By Kristina Monllos * January 1, 2025 *
Ivy Liu
When it comes to brand activations, marketers are devotedly obsessed with shiny new things. It’s not surprising that marketers are rushing to use generative AI in their advertising in the second year of having it at their disposal.
However, consumers haven’t been as enthusiastic about generative AI ads as marketers. In 2024, marketers who used generative AI for their ads, such as Toys R Us and Under Armour or those who touted the potential of generative AI (like Google, which pulled their Olympics ad after backlash), will have their ads criticized by the public, especially the creative community.
Despite this, it is expected that marketers and agency executives will continue (and likely increase their use) of generative AI by 2025. Marketers frequently ask how creative agencies use generative AI, and how they can integrate this into their creative process. Creative agency executives, for their part believe that generative artificial intelligence is a new tool they will continue to experiment in various ways. However, most do not see their experiments becoming fully generative, at least, not yet.
John Cornette, Chief Creative Officer at EP+Co, said, “We don’t expect AI to replace everyone or everything, but we do want to have more intelligence about our ideas and accelerate our ideas to the market.”
As marketers adopt the technology, it’s important for creatives to examine why people have reacted so negatively to a few ads that they’ve seen and learn from this. Eight creatives and agency executives said that the problem with early versions of marketers’ generative AI work was not that they used generative AI but that there was a lack of human interaction in the creative process.
When you tell a great story, you are being authentic, and you make a real connection, said Eva Neveau. Chief creative officer at Omnicom Production. “What we see in the [AI infused] works is that they’re not authentic and don’t have real emotion in them. There’s nothing that can take you into a magical world. Then you start to think, “wait a moment, you’ve lost my attention – and now, I’m distracted because that hand has seven finger.”
But those strange errors in the generative AI advertisements aren’t just the issue that marketers and agency executives may face. The negative reaction from online creative communities and consumers is another issue. There is also the hype cycle, where brands that use generative AI in their marketing get a little attention from the industry. Bill Oberlander, creative chairman and co-founder of full-service agency Oberland noted that while marketers want to make headlines with their work, doing so by using work that is, at best forgotten, doesn’t benefit them in the end. Oberlander said that “all these AI [ads]are not memorable to me because they just do not have the human spirit” in them. “They don’t spark.”
But it’s easy for anyone to understand why the idea of using AI in order to create ads faster and cheaper is appealing at a time where they are under pressure to do more work with less. “There’s something seductive about being able create things quickly without having to go on a shoot or spend millions of dollars,” said Paul Malmstrom. He is the founding partner of creative shop Mother, based in the US. “It’s a race against time.”
When that’s what’s on the agenda, it’s a “race toward genericism,” said Malmstrom. “Our job has always been to distinguish. We’ve done this for as long as we can remember. How do you create a voice that is unique? How do you create an identifiable brand voice? It seems that this is slipping a bit to the side.”
In their rush to be on top of trends, marketers often forget that the most important thing for their brands is not to use the technology that everyone’s talking about, but to create great ads that connect with the people that they are trying to reach.
“Brands should not feel that using a technology makes them ‘innovative’,” said Dave Snyder, partner and head designer at Siberia. In many ways, the train has already left station. Snyder said that there will be no shortage in ads and other experiences created using gen AI. “And if they’re great you’d be none the wiser.”
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