- AI has the potential to disrupt ad agencies by automating creative work.
- Three top creative directors told Business Insider they were using AI to win more work.
- They said they were using the technology to supercharge pitches and expand their services.
Artificial intelligence threatens to upend the ad agency sector. Ever-improving tools are shortening the time it takes to produce logos, online ads, and even movies.
In the soon-to-be-published book “AI First” by Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is quoted as saying, “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, and at almost no cost be handled by AI.”
The agency world thinks differently. Business Insider spoke with three top creative directors who said that AI is fueling a creative boom and that the technology doesn’t portend an ad agency extinction event. Instead, they’re using AI to more efficiently pitch big ideas and to expand their services into areas such as content optimization. It’s Don Draper from “Mad Men,” on steroids.
“AI can be an incredible creative tool, and if we keep getting in our own way of fearing it, it’ll only date us,” said Elena Knox, an executive creative director at BBDO New York, which works for clients including Starbucks, SAP, and St-Germain.
Knox said she was using AI to sell ambitious concepts to clients. She and her team used tools such as Midjourney to bring to life a vision of an office where tree growth exploded into it before landing the viewer in a forest in the form of a GIF. It convinced the client to invest a multimillion-dollar production budget for shoots in New Zealand and Bulgaria.
“Before you would have had to spend hours comping that, and the image wouldn’t have existed,” Knox said. “In AI, we were able to make a quick GIF of it and show the clients: This is what we want to film.”
In a separate pitch, Knox and her team used AI to create a realistic voiceover that convinced the client they needed to invest in that particular celebrity. In yesteryear, the agency might have needed to create a multipage pitch deck to showcase why the celebrity was relevant, include their latest movies and social media followings, and perhaps call in the celebrity or a voice impersonator for testing.
“What AI allowed me to do was show the client what it felt like,” Knox said. “There’s nothing like hearing the thing and being like, well, I can’t unhear that.”