Focused Futures: How AI is truly influencing the Creative Agency World

This Week's Feature: How AI Is Truly Influencing the Creative Agency World

In this episode of Focused Futures, we're excited to welcome Patrick ‘Sully’ Sullivan, a brand advertising innovator with over two decades of experience in creative leadership roles at Ogilvy Paris, Integer Group/TBWA, Marriott International, imre and more.

As a life-long Creator, Sully’s latest focus has been helping brand marketers get smart on Generative AI strategies that will super charge their business. Let’s dive into the who, what, when, where, and why driving the massive shifts currently taking shape within the agency world.      

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Q: Let’s begin with a lay of land, from what you’ve seen, what are the key areas where AI is having an immediate effect on the creative agency world right now?  

I’d say what we’re seeing right now is what I’d call ‘the quickening’:  the expedited death and rebirth of the ‘traditional’ creative process. Not to be overly dramatic or anything, but obviously this is a full-scale disruption in not only the ways we’ve previously summoned ideas from the ether, but also have given them form, function and meaning.

I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t acknowledge the pure existential dread that’s been wafting in the wind lately. Good, bad, Skibidi Ohio, who knows…but what marketers used to ‘do for a living’ has forever changed. And I’d say the cumulative effect of the constant barrage of this topic in our news feed is compounding the overarching sentiment that so many of us are feeling… that the train has left the station and I’m not on it. Fortunately, though, nothing could be farther from the truth. And it’s really what’s inspired me to build and launch this educational workshop series for marketers who want to get their bearings in this brave new world and take advantage of what is truly a sink or swim moment in their careers.

‍Q: It feel like there’s this sort of all or nothing mentality in the agency world, in other words the infusion of AI is going to save the model or doom it; as with anything the reality probably rests somewhere in between, what’s your take?  

One thing’s for sure: it’s going to blow this whole thing to smithereens. JK, well sort of. I mean, how could it not? In the future, what we’re all currently experiencing will colloquially be referred to as ‘the early days’. The miners have found gold up in them thar hills, ya know? But to all the fear mongering Chicken Littles saying the sky is falling… they are absolutely missing the point. Change has always been the currency of our world. It’s the foundational energy of it all. ButI can totally relate to the anxiety creep. It’s easy to get fazed by the sheer speed and scale through which it’s all actually changing. There’s just so much churn in the system. That’s why having a crisp and clean strategy to approaching Gen AI education and implementation is essential to keeping your teams from totally getting lost in the sauce.

Q: Talk to me about the key watch outs when implementing an AI creative mindset at a modern-day agency?

The single biggest ‘watch out’ would be looking at this thing as just another ‘digital transformation’ that will come and go. That’s probably the most common misconception that I’ve heard. This isn’t about technology. This is about communication. This is about leveraging artificial intelligence to supercharge human intelligence. And the natural communication skills that most marketers have in spades will actually be the skeleton key that will unlock new modalities of creation. In a certain way, it’s the same thing that futurists like Ray Kurzweil have been pointing at for years. These are the early stages of the Singularity. Of self-actualized intelligence. Of thriving in the slipstream behind the shooting star. For me, that mindset shift has been essential, and it’s completely informed my approach to educating people on ways to leverage these tools to do career-defining work.

Q: Do you see this evolution of technology as the ultimate force to even the playing field amongst the industry by creating parody or an accelerator for the most savvy and experimental?  

As in almost any movement – whether it be an artistic, economic, or a philosophical  one – you have the progressives and you have the purists. And it’s really been the latter group that have been the most skeptical and slow to adapt. To paraphrase Dylan, they’re spending too much time ‘criticizing what they don’t understand’ and too little time getting excited about the prospects. Of course, in a certain way, that’s human nature. It’s a survival mechanism. But when you’re able to set the ego of experience aside and take a hard look at what’s coming on the horizon line, it’s easy to see that these platforms will be the nitro in the tank for the truly talented folks in our business. Conversely, in the coming years ahead, it’s very possible that one of the outcomes will be a much smaller yet much savvier creative community. With the ability to be exponentially more prolific in the work, it’s fair to assume that the small creative agencies of the future will deliver the same level of work that agencies ten times their size do. That shift has already started to happen in pockets and will be soon be the norm.

Q: You’ve worked at some of the top storied names in the brand and agency world. From Ogilvy Paris, Leo Burnett, J. Walter Thompson toMarriott International, how do you see such traditional and globally matrixed organizations adapting to what’s already here?

Oh man, it’s really going to expose the fragility of those ecosystems and business models. Leaders will need to rethink how they build high performing teams. There will be a flattening of the org and a democratization of the tools of invention. For Creatives, it’ll be essential to master these tools in a way that allows one to keep the edge. If you think your clients are backseat art directors now, just wait until they learn these tools themselves.

And in the same breath though, the expected acceleration of the creative process will have serious repercussions for agencies whose models are essentially based on selling time. That business model is already on its last legs and Gen AI will deliver the killing blow. Perhaps the silver lining there is also the death of timesheets. Send thoughts and prayers!

Q: As a creative at heart, what are the possibilities ofAI influence that keeps you up at night and in turn what’s the biggest inspiration?

Intellectual property issues is a big one that keeps me up at night.  I think I speak for a lot of my creative colleagues when I express serious concerns about the way our work is used to train these large language models. Big tech has been taking big liberties with our work. And I think that extends outside our community to the general public as well. Social media profiles and their assets are absolutely going to be used to train AI, no matter what you ‘opt out’ of. It’s part of the user agreement. It’s a really slippery slope and will inevitably lead to a wave of identity theft in the future as the lines between what’s real and unreal blurs beyond comprehension.

As far as inspiration, I think back to when I first started out in this business. I was absolutely obsessed with learning how to concept ‘big ideas’. I was a sponge for methodologies, creative frameworks, brainstorming techniques, and all that good stuff. For me, it wasn’t just about scoring the ‘big idea’. I wanted to understand how to get there. Anyway, I remember one of my earliest mentors told me that if I really wanted to uncover something extraordinary, the key was actually ‘digging shallow holes’. At first blush, the advice felt totally counter-intuitive. After all, I wanted to do the deep work, not skim the surface of the expected. Well, it turns out that the wisdom behind ‘digging shallow holes’ is that it allows you to very quickly try on a few ideas on for size without getting stuck. The approach allows one tokeep the thinking kinetic and spontaneous. And then once you’ve dug enough of those shallow holes, you’re way more likely to push through those cliched first thoughts and find the really juicy bits hiding deep under the surface.

With that said, I think the most powerful influential effect that Gen AI will provide is the ability to dig shallow holes at an unprecedented scale and speed. In essence, we’ll all be able to plow through the cruddy ideas way faster. This ‘enhanced’ approach to woodshedding will ultimately involve a level of vetting that most of us have never been able to access before. Just imagine in the not-so-distant future that everyone on your team has their own LLM to tap into, with all the data, insights, and brand strategy built in. And the interface (think custom GPTs), will mirror your writing style and taste level. Consider then the sheer ability to scale yourself as aCreative and the impact that your unique brand of creativity can have. It’s like the old joke of ‘I wish I could clone myself’. Well, in a way, you soon will.

Q: Will the creative leadership roles in today’s agencies get harder or easier because of these evolutions…or both?  

Harder in the short-term. Easier in the long-term. In the current context, as a Creative leader, your ability to deliver the goods is directly correlated to the talent on your bench. It’s an operational maxim in agency life and why the sagest Creative leaders only hire people who are better than they are. Looking at the future of creative leadership through this lens,I’d imagine that the unlimited firepower that Gen AI provides will make leaders exponentially more effective because they will no longer be limited to a finite talent bench. They’ll not only be virtual Creative Directors (there already are), but they’ll be custom-built for each and every project.

Q: Hot takes and innuendo? Predictions? 

Spicy! I like it. I have two thoughts. One is… just likeOrange is the new Black, Copywriters will be the new Art Directors. That’s already been happening with the early iterations of these text to image and text to video tools. The liberal arts majors of the world will be able to flex those excellent communication skills and will undoubtedly be the biggest winners in this revolution. Secondly, I think about comparisons to the rise of the social media and celebrity culture. Just as people have been (and still do) scramble and climb to get their 15 minutes of fame, the citizens in the post-Gen AI era will be scrambling for 15 minutes of anonymity. ‘Anonymity’ will soon become one of the most valuable currencies on the planet.

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