Faster, cheaper, better

There seems to be a lot of panic on social media about the impact of generative AI on the creative industry. This was triggered by Sam Altman being quoted as saying that generative AI will do "95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today."

Immediately and understandably, many people’s first reaction was that this sounds like a race to the bottom, where the primary currency is 'fast and cheap' as agencies struggle to cut costs and survive.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There are some really interesting alternative strategic choices ahead. There are at least three ways to leverage the 'AI dividend': Faster, Cheaper, Better - or any combination of these.

No doubt some agencies will go down the 'cheaper and faster' route, but I don't imagine they all will. Primarily because if I was a client, I would be happy to pay the same budget for work that can be executed twice as fast with 5 times the impact. That's a f***ing great ROI. I would rather that, than get the same result I currently do, for 20% of the cost.

Why? Well, think about it. If generative AI unleashes a flood of books, podcasts, movies, blogs - and advertising - all generated in seconds for peanuts, the main limiting factor isn't cost of creation any more, it's the waking hours of human brains and eyeballs to consume that torrent.

So it's much more valuable to have a smaller number of 'high impact' executions with lasting value, than a greater number of 'standard impact' executions with momentary value.

The future post-AI world actually favours quality over quantity, not because of the technology itself nor the companies using it, but because of the human factor of shoppers, users and customers.

So I think 'faster and better' will trump 'faster and cheaper'. But I do also believe that 'business as usual' will be dead in the water, probably faster than we currently think.

One final point on 'craft'. Anyone who thinks that getting great results from an LLM is 'craft-free' hasn't really been using it at scale. It actually takes a lot of work, even when you're good at it. And even in the long-term, I think there will always be a role for human finesse and creative direction - although admittedly the number of roles required in the industry may shrink overall.

To counterbalance this, new jobs will inevitably come - and I don't mean prompt engineers. Think about all the roles that were created across tech, creative, delivery, analytics and more as the internet and then mobile era took off. And all the software and startups that came into being. I'm genuinely excited to see what's coming.

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash