GenAI is here, Adland. Are you panicking, prepping or producing?
What looked like science fiction to me two years ago is now fact--how'd we get here, and what's the learning curve look like?
We just launched another AI-assisted video at the consumer healthcare company I lead marketing for. They are hardly state of the AI art, but they’re already delivering better results than any of our expensive “old school” TV spots, and we get better at it with every video we produce.
With our agency, we still write the scripts, source stock video and existing brand assets, and struggle with the final edit and voiceover quality. But there’s a fast-growing community of content producers WAY out ahead of us getting a lot closer to mind-boggling quality, quantity and results. How did this accelerate so quickly?
Two years ago, a few people saw it coming
In 2023, a team of Persian and Slovenian professors, Marko Vidrih and Shiva Mayahi, boiled a large body of research and casework down into their paper, “Generative AI-Driven Storytelling: A New Era for Marketing.” They made a strong case for what generative AI is now starting to deliver at scale:
Enhanced, real-time and actionable consumer insights
Instant target identification, re-targeting, and creative & media optimization
Precision, sequenced, automated messaging along key consumer journey touchpoints
Real-time, massive offer and creative personalization at scale
Improved customer engagement and conversion rates”
“As technology evolves, we foresee its application in real-time storytelling, where narratives adapt on-the-fly based on real-time user interactions, integrating generative AI with augmented and virtual reality–immersive brand experiences that were hitherto deemed science fiction.”
Crazy, right?
The speed of AI adoption has been extraordinary, and every AdLand practitioner has had to grapple with their own role in this new world.
As NYU’s Scott Galloway likes to say,
“AI is not going to take your job —but people who know how to use it might.”
Case in point: Malka Media, who I worked with last year on a major brand storytelling project, has been building generative AI capabilities for years. I reached out to Malka’s Co-CEO, Bill Davaris, for an update last week, and he said,
“We’re using GenAI in many ways now—specifically, to:
Create custom ad generators and agent avatars that auto generate personalized content at scale
Turn SEO articles into videos
Build virtual sets and worlds in conjunction with green screen shoots
Create timely content in hours to respond rapidly to news”
The most dramatic change to me in these last few years has been on the content and creative side, where AI may actually drive faster transformation than in the more expected analytical, financial and logistics roles.
McKinsey predicts “artisans” will experience the fastest transformations
McKinsey just published “Superagency in the Workplace.” Check out the upper right-hand corner of the below graph where the “artisan” teams sit. McKinsey sees AI evolving creative work faster than most manual and process-focused work:
This week’s creative horror story is Hayao Miyazaki’s, the 84-year-old master storyteller of “Spirited Away” fame. Turns out every major AI model is now allowing people to transform any image into the unique style that Miyazaki spent his entire career developing. It’s now available to anyone at the touch of a keyboard.
Truth, transparency and the ethics of AI
While fully AI-generated content is fast moving from flawed to flawless, we’re dealing with the ethical ickiness that still underlies all of AI, as the Miyazaki fiasco just proved with the AI-cloning of his life’s work:
Copyright infringement and data-sourcing opacity
Multi-level AI reingestion/regurgitation
Deep-fake dangers looming larger every election season
Outputs still deeply shaped by entrenched human bias
The dearth of proficient, AI-trained professionals (yes, we’re short on well-trained humans!)
China drops a bomb
Are we really expected to believe that China’s DeepSeek LLM model didn’t steal its way into blowing everybody’s minds? I sure don’t.
Karma’s a bitch here—the first LLMs are being sued for stealing content, then DeepSeek steals THEIR content and delivers quality output for virtually no start-up costs. And as each AI model gobbles outputs from other LLMs, original source data recedes into obscurity while trust continues to erode.
Yeah, but are any AI-generated videos “good creative” yet? And does it even matter?
Chadix (via MediaPost, link below) has a good take on last year’s “Best/Worst AI Ads (According To Some Humans).” Cruise around that piece and see what you think:
Recently, a video getting a lot of buzz is the new PUMA ad that AdAge says was “produced with virtually no human touch…and hundreds of AI agents.” Tyler Pierce, the ECD and director I worked with at Malka last year, has a sharp take on it:
“While it’s cool they did that, what’s missing is the writing. None of the images really build on each other to create a story arc, and the aesthetic of it serves no role. What’s the ethos of the brand? What’s PUMA’s vibe? This is every sports cliché, back to back.”
And there’s the rub—the tools are incredible, and improving every day, but it still takes great strategic and creative minds to make great work happen. And I’ll call myself out here—the AI-assisted work I’m just learning to develop with our team may be delivering strong results, but we’re nowhere near “great creative” yet.
Does that matter? I think so. Just think about Adland’s transitions from print to radio to TV to the internet and social—each was threatening, disruptive, but ultimately emotionally engaging, brand building and profitable for all parties when the mediums were mastered.
But the LLMs are still trippin’
The swagger with which the LLMs are still hallucinating, however, is breathtaking.
My wife and I just finished season one of Showtime’s CIA thriller “The Agency.” Highly recommended, by the way. But the plot twists were bewildering, so we asked ChatGPT for a summary, and after four laughably idiotic attempts, including insisting on citing the wrong show after repeated corrections, we told ol’ Chat to just stick to ‘shrooms for its virtual salads.
The key lesson, folks: stay skeptical out there…
Meanwhile, Google’s hellbent on automating the entire marketing and advertising process.
If Google is to be believed, the entire marketing and e-commerce process, from insights and planning through creative development and execution, media planning, buying and measurement, and real-time personalization and optimization of creative at scale is all just around the corner. Below is the current Google “menu” of AI-supported services:
Down the road a piece, I’m not sure what the role of humans will be in all this…but one thing I’m sure of is how fast we’re gearing up for this, around the world.
Canva and Morning Consult just conducted a global AI adoption survey, and it’s clear how important AI literacy is becoming across every role in marketing:
Now let’s get real: video production job losses will be steep.
The video generating options coming onstream for full-up AGI production are multiplying quickly, and the net losses in coming years in “traditional” video production roles will be huge. If you’re looking for help, check out Google’s latest shopping list of 2024’s best AI video generators:
We used to spend $125,000 A SECOND on beer TV ad production
At Backer & Spielvogel in 1989, our team shot two introductory Miller Genuine Draft Light spots in Alaska and Utah for about $7,500,000 in today’s dollars. (you can view them below).
We ran them for 3 months and moved on, never sure how effective they were.
Go figure.
Here’s an AI video that just fooled me—and the lesson was emotional, not technical.
I lived in Honolulu from age 20-26. My wife Liz grew up there, and we have deep emotional connections to the city and state.
An unprecedented storm system recently dumped a record one-day rainfall of 4-6” across the islands, and a reel popped up on Instagram and quickly upset my wife and me. Most embarrassing? The second line of the caption says “Dis is AI,” and we never got there—we were just mesmerized and upset by the video. (Our kids had to point out the fakery—hate it when that happens.)
Liz attended day camp inside that crater, her high school still sits at the foot of Diamondhead, and we’ll be staying close to Diamondhead when we go back to Honolulu in May. No wonder this upset—and embarrassed—us.
So I’ll stay skeptical, keep learning, and continue to use AI every day for a greater variety of tasks. Even though I’m a relative rookie, I’m loving the process.
I’d love to know what you think about all this, what you’re learning, and how AI is impacting your personal and professional life.
What’s your story?
Notes and Sources
https://www.bridgeandvali.com/
Generative AI-Driven Storytelling: A New Era for Marketing [Cornell arXiv]
[Sora and competition round-up, 1//19/25] https://www.androidpolice.com/sora-openai-text-to-video-explainer/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[Coca Cola 2024 holiday ad controversy] https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/drink/cocacola-responds-to-backlash-over-aigenerated-christmas-ad/news-story/e8af941b887ae81d03077f6628a3df13?utm_source=chatgpt.com
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGeRlCwot8/tYpUysRzVcZA7nv_wZPB1A/view?utm_content=DAGeRlCwot8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h387a8920b7#12
[AMT Lab – AI impact on Moviemaking]
https://amt-lab.org/blog/2024/9/a-new-era-of-ai-in-the-entertainment-industry
[Canva » The State Of Marketing And AI Report]
https://www.canva.com/design/DAGeRlCwot8/tYpUysRzVcZA7nv_wZPB1A/view?utm_content=DAGeRlCwot8&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h387a8920b7#8
[MediaPosts’s Best/Worst AI Ads] https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/403413/bestworst-ai-ads-according-to-some-humans.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=readmore&utm_campaign=137708&hashid=A5fZvpGdRfyWgET8vOfczQ
https://adage.com/article/digital-marketing-ad-tech-news/puma-uses-ai-agents-create-ad-agency-monks/2605866
https://www.restack.io/p/ai-storytelling-answer-ai-news-generator-cat-ai?utm_source=chatgpt.com
[MGD Light Moab]
[MGD Light Alaska]
[Google marketing suite]
[Diamondhead flooded]
Bravo, dad!
You’re now part of my must-have AI arsenal Tom - thank you!