Marty Hungerford: How marketing and advertising creatives can thrive in the AI era

Guest post by Marty Hungerford, Chief Innovation Officer, BRX

 

If you’re a passionate creative professional, the following reality check about the future of your career and AI might make you uncomfortable, but that’s OK.

Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta’s AI is set to disrupt the $1.15 trillion global advertising industry. According to him, AI will write the ads, create the visuals, target audiences, run and optimise campaigns, all seamlessly and efficiently.

Of course, this viewpoint is either incredibly naïve, blatantly self-serving, or both. It assumes a world where products only exist within the Meta ecosystem (they don’t), and it ignores broader aspects like brand building, customer lifecycles, channel marketing, and more. Strangely, it also overlooks Meta’s own significant investment in very creative (and very expensive) humans through their Creative X agency and Creative Shop.

That aside, it’s a wake-up call for agencies. Meta, Figma, Canva, and Adobe all now feature native generative AI tools for copywriting and image creation. They’re not brilliant yet, but this is the worst they’ll ever be. (PSA: there are great AI platforms out there already, including Midjourney, Runway, and more.)

Zuckerberg’s announcement signals a broader shift. This rapid proliferation of generative AI is set to have far-reaching consequences for brands, agencies and marketers worldwide.

If you work in an advertising agency, know this – a giant leap in evolution is happening. It’s adapt or die, and you’d better adapt fast.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. If you’re in an agency and genuinely care about making better work, generative AI, both as an automation tool and creative partner, can empower you and your team.

Used well, it will help you create and deliver stronger, more valuable work, while freeing up time to focus on what matters most: creativity, strategy, and making meaningful impact.

But where to start.

Sweat the process

If I had to guess, I would predict that the vast majority of people working in creative marketing have not mapped out their creative delivery process end-to-end.

This is a problem, because great creative output is not just about inspiration, it’s about system design. The best systems, whether in engineering, business, or creativity, are ruthlessly mapped, understood, and refined.

Some might argue, “How can you quantify art?”, but a tough reality for some of us to face is that we are not making art, we are delivering a service, one that needs to be profitable. There is an expectation on all agencies to deliver efficiency. Those that do not show continuous improvement will not last long. If you do not want to eat into your creative time, you must understand where else you can optimise your delivery process.

That is where mapping your end-to-end process comes in. We now live in an age where many of the steps involved in delivering advertising can be automated, streamlined, or removed altogether. But without understanding your process in detail, you cannot do it.

Moving out of the fear zone

Which brings us to the elephant in the room: artificial intelligence. Lately, I’ve found myself disheartened by the number of creative people in our industry talking down AI, lamenting what will become of creativity, as if using it somehow betrays our craft or as if exploration is no longer part of the job. It’s important to remember that voices like these are often overtaken by those who lean in, experiment, find new energy in unfamiliar formats and create.

It should also be noted that so much of the current criticism of AI isn’t about the tools themselves, it’s about the fear of becoming irrelevant. But this fear doesn’t lead to innovation, it leads to stagnation.

From when I learned to type on a typewriter to launching Melbourne’s first street electronic magazine using early Photoshop and QuarkXpress (I feel old writing that), I’ve watched technology consistently elevate creative work. During the halcyon days of the late 90’s electronic music scene, artists embraced home-built studios and DIY installations; tech wasn’t an obstacle, it was the enabler. Through decades of helping brands navigate early web and social media, I’ve never once heard a true creative reject a new technology.

Creatives in marketing need to understand that rejecting new tools does not equal artistic integrity. Creative people should not and do not fear tools, they create with them.

AI and the creative good

Every genuinely creative person I know is already making clever, ambitious and beautifully crafted work using AI. They’re not cheating, they’re extending themselves. They are building faster, reaching further and testing ideas in new ways.

So if you are a creative, this is your moment. If you’ve spent years honing your craft, developing your taste, learning what works and why, you are the ones who should shape how AI is applied.

In order to stay competitive and protect your creative time, I recommend taking the following strategic steps:

First, map your end-to-end process. Understand each step. Identify the inefficiencies. Start working to automate or eliminate them.

Second, embrace AI as part of your creative toolkit. We’ve never had fewer creative boundaries. We’ve never had more possibilities. Doing so will allow you to maximise time spent on creativity, deliver a stronger product, and still meet the ever-growing demands of the business world.

Rejecting AI as a creative force for good says more about you than it does about AI. In a world that demands more from less, the teams that evolve their creative delivery, embracing both systematic thinking and technological advancement, will not just survive, they will thrive.

 

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