Category Archives: Creativity

Quotes by Ogilvy, Voltaire, Jobs, et. al.

As it’s the last Tuesday in July and since I accidentally skipped June, I thought it time for Quotes. From Bernbach and Barton to Serling and Steinem . . . enjoy!

 

Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity — not as a threat. – Steve Jobs

We pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. — Bruce Barton, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

The heart of creativity is discipline. — William Bernbach, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

Nobody has ever built a brand by imitating somebody else’s advertising. — David Ogilvy, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers. – Voltaire

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance. – Robert Quillen

Consumers are statistics. Customers are people. — Stanley Marcus, member, Advertising Hall of Fame

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. – Gloria Steinem

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. – Henry Ward Beecher

I think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I’ve written there is a thread of this: a man’s seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself. — Rod Serling, LA Times, 1967

 

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!

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 →

Why Play is More Important than Talent for Creativity

This week my creativity blog features an excerpt from a podcast initiated in Japanese, “The Creative Mindset”, with the first guest on the podcast, Ian Spalter (Ian Spalter), the man behind the design of Instagram.

Ian cited this quote during the interview: “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”

A few years ago, Ian led the redesign of the Instagram app as well as its brand identity as the Head of Design at the company. That process was well documented and Ian was featured in a Netflix special called “Abstract: The Art of Design.” Since then, he moved to Japan with his family to head up the Instagram business there. He’s now leading design at Meta for its metaverse initiative, still residing in Japan, where the podcast episode was recorded.

In the podcast interview with Ian, there were three key takeaways that stood out and can be helpful for, not just designers, but those particularly in a position to manage others:

1. The permission and the freedom to be wrong is essential to creativity.

Ian uses simple activities and games in meetings with his team in order to create what he calls the State of Play. These games might be something as simple as drawing for people who are not typically used to drawing. He says that play is useful in getting people out of their comfort zone and letting people be wrong without, or at least with less, fear. Eliminating the sense of fear is essential to cultivating creativity, especially in a corporate environment, according to Ian.

2. Humility is underrated.

One of Ian’s hobbies living in Japan is to go visit shokunin, craftspeople typically engaged in making traditional daily tools and objects such as sandals, bowls, baskets, buckets, etc., oftentimes painstakingly by hand. Having visited quite a few of them in various towns, he observed that they all have something in common: a commitment to humble excellence. This kind of humility is underrated, he says, and he witnesses that it makes such a big difference in the final product.

3. Representation matters.

When he started his career in NYC, one of his first managers was Omar Wasow, a co-founder of BlackPlanet.com in the 1990s. At R/GA, Ian worked under a colleague who was from the Dominican Republic and a person of color. The fact that his bosses were minorities back then and how they reflected on Ian himself wasn’t lost on him. As a Black designer, he felt and still feels that how he does would reflect on other people that look like him that would come after him. Ian projected a sense of duty in his voice as a leading yet humble designer who happens to be Black.

If you are curious about the conversation with Ian, please listen to this episode “Why Play, Not Talent, Is More Important for Creativity” wherever you get your podcast:

This blog post represents portions of an interview moderated by Rei Inamoto, a designer by trade, a minimalist at heart. Founding Partner of I&CO. Named in “Creativity 50,” “The Top 25 Most Creative People in Advertising.”

 

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!

 

Story is Still King in the Creative World. Here’s Why.

Whether it’s on TikTok, Twitter or television, storytelling is at the heart of advertising. Recently, storytelling mixing with creativity found its way into my inbox. I thought it appropriate to share here, on my creativity blog.

Margaret McGovern, Executive Creative Director of Boathouse, examines the key aspects of an engaging story. 

Heading into a new year always prompts questions: What’s new? What’s trending? What digital platform has risen to the top?

And there’s a lot; from vertical format to generative AI. And shorter… everything keeps getting shorter. Six seconds! How can you capture someone’s attention in six seconds in a compelling way, and without sound? 

Plus, it’s hard to predict anything anymore. From the rise of TikTok and the creation of the metaverse, to whatever is going on at Twitter, it’s all up for grabs. But, if there’s anything all of this change has shown, it’s that storytelling will be front and center because it’s the one thing that ties it all together

We still have a long way to go 

What we are seeing is a rise in inclusivity and equity. Voices that have been marginalized in film-making, and in all creative fields, are finally being heard. These inequities are finally shifting and trending in the right direction. Toy companies are removing gender labels, fashion brands are embracing a non-binary world, welcoming anyone to wear their clothes. My hope that this uptick in acceptance and inclusivity of truly all voices continues.

The metaverse is trying to TikTok its way into the hearts and minds of Gen Z and the generation that comes after that or, basically, pretty much anyone who will pay attention to it. There will always be a new digital stage to perform on but one thing will remain the same, the extraordinary power of telling a great story. Be cutting edge, create something we haven’t seen before, put it on a platform we are just starting to understand but, without a story, it all falls apart. 

We are in the business of capturing hearts and minds. It is our job to meaningfully connect people, brands, products and culture. Storytelling will always be front and center, it’s the one thing that ties it and us all together. Without a story, we come up short.

Narrative and storytelling

If a story is compelling, delivers on a universal truth or just makes us laugh or smile for six seconds, then it is a great story and will result in quality creative work, regardless of whether it has been shot on a phone, in someone’s dining room, or by a film crew of 30 people with a six-figure budget.

Never has it been more important to stick to the core of storytelling to help work stand out amid the proliferation of video. The world is full of video; we are living in self-created and curated bubbles and consuming more video content than ever before. But there is a reason for this; it drives engagement like nothing else. 

However, attention is a limited resource, and we need to get the right message in front of the right consumer at the right time. Media is fragmented and attention is at a deficit. Narrative pulls it all together and lets us focus on what story needs to be told, when and where. Plus, AI is helping us understand what’s out there, what is working, and why.

New ways to tell essential stories

The pandemic taught us that stories can be shot on smartphones, or even filmed over Zoom. Who would have thought that a Zoom-created commercial would ever be a thing? But, however they were captured, riveting stories emerged, tapping into universal experiences shared by all of us. This approach to film-making, doing whatever it took to tell a story, helped to revolutionize and re-imagine the standards for quality content the industry had created. And the consumers came along with open minds, willing to engage, watch, digest.

Probably key to this work created in serious times was the notion of authenticity, and it has increasingly become an important component of marketing. Content that is too slick or too branded will be dismissed. The savvy consumer knows when they are being played and information needs to be imparted in a clear, concise manner. Messages can be entertaining and humorous, but most of all they should simply be human. We humans fall for humanity every time and we use story to understand our world and all that happens in it. Authentic storytelling, inclusive of all voices, is what we need in the politically charged, troubled and climate-challenged world we live in. 

The opportunity for creativity and storytelling has never been greater. Our digital, always-on culture means we are consuming content at breakneck speed, which means there are countless opportunities to make powerful work that connects between brands and their audiences. Contrast this with the way work was created 25 years ago, when brands had such limited channels and opportunities, and 2023 is looking pretty good.

While brands may have countless opportunities, as Margaret points out, they also have more competition and more eyes and ears among which they must travel. Bud Light is finding that to be true as they endeavor to change the transgender story to a story much more positive. Today’s storytelling mixed with the right amount of creativity can make for a rather nice  and appetizing recipe. Bon appetite!
 
 

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!

 

Creativity is Productivity

Recently I came upon an article about creativity and productivity by Wall Street Journal best selling book author Scott Young. In it he explores various traits of creative people and how they transition into productivity. Below is an interesting excerpt of his findings.

Nearly two centuries ago, the Belgian sociologist Adolphe Quetelet observed the impressively tight link between personal productivity and creative success.

More recently, Dean Simonton has analyzed the creative output of individuals across many domains and suggests an “equal-odds” rule best describes it: once a creative individual starts publishing in a field, each piece of work they produce has roughly equal odds of world-breaking impact.

 

The Surprising Equipotential of Creative Success

 Consider, for a moment, what this theory rejects:

  1. Accumulating expertise. We might expect steadily improving skills through deliberate practice and a widening knowledge base would lead to increased creative success. Except, this is not what we see outside of the initial preparatory training to enter a career.
  2. Youthful genius. Alternatively, we might expect creativity to decline as thinkers become burdened by old ways of doing things. Were this true, we would predict a reduced rate of creative success over time. But this wasn’t observed in Simonton’s research.

Instead, it looks like the most important determinant of creative success is simply how much work you produce.

 

Creative Success as Randomness

A simple model might capture the essential details of this trend:

  • Be at a knowledge frontier. You can’t contribute anything new if you’re not at the boundary of knowledge for a discipline. In academia, this usually prevents undergraduates from publishing many papers; in technology, this prevents unskilled inventors from obtaining new patents. Other work suggests painters and composers have similar ramp-up periods where their work is initially unremarkable. Getting to this threshold is non-trivial and takes considerable time and training.
  • Idea generation and public reception are randomly determined processes. Once you reach the threshold, further advances have a significant random component. This might be due to the trial-and-error process of finding new advances. Or it might come from the unpredictability of public taste as to what work receives acclaim.

The randomness of creative success favors those who are the most prolific. Price’s Law captures this relationship in scientific output. So in a field with 100 contributors, ten will produce half of the published output. If every paper in the field has a roughly equal probability of being cited, these ten highly prolific authors will capture approximately half of all citations in their field.

 

To Produce Better Work, Increase Your Output

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

Intuitively, it feels like there ought to be a strong quality-quantity trade-off in one’s work. You can make a few excellent things, or you can produce a lot of mediocre work. Certainly there are lots of things that increase productivity at the expense of quality. Typing random words on a page and hitting publish would increase essay count at the cost of writing quality dropping to zero. However, it’s interesting to note that Mr. Young’s most-viewed articles have tended to come from his more prolific writing periods.

We prefer to attach creative success to a combination of innate talent, acquired ability and passionate commitment. Placing such significance on chance appears to cheapen the achievements of great artists, inventors and scientists.

Yet perhaps it’s because we’re so uncomfortable likening creativity to a lottery that this perspective is undervalued. Over a surprisingly wide range of pursuits, creativity is productivity, and we will have more hits if we take more swings.

That may seem quite obvious but one still should not downplay raw talent and determination, as Scott points out.

Scott H. Young, author of WSJ best selling book: Ultralearning www.scotthyoung.com

 

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!

 

The Fuel for Creativity is Fear

A few years back, I presented a talk to several ad clubs about fear and its impact on creativity. Naturally, when I came upon a TED talk about the same topic, I was interested in what was being said. Below are excerpts from a TED talk in 2012 as well as content from a book, The Creative Edge. I find the info still valid today.

Kevin Chesters, CSO and Co-Founder of Harbour, argues that, far from hiding from it, we should be embracing fear as the ‘spidey-sense’ that lets us know when we’re onto something creatively exciting. Chesters is co-author of the book The Creative Edge, which includes a chapter on fear entitled Don’t be Afraid to be Afraid.

Fear is fuel; uttered by Paul Gilding, the former Executive Director of Greenpeace, from the TED stage in 2012.

In his talk, he outlined the apocalyptic future for Earth if we stayed on the current emissions path and asked the audience: “are you scared?” 

He then went on to say that fear was a fantastic fuel for action. If you’re not scared, you’re not paying attention.

Gilding went on to qualify that too much fear is paralyzing. We know this from science. The body floods with adrenaline and too much of that is, literally, a poison. But fear itself is very useful as a trigger for action. From an evolutionary perspective the role of fear was vital. The presence of a threat allows the brain to focus and then concentrate on either fleeing from the threat or eliminating it. It can also, as Gilding said, be a very powerful motivator for taking action to solve problems in life or the world.   

The book, Fear is Fuel by Patrick Sweeney, continues this theme about how useful fear can be as a positive force for change in life and business. He points out that fear is one of the most pervasive emotions in the human psyche, but is probably the least understood or studied. According to Chesters, the book is a fascinating, contrarian ride in establishing fear as the path to optimal living. 

Sweeney says: “Most of us know fear as the unwanted force that drives phobias, anxieties, unhappiness, and inhibits self-actualization. Ironically, fear is the underlying phenomenon that heightens awareness and optimizes physical performance, and can drive ambition, courage, and success. Harnessing fear can heighten emotional intelligence and bring success to every aspect of your life.”

Where fear is most useful though is in the world of creativity. Humans suffer from two rather unhelpful phobias when it comes to creativity, especially when one realizes that the dictionary definition of creativity is simply different or original thinking. 

The first is neophobia – the fear of the new. This was a rather useful thing to have 50,000 years ago, when anything new was likely to get you killed or seriously damaged. The second phobia is xenophobia – the fear of the different. Humans feel unsure when presented with something outside of the usual. Again, it was helpful in 50,000BC, but is less useful now, with fewer woolly mammoths about.

When humans (whether client or agency, planner or creative) are faced with something new, it triggers our ‘fight or flight’ response at a sub-conscious level. Everything in our evolutionary spidey-sense is telling us that we should shun it, ignore it or kill it stone dead before it kills us. When you consider that the dictionary definition of creativity is about doing new things, you start to see a problem emerging.

And, anyhow, you really shouldn’t be scared these days. After all, the negative outcome in a business context won’t be life or death. It is highly improbable it will ever involve any physical harm. There is lots of research to show that, in the context of a safe environment, being scared can be incredibly positive. Good scary. The body’s natural ‘fight or flight’ mechanism can be hijacked when we feel safe; the natural chemicals that our body releases when it is scared can be put to good use. It can even be pleasurable. There is a lot to learn about this in Margee Kerr’s brilliant book Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear.

The thing is, fear is a brilliant signifier of creative brilliance. It’s a fantastic lightening rod for detecting whether your idea is different and new. That thing you’re feeling isn’t fear, it’s a creativity detector. Fear isn’t just fuel for creativity; it is the accelerator too. When you have an idea and it makes you scared, or you start to worry, then you shouldn’t walk away from it, you should run towards it as fast as your little shaking legs can carry you. It’s a good sign that you may be onto something category redefining or, at least, career enhancing!

Everyone from every area of business needs to allow fear to play a truly positive role in their lives, to find ways to override their natural cowardly custard instincts. It’s time to reframe fear as excitement. 

Thinking about fear in a different way enables you to act differently and effect a positive outcome. Are you actually scared, or are you just excited in an anticipatory way? Next time you feel nervous, try to appreciate that this is a great thing. This is your body and brain getting ready to fire on all cylinders. Fear is the best detector you have for knowing if your idea is a good one, and for making sure it’s a new one. 

So, don’t be afraid to be afraid.

 

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!

 

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!

Can AI and Creativity Coexist? An AI Followup

Recently we have been hearing a great deal about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on society. Last week this blog posted some of that information and this week shares with you a followup of sorts. Below is part of an interview with two professors from UCLA, Jacob Foster and Danny Snelson, and their take on AI’s influence on us. Thanks to Jonathan Riggs for spearheading the effort.

 

One of the Writers Guild of America’s demands in its current strike is for studios to regulate the use of artificial intelligence for creating, writing and rewriting TV and movie scripts and other material.

That might have sounded like a far-fetched concern just a few years ago. But with increasingly sophisticated, easily accessed AI tools already making inroads in other creative fields — literary magazines and fine arts competitions have lately had to contend with a glut of AI-generated submissions — there is a very real concern that expensive, time-intensive human creative labor could soon be outsourced to machines.

Higher education has reached an inflection point, too, now that AI tools can pass graduate-level exams and write serviceable essays at the touch of a button. Already, UCLA has posted a faculty guide and held a virtual town hall on the subject.

“We in the humanities have long thought about these kinds of questions, especially at the experimental limits of what constitutes creativity,” said Danny Snelson, a UCLA assistant professor of English and a writer, editor and archivist. “Lately I’ve been thinking about this artwork by Robert Rauschenberg from 1961 in which he sent a one-line telegram: ‘This Is a Portrait of Iris Clert if I Say So.’ It’s a perfect rejoinder to where some of the debates about creativity and AI are right now.”

Jacob Foster is a UCLA associate professor of sociology, computational social scientist and co-director of the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute, which unites scholars to explore cognition in all forms. He also has pondered the revolution that appears to be unfolding.

“Something terrible and amazing is about to happen, but no one has a full idea what these systems are capable of — or an entirely clear picture of how they do the things that they do,” he said.

In a joint interview, Foster and Snelson spoke about how chatbots could be used in teaching, offered historic analogs for the current AI explosion and opined about whether technology is actually capable of creativity. Answers have been edited slightly for length and clarity.

 

Are you excited or concerned about where AI is headed — or both?

Jacob Foster: I’m excited, given my broad interest in how complex wholes become smarter than their parts. I agree with the school of thought that says AI creates opportunities to get at a more fundamental understanding of — and clarity about — things like intelligence and creativity.

Danny Snelson                                                        David Esquivel/UCLA

Danny Snelson: I’m tremendously excited watching these developments unfold, but in a physiological sense — an excited state of fight or flight. Things are moving faster than we can understand them. These developments change things in ways that matter. The effects of algorithmic bias are real and the harms of technological development are never equally distributed.

Foster: To that point, I recently asked ChatGPT to write short plays about the nature of creativity. Until I explicitly told it that the expert on creativity had to be a woman, it always came up with a story about a singular male genius interacting with a female muse or with a female petitioner seeking his advice.

When you read the technical report for GPT, they have worked very hard to tamp down on problematic responses — for example, using reinforcement learning with human feedback — but even this neutral prompt resulted in a gender-biased response. AI is a mirror of the things we’ve written and the stories we’ve told, and that becomes a much bigger deal when it’s potentially determining who gets jobs or certain insurance rates.

I’m helping to organize a program at our Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics on the mathematics of intelligences, and trying to develop the theoretical foundations of AI is obviously a big motivation. I don’t think we have the resources within social theory to think about the possible rearrangements of society that such technologies could enable. We don’t know how to deal with social change that’s happening so quickly and pervasively.

 

Is AI capable of creativity?

Foster: We often reserve the notion of creativity for the capacity to generate interesting, novel things. But the contrarian part of me wants to argue when people say, “Large language models aren’t creative; they’re just putting things together.” Humans do that, too — look at many of the papers produced by students or academics!

Snelson: These systems reveal just how formally consistent most writing is. The more generic the formats that these predictive models simulate, the more successful they are. These developments push us to recognize the normative functions of our forms and potentially transform them.

Jacob Foster                                                           David Esquivel/UCLA

Foster: I think of the short film “Sunspring,” directed by my friend Oscar Sharp, which came out in 2016 and was the first movie written by AI. The script itself is only borderline coherent — this was a much earlier iteration of the technology — but it becomes something much more elevated when interpreted by the human actors, director and viewers.

Snelson: William S. Burroughs would cut up different texts and smash them together to produce a kind of surrealist energy. And he said this beautiful thing, which is that by using this cut-up method, you’re cutting into the present for the future to leak out. Right now, we have an opportunity to think about these new forms of fluid, coherent, algorithmic writing and how we might cut into them to see what they might reveal.

 

Can ChatGPT actually be an asset in teaching at the university level?

Snelson: In my Intro to Comics course, my students collectively wrote a full book in the first week, before they knew anything about the subject, using ChatGPT. I think it’s useful for them to experiment with the essay, and then for the rest of the course we instead use comics formats to produce new knowledge about comics.

We want our students to use modes of critical thinking to navigate the world around them, which now includes these AI tools. Experimenting and playing with them will prepare students, hopefully, to think critically in a technological environment that’s always changing and shifting.

Foster: That’s a very helpful tonic for the prejudice that the essay is a necessary gym to build the skills we want students to have. It’s of a type with my faintly ludicrous “old person” attitude that me learning how to use card catalogs made me uniquely capable to deal with the internet age.

Snelson: Right now, for example, there’s a moral panic in academe about essays. Having taught the fundamentals of argumentation, evidence and rhetoric for over a decade, I can tell you essay writing is not a mysterious formula. The essay has stood strong for a while now; it has limitations that other modes — some of which are still to be invented — may yet be better at when it comes to inspiring students to develop the kind of critical thought needed to address generative algorithms.

Foster and Snelson chatting in the UCLA Court of Sciences                                                                            David Esquivel/UCLA

 

How will we look back on this moment in time?

Snelson: If the history of major technological inventions is any indicator — I’m thinking here of the printing press and the internet — we’ll look back at this time as a moment of confusion and flux with a huge amount of widespread misunderstanding, and, hopefully, with unexpected avenues toward a better future.

It makes me think of this great anecdote by Rudy Rucker, who helped invent the genre of cyberpunk fiction in the 1980s. At some point, he woke up with this universal computing device in his hand that could access all of human knowledge while still living in the extreme disparities of contemporary America and he realized that a cyberpunk future was already well underway.

Foster: In some sense, this is a generalization and acceleration of the experience humans have always had negotiating a world of vast forces far beyond themselves.

As folks like the computer scientist Danny Hillis and mathematician Norbert Wiener have remarked, we’ve been dealing with artificial intelligence for centuries, in the form of corporations and bureaucracies that take human beings as their parts and turn them into vast, impersonal collective machines. Will we be able to tame or resist these new machines? I hope so.

 

On a side note: The Houston Area Apple Users Group will meet on May 20, 2023, with the main meeting topic being AI Chatbots. We will be comparing Google Bard, Microsoft Bing, and OpenAI ChatGPT. This meeting will be held via Zoom. 

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!