The Only Thing Changing Advertising Faster Than AI Is Time Itself

Luckily, we have creativity on our side.

By George Ellis, Creative Director

Nothing lasts forever.

Deep in our hearts, we all know this applies to advertising the same way it does to everything else. We look at our industry over the last twenty years and it confirms that yes, everything changes. Digital supplanted traditional. Smartphones disrupted digital. Then social ate it all.

The last few years have hammered the point home the hardest in the form of AI, mass layoffs, super-mergers and extreme unease in the industry.

At least that’s how it feels if you read LinkedIn on any given Monday.

The reality is that advertising was always going to change. It’s not currently dead, as some claim. But it may be someday. When will the last TV commercial air? 2040? 2060? How about the final spread in a physical newspaper?

These things are going to happen.

But even then, does a final TV commercial or print ad signal anything beyond just the death of a particular format? As for the industry at large, perhaps what used to be a few thousand ad agencies will turn into a few million creators, freelance creatives, strategists, in-house brand groups, boutiques, hybrid-product-incubator thingies and who knows what else.

That’s just the nature of life and business. So when people talk about the existential threat of AI to advertising, I tend to think beyond this latest tech blip. Maybe it’s because I’m a sci-fi novelist on the side, but I look at the future and it occurs to me that a lot of the shows and books have it wrong. Ads aren’t going to be everywhere in the form of building-sized holograms and AR glasses. Or if they are, that will just be a phase.

It seems most likely “ads” will be replaced by brand expressions that are beyond the 22nd century equivalent of a billboard or a humanoid robot companion spewing suggestions at us. Those futures are limited by what we can currently imagine. Thirty years ago, exactly zero people on the planet predicted social influencers as (a) a thing or (b) a major force in advertising. So thirty years from now, who knows what selling a product or service will look like. It won’t be a tagline in the lower third section of a print ad. I don’t think. I guess it could be.

All we can do is try to evolve creative in the way we want it to exist. I love companies like Superconnector Studios that believe entertainment is the way. Liquid Death is all about the brand experience. Agencies like Mischief constantly hijack media to make noise. (That’s my impression of those companies anyway)

Maybe if we spend more time looking forward to new solutions and not backward at what we miss, we’ll see better alternatives to the AI doom and gloom. We humans can still shape our own future. We are not Matrix-style coppertops just yet.

For me, considering the future is a fun exercise. If I’m writing a book set in 2084, what does the marketing world look like? Are brands loud and proud, or do people want utilitarian solutions? Have ads been outlawed, embraced or replaced altogether by some other form of mass media we can’t yet fathom? Logos. Still a thing? How about jingles?

Now, pull it back to just ten years from now.

If we really think chatbots will be ubiquitous and slop (even refined slop) will be everywhere, then where are the opportunities to build brands in that ecosystem? Like, what if the main theme of advertising in 2036 is brands fighting to be the most authentic. Or perhaps AI as a whole will have flopped and brand-funded episodics are the rage. Or social platforms change in some way we can’t predict and 95% of ad spend is focused there.

Apps! Everything could be apps and jingles!

In addition to our ad agency, Bandolier Media, my partners and I own a coffee company. And every time we release a new variety, I think to myself: is this product or brand or advertising? Maybe it’s all three. Messy and complicated, mushed together.

“Great,” you may be thinking. “Where do we go from here? This guy doesn’t have any solutions, either.”

Like everyone else, I don’t. I just have the questions and the knowledge that our industry and careers WILL change. Parts of what we love about advertising will cease to exist. Other parts will remain. That’s pretty cool, if you ask me. Yes, I’ll miss making big commercials for the Olympics and the educational benefits of being part of a large heritage agency with defined roles and mentorship opportunities. I won’t miss the politics and profit-addiction of those agencies. I will, however, be excited about problems so big and gnarly like AI that we need to harness all our creative juices and humanity to overcome them. It’s the toughest brief of all time: conquer time itself and the change it inevitably foists upon us.

Change is the challenge. Not AI. Not social. Not holding companies. It’s all those things together. And the best tool at our disposal to shape the coming years is still creativity.

That and jingles. Those will probably never die.