Just about every advertising creative worth any damned thing at all believes three things down to the nubs of their former fingernails:

Agency life is unfair. This is one of those “res ipsa” things. Unarguable.

Work long and hard enough and that career-making idea will come. Dubious, but maybe marginally defensible per Woody Allen’s zing that 90% of life is a cliché.

Last, there’s our shared article of faith that better creative makes for more effective advertising; a point that been surprisingly controversial ever since Whipple started screeching about TP on TV.

Once upon a time, generally after I’d done something particularly boneheaded—filling the garage with toxic fumes from a “slightly” modified Gilbert chemistry set comes to mind—my mother would recite, “Sorry doesn’t feed the dinosaurs.”

For the first time in forever—or at least the year and change since ChatGPT-3 hit the buzzworks, there’s actually something in AI-land that doesn’t come with a wisp of vapor, a hint of future-forward bait, and the distinct odor of fish. It’s called Perplexity A.I., although I think it could be more properly tagged as CliffsNotes on digital steroids.

For all the waxing and pontificating about AI—and we’re well past gigapixels by now—there’s one item nobody seems much dialed into.

Born at the intersection of necessity and opportunity, “source agnostic” is a different way to think about creative video production—one that frees your creative concepts from traps, brick walls, and dead ends.  So, what does that really mean?  We thought you’d never ask.

Not for nothing, but seeing this graphic puts me in mind of a grim reprise of the beyond ancient “horse walks into a bar” trope. Only now when the bartender asks, “why the long face?” the reply is: “I’m a CMO.”

In “Little Gidding” T.S. Elliott delivers one of poetry’s most evocative stanzas when he writes, “And the end of our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time.”

Every two years, give or take, America rubs its irritated and bloodshot eyeballs, bracing for another flood of political advertising. Overwhelmingly brownish in taste and texture. Formulaic, repetitive. Uninspiring.

This week, the case for keeping the humanity in advertising got a powerful boost, and/or shot in the arm, and/or kick in the ass.

Based on his consultancy’s 2023 survey, the very credible Jack Meyers reports that of the 10,000 professionals working in agency media departments and similar, only 20% have more than 15 years’ experience. With 65% having less than 8.

When you get right down to it, those squishy bastards “ends” and “means” are tricky taskmasters.

Especially when it comes to the intersecting worlds of creativity, advertising, and production.

And yes, it’s the silliest of advertising seasons. So, sue me. But somehow, it’s managed to get me thinking about the biggest of the big Sunday decisions and what it could mean for advertisers plonking down a reported $6.5 to $7 million on a gone-in-30-seconds grab for brand glory.

And, of course, we should now all be thanking LinkedIn, from the deepest and sincerest cockles of our nary-a-drop-of-irony hearts, for giving us a brand new option when posting thoughts on the site.

And just like that, there I was last Sunday, standing in an Alaska Airlines boarding line. LAX to NYC. Delayed a mere 2 hours because of a “toilet” issue. Sure. The day after their Portland-to-Ontario flight had what Boeing, the aircraft’s manufacturer, now calls a mid-air “mistake.”

On this we should agree: AI is so last year. And so this year. And so on and so forth as we march, Tiktok dance, or leave fingernail scratches on the rocky cliffsides of a progressively less predictable future.

If you’re among the cynical souls harboring doubts that New York is back in full holiday snap, crackle, and pop, consider yourself invited to join the throngs thronging what locals call “CPS” (59th to the unwashed). So many people, so little interest in using the sidewalk to, say, get from point here to point there.

So, here’s the other way it might go down.

Or up.

Or in some generally more interesting direction that the gloom- and doomsaying you generally hear when the advertising chattering class starts vomiting about generative AI.

All kicked off by a thought from the remarkable Bob Brihn, or at least the brilliantly inventive spirit that inhabits his impressively bearded head. His argument, at least as I’d set it up, goes like so:

Jay Pattisall, the Forrester Research advertising analyst is back, and this time with a doozy of a prediction: starting in 2024, the big gun advertising battle will be waged between large agencies, each vying to build brand-proprietary AI platforms for their clients.  

First you hear Noam Chomsky, as reported by the remarkable Ernie Schenk, calling it “high-tech plagiarism. Then you dial in the “godfather” of the technology, Geoffrey Hinton, who warns us of its dangers. All while the entirety of formerly-FAANG-now-MAANG giants are scrambling as fast as their little coding fingers can fly to build the competition-terminators of their dreams. 

In the beginning there were just the three TV networks: Peacock, Tiffany, and Huntley-Brinkley or whatever they called ABC at the time. That is, until Murdoch begat Fox, but that’s a cautionary homily for another time. Anyway, then did the pundits, critics, talking heads, and soothsayers soothsay: “this gonna play hell with theatrical cinema, movie theaters are toast.”