25 years of change in advertising, and why AI feels different
In the 25 years I've been in advertising, I've seen the creative process go through some massive changes. The Creative Directors who mentored me in my junior years would have seen even more.
Dinosaurs, that lot.
When I started, stock library books formed towers between my desk and my art director's, each full of coloured bookmarks marking possible images for different briefs. We'd spend entire afternoons in libraries researching subjects or we'd head to the bookshop and buy everything we could find on the broader topic of a brief. The agency library was a thing of wonder.
The monthly Shots VHS reels became DVDs. The DVDs became Blu-rays. Then Shots went online. Stock footage arrived. Music libraries replaced hours spent sitting with composers, listening to different interpretations of a score, trying to find the perfect fit. I probably miss that part the most.
Digital photography meant art directors no longer spent hours hunched over a lightbox with one of those little glass bubble thingamajigs, poring over strips of negs looking for the perfect shot.
My blue bubble iMac G3 was replaced by a slim white laptop, which meant I could work anywhere, as long as I could find somewhere to plug in the dongle. My boffin-sized dictionary and thesaurus no longer leaned against my monitor.
Adding “www.insertbrandnamehere.co.nz” at the end of all my radio and TV scripts swallowed up precious time for the idea.
Lürzer's Archive and awards annuals, The One Show, D&AD and Communication Arts that we used to salivate over and were all carefully labelled by the CCD so the juniors wouldn't pilfer them, began to gather dust.
Google meant that everything we needed to know about a topic was only seconds away.
Mood boards that once took a day to put together could suddenly be created in minutes. It became quicker to mock up an ad scamp in Photoshop and Illustrator than it took to talk to the actual illustrator sitting opposite us.
Sorry about that.
Hours in the cutting room and the spray booth, mounting presentation boards onto foam board, gradually disappeared. Printed presentations became the exception rather than the rule.
Sending VHS tapes, DVDs, DATs, artwork and artwork masters by courier gradually gave way to email and file-sharing services.
Then Zoom, Teams and Google Meet made distance almost irrelevant. Suddenly we could collaborate with someone on the other side of the world instead of flying over for a presentation.
Every one of those changes felt, for a moment, like we were losing something. Looking back, we were always gaining more access, more speed and more freedom. Sometimes it felt like we'd lost part of the craft and that deadlines were simply being compressed, but the craft never disappeared. It just moved somewhere else.
Then AI arrived.
Like a bullet train we knew was coming, but was too fast to see arrive.
Unlike the other shifts, this one feels different. It isn't just another piece of technology arriving in the creative department. It feels like an intruder. For the first time, technology isn't changing how we bring ideas to life. It looks like it's trying to make them for us. Suddenly, anyone can write, art direct, design or make an ad.
Or so it seems.
Every one of these advances has made creativity more accessible. None of them has made creative judgement less valuable. In fact, I think it's done the opposite. AI can produce ideas till the cows come home, but it can't tell you which one deserves to exist.
We've adapted to every new-fangled invention that's wandered into the creative department over the last 25 years, and we'll adapt to AI too. The tools will continue to evolve, just as they always have, but knowing what's bad, what's good and what's great has always been our job.
And it still is.
