs, right? Umm, not so fast or at least not yet. Alex Collmer, CEO and Founder of VidMob believes that, without humans, AI could not be creatively effective. But, by embracing AI, humans’ creativity could increase. Thanks to Alex’s input, we explore this topic in this post.

When attending a recent tech conference, an investor expressed the opinion that, in five years’ time, all creative jobs will have vanished. Seriously!?

They predicted that advances in AI and machine learning would lead to the invention of tools that could do creative jobs better than any human. This is not a limited viewpoint. In fact, it’s increasingly prevalent throughout the advertising industry and beyond, according to Mr Collmer. 

In December 2022, The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson wrote an article entitled Your Creativity Won’t Save Your Job From AI; arguing that with AI already capable of certain cognitive tasks, there was potential that, in the near future, it could “master the art of generating high-quality advertising concepts”. 

It’s an interesting perspective, but there is an equally engaging counterargument — that AI and creativity are not fundamentally at odds and, in fact, AI can actually enhance human creativity. However, that statement should have a caveat with a word or two of warning.

While AI itself isn’t what marketers and creators need to fear, it’s other companies employing staff with the ability to leverage AI-generated data and use it cleverly that they should be worried about. Brands who fail to embrace the technology should be looking over their shoulders, as businesses that do leverage AI will achieve stand-out content and establish their competitive advantage. Hmmmm.

Responding to increasing content consumption

In an age where we spend more and more of our time looking at a screen, our digital content consumption has risen dramatically, especially when it comes to video. It’s little wonder, given the growing number of devices and platforms we have to choose from, and with each platform having its own creative nuances, marketers are under pressure to create more content to meet this demand. 

AI can be extremely helpful to under-pressure marketers tasked to create an increasing amount of content. But it is a misguided belief that algorithms can be deployed to simply solve all challenges faced by brands looking to scale their content production. When considering the ultimate goal of marketing success, volume should not be judged as the pinnacle. Rather, creative effectiveness is what matters and brands should be aiming to foster genuine, unique emotional connections with audiences — and AI can’t do this on its own. 

While AI can accurately measure the impact of multiple creative elements in a video ad — emotions portrayed by a model, the audio accompanying imagery, the logo placement, and so on — it’s not until humans analyze this data that meaningful strategic insights are derived to help fully understand audience reactions and the context around them. Once a deeper level of understanding is established, these insights can help optimize current campaign creative for success and assist with efficient planning. Without a human eye, the data itself carries limited value.

Augmenting creative with AI

Before AI-driven creative data, the production conversation has been primarily a conversation about building faster and cheaper creative. Sigh! The first step towards scaling meaningful creative content must be to understand it. 

Once marketers grasp which creative elements work well and why, and on which platforms, they can ramp up their content production while continuing to make the appropriate adjustments for each unique audience in every channel where they will be met. Every frame of an ad contains a myriad of creative decisions. AI-powered tools have the capacity to capture all of these data points in real-time – not just of a single ad, or whole campaign, but from all of the video content a brand has ever created. And while marketers may have a reasonable understanding of which of their ads worked and to what extent, AI provides an answer to the million-dollar question: Why? Good point.

By tracking all the behavioral signals from audience reaction to each creative element, AI collates the data that marketers require to build learning models to fully inform and enhance their future creative decisions.

Why AI needs creatives

The AI-powered creative platforms used in the business world all require an element of human input. When applied to marketing, human intervention can help ensure brand safety when using AI. For example, AI was used to draw insights from a luxury cruise liner’s campaign which revealed that under-30s responded positively to waterfalls, horses and beards.

If we assume all creativity is going to be replaced by AI systems, we could simply input all of this data into a generative AI tool and expect it to produce an effective ad. However, based on data alone, the output could end up ticking all the boxes – waterfalls, horses and beards on paper; however, in reality, the ad wouldn’t make sense. Bottom line, the outputs are only going to be as good as the prompts that an educated human can provide. 

Combining a human perspective and the context in mind, it enables the analyst to understand that the cruise line is viewed by under-30s as a mode of transportation to explore the world. They are more interested in getting off the boat. Waterfalls and horseback riding are merely examples of adventures that can be experienced when they are off the ship. When this strategic insight was applied to the campaign, the resultant creative was able to nearly triple the creative effectiveness. Insights are valuable to creative teams producing new ads, but without human interpretation the data alone fails to achieve this strategic impact and often leads to little sustainable performance improvement.

According to Collmer, AI tools open up a host of creative teaching to marketers and brands who have the ability and expertise to use the data. These teams will still need to maintain control of design oversight and ensure findings are considered in context with AI capabilities guiding their decisions. Where AI really shines and supports the human team beyond their own capacity is in efficiently generating a higher volume and variety of content to meet audience needs and platform requirements. The time saved by AI solutions affords creators space to indulge their creativity further and apply their expertise in different ways. 

Fears that AI is here to replace creators are ill-founded: the real threat posed by AI is to those who fail to embrace a human and AI partnership. Rather than reducing the creative roles available to humans, brands that embrace data and technology will require an expertly-trained workforce to interpret findings and apply insights creatively, eliminating guesswork and optimizing creative content. 

As a result, the next generation of marketers will evolve alongside AI capabilities and will require data analytics skills to enable a new level of creative efficiency based on data-driven decisions. Brands that embrace this new reality will find that they have a significant competitive advantage over those that continue operating the same way they have been for decades.

Thanks to Mr. Collmer for his AI insights and its influence on creativity. In my view AI is a tool, a tool that can enhance our creative efforts, not replace them. From a creative’s perspective, it’s always nice to have extra tools in one’s creative toolkit.

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for personal insights on life and its detours.

And, check out creative selections from my website.

Jolan tru!

Top Tips for Kick-Starting Creativity

Albeit some years back, I came up with a list of tips for kick-starting one’s creativity. These are tips I’ve learned over the years and have put into practice. May they serve you as well as they have me!

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for personal insights on life and its detours.

 

Feel free to review various creative selections from my website.

Creative Trends for 2023

This being the first part of the year, I’ve come across several articles that portend various trends and forecasts for 2023. Below is the most recent one I’ve read from someone within the creative industry. Please note this is an edited version of her original contribution. Emily Cohen is an avid reader, speaker, author and brutally honest operational and organizational consultant to creative teams.

Based on Emily’s consultations with clients and conversations with industry colleagues the past few years, she’s identified five trends that we need to learn from and adapt to now.

Trend 1: A new, employee-forward approach to “culture”.

The state of the world has had a real and tangible impact on many employers as they continue to evolve their understanding of the importance of addressing employees’ escalating — and more openly expressed and talked about — cultural demands and mental health challenges as well as shifting priorities. As a result, building a healthy, flexible workplace culture has become priority number one for our industry and has moved well beyond having a written mission statement, organizing “team-building” activities, and having a dedicated people operations person (a must-have for any team).

What these new cultural changes look like is something that we really need to rethink industry-wide. We need to be more transparent with our peers and colleagues so that we can learn from both our collective successes as well as failures. We need to get creative, involving our entire team to explore and build the type of culture that best fits their needs and the vision we have for our firm. We need to realize that the nature of work is shifting and take bold steps to shift with it. Beyond caring about our team’s happiness, health, and welfare — which, above all, is most important — changes to how we think about our culture are also critical to improving retention, recruiting, and even productivity/profitability.

Trend 2: Paying ourselves and our employees what we’re worth.

In order to attract new candidates, increase morale, and retain staff, many creative firms are realizing the hard way that what they’ve been paying their staff and themselves isn’t competitive or sustainable. And, given the pressing challenge of a competitive talent pool, candidates and employees have the power to demand what they deserve more than ever.

Thus, many firms have updated — and increased — their pay scales, often making them transparent to their team and, as needed, have raised salaries for their existing team to reflect industry standards. This is long overdue. In the past, we were expected to love what we do and prioritize this love over profit or money. This simply is no longer the case and rightly so. We should pay everyone — including ourselves — a fair, equitable, and livable wage.

Trend 3: Pricing based on our worth and value.

With a much-needed increase in salaries across our industry and a rise in our overhead costs because of inflation, we must increase our rates. Yet, instead, because we are working in a saturated and highly competitive industry — along with our desperation to win, often at any cost, and the misconceived “lack of work out there” mentality — our rates continue to plummet instead of rise.

We have to stand our ground and remember that the more clients pay us, the more they are going to value what we do and this changes how they engage with us — i.e. shifting from a “we need this” or “do this” relationship to a “what do you think we need” and “how can you help us?” mentality. Raising our rates industry-wide will move us from being perceived as an on-demand service to a more consultative, advisory business.

And, yes — this does mean we will lose some projects but it also means we will win more valuable, desirable ones, and, ultimately, our focus should be on the quality over the quantity of those wins. Everyone in the industry should raise their prices across the board. (Rates) that are fair and realistically reflect the true cost of running a business as well as the value of our experience, expertise, insight, time, and how our work directly translates to and positively impacts our clients’ businesses (think: return on investment).

Trend 4: Evolving and shifting partnership relationships.

Previous unresolved tensions — as well as new ones — have bubbled to the surface and forced many partners re-think how they work together and, in some cases, partnerships have crumbled. In some cases, partners have moved away physically and are therefore no longer working together in person, putting a strain on interpersonal relationships. And, in other cases, partners re-think their own personal career path and choose to leave the industry entirely or move to another, less “risky”, full-time role in-house or elsewhere.

While partnership-based relationships have always been notoriously difficult to manage (like many marriages), these challenges have escalated even more due to the current global pressures. If you are in a partnership, take the time to have honest, open conversations and resolve any challenges you do have, before they continue to escalate. And, if you’re thinking about entering into a new partnership, be very thoughtful — ensure you’re being honest with yourself and your partner(s) on personal and professional priorities, goals, expectations, challenges, etc.

Trend 5: Nervousness about inflation.

There is rising nervousness among firm owners and their teams about 2023 and the impact of inflation on their firms. We are all worried and have seen a slight slowdown of new work, but that’s because all our clients are also nervous and are in a wait-and-see mode and are therefore taking a bit longer to reach out and make decisions.

So, what can you do? What you should always be doing: having at least 3 months of overhead saved (as cash in the bank), 3–4 months of committed revenue, and signed contracts with all clients. Ultimately, those that struggle with maintaining this level of financial security have bigger problems than just inflation.

On the other hand, when our clients and companies implement hiring freezes and, in some cases, layoffs, there often is the opportunity to do the work that their reduced in-house teams can no longer handle. There is work out there but it may not be coming to you as quickly and easily as it once did. That is why firms should always be reaching out and shifting their business development strategies from being reliant only on inbound opportunities to a relationship-building mindset focused on outbound opportunities and “building the love” with potential prospects, existing and past clients, contacts, etc.

Emily concludes by saying . . .

Our industry is at a critical crossroads as we encounter new challenges, shifting priorities, and a complete rethinking of our personal and professional priorities. Change will take gumption, fortitude, and some degree of risk but, as a result, our firms will be more financially stable, our employees will be happier, and our industry will thrive.

So what do you think? Do you agree with Emily’s take? Do we alter our plans for 2023 or stand pat?

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for personal insights on life and its detours.

 

The Power of Creative Excellence and the Loss of an Icon

Every once in awhile it’s nice to get another perspective on creativity and its influence in the advertising industry. So this week the creativity blog focuses on an interview with Rob Reilly, the creative lead of WPP. We also acknowledge the passing of an icon who truly embodied the power of creative excellence, Dan Wieden. Below are some excerpts from that interview conducted by Carly Weihe.

In sitting down with Reilly, his passion for creativity and the high quality standards he puts into his work is clear. Under his creative lead, WPP won the Most Creative Company of 2022 at Cannes. Animated and engaging, it’s no surprise he is the chief creative officer for the largest advertising company in the world. With a little over a year under his belt at the company, his outlook on the future is a positive one, emphasizing the importance of collaboration and brand consistency as key factors for continued success.

I have a photograph of the Fearless Girl in my room. I discovered that you had a hand in bringing it to life.

That’s one of the best things someone’s ever started an interview with. I think the accomplishment you can have is to create something that has an impact long after you leave this earth. When the stock brokers come out, they have to face her and remember to do the right thing the next day. The City of New York wanted to move her into a park because she was causing a lot of traffic. We were like, ‘no, we’ll move her to Tokyo or London instead because everybody wants her.’

So, we showed them the comp of the only place we would accept, State Street, and that’s where she is today. We don’t know what the return on investment is on that piece of work, because who knows if it inspired, some president or someone starting a company or finding a cure to a disease, because they were inspired to be a bit fearless.

You’ve been a part of other social justice campaigns such as #NYCSaysGay. How do you leverage real problems to inspire people?

Well,if you’ve seen anything that I’ve done or any presentations I’ve made, I really talk about creativity being today’s most valuable asset. So yes, the NYC Love was a campaign that we did against the Don’t Say Gay issue that they had in Florida. (The campaign was digital billboard advertisements strategically placed across Florida that emphasized NYC’s commitment to the LGBTQ+ community, in partnership with New York City’s mayor Eric Adams.)The idea is great. But the media placement is what makes it really great.

The creative headlines are fun and interesting and pretty punchy, but it’s a fact, that you’re able to buy the media in the States basically telling people to leave Florida, and the state of Florida couldn’t stop it. You need some real ingenuity and real creativity to do that. I have high hopes for creativity being taught to children in schools eventually. We’re teaching our kids a lot of things, and we should be teaching them to use their brain and creative ways to solve problems.

Too many people think, “Oh, I’m not creative.” But you don’t have to be an artist to be creative. You just have to use your brain in different and unique ways to solve things. I feel like more and more creativity is going to be used to get us out of sometimes the messes we create as a country and as a world.

How does hiring talent play into that mission?

I think younger people want to work for companies that are doing the right thing. Whether you choose to work at a company or whether it’s the couple of brands you choose to support, you’re watching what they do. But you also want to have a good career and make money and these two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

I think we’ve got to continue to attract unique and different types of individuals by doing the right things for them, and then the right things out in the world. I think where we’re struggling when we get into the diversity and inclusion aspect. I feel like we got to do a way better job of making sure all types of people with all types of opinions and voices and backgrounds are included and this is the business.

Continue reading →

Know Thyself and That Which Makes You Tick . . .

Quotes. Funny thing about quotes: They can be instrumental in getting over a point of view or conveying one’s opinion or setting oneself apart from others. In general, they’re supposed to be unique, jaw dropping and memorable. Here’s the latest batch out of my electronic grab bag of quotes by various folks from within the advertising community and beyond. Enjoy!

 

If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. – Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh

You have to know yourself … really know what makes you tick. — Shirley Polykoff, Advertising Hall of Fame

Advertising is what you do when you can’t go see somebody. That’s all it is. — Fairfax Cone, Advertising Hall of Fame

We don’t grow unless we take risks. Any successful company is riddled with failures. — James E. Burke, Advertising Hall of Fame

Success or failure in business is caused more by mental attitude than by mental capacities. — Walter Dill Scott, Advertising Hall of Fame

All creative people want to do the unexpected. – Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside of them was superior to circumstance. – Bruce Barton, Advertising Hall of Fame

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. – Niels Bohr

Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message. — William Bernbach, Advertising Hall of Fame

Bill Bernbach

The place to start in advertising is the basic selling appeal. An appeal that fulfills some existing need in the prospect’s mind, an appeal that can be readily understood and believed. — Morris Hite, Advertising Hall of Fame

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.

Wonder What Mr. Data Would Think: Robots Creating Ads? Hmmmm.

Lt. Cmdr. Data of the USS Enterprise

Well, Data, as all Trekkers know, was an Android, not a robot. It was a very sensitive distinction in his day. Yet, one can’t help but wonder what one non-human form of life would think of another non-human form of life creating advertising in the manner humans do.

While humorous, I can just picture Klaatu instructing Gort about a forthcoming ad for NASA’s Artemis IV mission to Jupiter. (Note: Those of you not having a clue as to what I am referring, Google “Day the Earth Stood Still” especially the 1951 version)

Gort

Recently, I read where a reporter from the Wall Street Journal did an article on the role of AI (Artificial Intelligence) writing and redoing advertising. Interesting, I thought, so I made it the focus of this week’s blog post about another aspect of creativity in the early 21st. Century. My thanks to both The Journal and Patrick Coffee for lending credence to this post.

In late 2021, as states eased pandemic restrictions and consumers began flying again, travel search company Kayak needed a message that would help it stand out against bigger rivals.

Most travel ads focused on “the family reunion space, soft piano music, the get-together on the beach,” said Matthew Clarke, vice president of North American marketing for the Booking Holdings Inc. company. Kayak took a different approach with the “Kayak Deniers” campaign, which went live in January and poked fun at the rise of online conspiracy theories. In one ad, an angry mother insists to her family that Kayak isn’t real, screaming, “Open your eyes!”

Inspiration for the ads came from an unlikely source: artificial intelligence.

Kayak worked with New York advertising agency Supernatural Development LLC, whose internal AI platform combines marketers’ answers to questions about their business with consumer data drawn from social media and market research to suggest campaign strategies, then automatically generates ideas for advertising copy and other marketing materials.

Supernatural’s AI found that Kayak should target its campaign largely toward young, upper-income men, who it said would respond to humor about Americans’ inability to agree on basic facts in politics and pop culture, said Michael Barrett, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Supernatural.

“That gave us a good amount of license to zig where the category was zagging and to be more relevant, more provocative,” Mr. Clarke said of the AI findings.

The campaign has been one of Kayak’s most successful to date in driving brand favorability, Mr. Clarke said.

Marketers have primarily used AI in a creative capacity in services like creative automation, which tests thousands of slight variations on elements such as ad copy and color schemes to determine which combinations will best attract consumers’ attention.

But AI is expected to change marketing practices drastically in coming years thanks to new tools like OpenAI Inc.’s automated language generator GPT-3, which allows algorithms to better understand different languages and produce original text content, said Tom Davenport, distinguished professor of information technology and management at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., who co-wrote a 2019 paper on the subject.

Unilever PLC’s Dollar Shave Club recently began working with AI firm Addition Technologies Inc., whose platform can analyze millions of social-media posts, to help identify themes for use in marketing products that range from razors to wet wipes.

“It’s like having a machine hive mind that you can just keep asking questions because it has completely consumed all comments on the subject,” said Matt Orser, vice president and head of creative at Dollar Shave Club.

Addition also worked with ad agency Droga5 LLC to create an interactive ad campaign for the New York Times that turns headlines from each subscriber’s reading history into a visual “portrait” of that person. Some headlines were too long to fit within the portraits’ design, so Addition programmed its platform to rewrite them in fewer than 50 characters, said a Times spokesman.

AI’s primary benefit for marketers is its ability to quickly complete projects, such as brand strategy briefs, that would take humans days or weeks, giving staffers more time to focus on other work, said Supernatural Chief Creative Officer Paul Caiozzo.

When Signal Messenger LLC, maker of encrypted messaging app Signal, wanted to plan its first major marketing campaign in 2021, it turned to AI marketing consulting firm DumDum LLC.

DumDum invites marketers to discuss their most pressing challenges in brief “thinkathon” sessions, then runs those ideas through an AI platform that matches them with potential solutions based on a growing pool of behavioral data and consumer surveys conducted by DumDum to provide CMOs with outside perspectives.

DumDum presented Signal with several options, and executives chose one that focused on the fact that Signal, unlike many other digital platforms, doesn’t collect user data. They bought several Instagram ads designed to highlight how its parent, Meta Platforms Inc., targets users with their own personal data, said Jun Harada, head of growth and communication at Signal. One post began, “You got this ad because you’re a certified public accountant in an open relationship.”

Facebook responded by shutting down Signal’s ad account, according to Mr. Harada. The move came only days after Apple Inc. announced sweeping data-privacy changes that would upend the digital advertising industry.

When used correctly, AI forces marketers to consider new perspectives and avoid simply repeating approaches that worked in the past, said DumDum founder Nathan Phillips.

“You can create a dance between human and computer that changes the way you think,” Mr. Phillips said.

The idea of AI as a creative partner isn’t new, but most campaigns have positioned it as a gimmick.

In 2018, Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus released what it called “the world’s first advert to be scripted entirely by AI.” However, a Lexus spokeswoman described that effort as a “one-off,” and it still needed a human director.

Increased use of AI could potentially eliminate some entry-level marketing jobs, but it will never replace the people required to ensure that content is fit for public consumption and to prevent controversies such as Microsoft Corp.’s anti-Semitic chat bot, said Mr. Davenport, the Babson College professor.

Ad industry leaders agreed that AI will supplement, not supplant, human ingenuity. “While [AI] can unlock the creative capacity of people by making their work more efficient and effective, sometimes we need to throw logic out the window and fall back on our intuition,” said Rob Reilly, global chief creative officer at ad giant WPP PLC.

More creative firms will begin using AI tools in the coming years, but most will not position themselves as AI-driven businesses, because CMOs aren’t particularly concerned with the process as long as the resulting campaigns are successful, said Mr. Caiozzo of Supernatural.

“AI is just the tool that is freeing me to do my job,” he said. “Most people don’t care how you bake the bread.”

Like it or not, AI is here to stay and will only adjust and modernize the ad industry for years to come.

 

Notes:

Sources: The Wall Street Journal and Patrick Coffee. Appeared in the August 11, 2022, print edition as ‘Robots Turn Creative as AI Helps Drive Ad Campaigns.’

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.

 

 

Nurture Creativity By Building Supportive Environment

Every so often I run across articles on some aspect of creativity. This week I found an article on nurturing creativity by building a supportive environment. It’s a recent study co-authored by professors from Rice University here in Houston and the Barcelona School of Management in Spain. I’ve reflected the study’s findings here in this blog post.

Creativity in children develops their spirits. Playing at or with almost anything spurs their creativity. (I wish this could be said about most adults.) Coaxing creativity from adults is more challenging. Creativity in adults enriches productivity — especially at the office.

Creativity is where ideas come from; ideas form the basis for innovation. In an increasingly competitive world economy, it’s innovation that allows businesses to survive and thrive. This makes creativity a prized commodity in the job market. For managers, cultivating creativity in their workforce is a crucial professional skill. (Note: Yet I think creativity is still a very undervalued skill, if not misunderstood.)

Current academic research takes a more holistic look. By studying the interaction between the character traits of the worker or the team, the leader or the supervisor, and the prevailing atmosphere at the workplace, researchers are unveiling new insights.

Studies show, for example, that the benefits of benevolent leadership expand when workers recognize creativity as an important component of their role. Not only that, creativity is highest in employees who experience high levels of both positive and negative moods and feel supported by their supervisors. Other research finds that leaders who empower their workers get a greater payback in creativity.

To explore these findings further, *Zhou and Hoever developed a typology that sorts out research about workplace creativity based on interactions between the worker (which they call the “actor”) and the workplace (which they call “context”).

The best-case scenario is a positive actor in a positive context, a mix that is synergistic for creativity. Worst case: When a positive actor languishes in a negative context or, similarly, when a negative actor stews in a positive context. At the extreme end of possibility, a negative actor in a negative context is downright antagonistic to creativity, Zhou and Hoever found.

There’s one final type of employee-workplace interaction: the “configurational” experience, which includes factors that are neutral in shaping creativity, but, when combined with other factors, cause a kind of chemical reaction that boosts or blocks creativity.

Zhou’s research serves up some bad news and good news for managers. Choosing and hiring employees who are creative is not enough, it turns out. If your workplace is discouraging, creativity will wither in almost anyone. On the brighter side, cultivate a nurturing environment and creative tendrils may sprout even in the most no-nonsense workers. Best of all, good managers can build a nurturing greenhouse environment. Practically speaking, it means that companies can and should train supervisors to cultivate creativity in their management choices. (Hmmm, wonder what an 8-year old supervisor would do!)

Plenty of research gaps remain, however. To fill them, Zhou has outlined an ambitious agenda for future research, including a close look at the impact of workplaces on collective creativity; exploring as-yet unidentified factors in workers and work settings that spark creative thinking; and seeking ways to vanquish the effects of unsupportive environments.

Making creativity happen at work, in other words, isn’t child’s play. It is, in fact, hard work, especially if the environment is less than stimulating.

——

*Identifying the best circumstances to make creativity bloom is one of the driving questions in this study by Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and colleague Inga J. Hoever, a professor at the Barcelona School of Management in Spain.

 

Hopefully making a ruckus, one blog post at a time!

Be sure to check out my other blog, Joe’s Journey, for a different kind of playground for creativity, innovation and inspiring stuff.