182: The role of the Creative Director in the age of AI

What can you do that it can't? And what can it help you do that you couldn't before?

Don’t worry, it’s still about having taste; and figuring out how to operationalize taste.

Anyone remember Quark Express? I learned how to use v1.0 while pasting up the University of Cincinnati’s newspaper. We still used razor blades, line tape, and wax to hold the layouts together. Years later, the Arnold agency employed a room full of humans with deep expertise in Quark—we billed these production experts out at a decent hourly rate to carefully assemble “mechanicals” for printing ads, billboards, brochures, direct mail. In that era, a Creative Director could make a living focused on the exquisite detail controlled by experts using Quark.

Of course the big ideas mattered. Concepts took precedence. But how the work came to life, in detail, was of valid concern and so you could be a CD known for exacting execution.

And then a software company came to visit.

They had built a plugin or companion to Quark for automating changes to things like rates or single elements in a layout. Imagine your agency produces dozens of billboard mechanicals every month. If you wanted your rate displayed to change from 2.3% to 2.4% the agency would charge you the hourly rate for those experts to open Quark, replace a number, kern the type—gain approval first from the Art Director, then the CD for the change in the layout (which also then included time for the Project Manager and the Account Executive), all before the production expert exported a new print file. The human process was time consuming and expensive, noted the software company. Publicly-owned companies owed it to their shareholders to consider software which opened Quark, changed the number, and exported a file in seconds. The kerning? No one cares, not in the era of MP3s and the “Good Enough” revolution.

Software was a sign the role of the CD was evolving.

Remember the Internet? Not long after the Quark story we had another room at Arnold, and this one focused on producing banner ads. This wasn’t my client, but I recall someone telling me they were purchasing (and producing) something like 6% of all available banner ads in the U.S. Imagine the churn.

The story I heard went like this: The client said, essentially, “I don’t need a creative director. We have the Internet.” Meaning, the team was charged to create a near endless supply of ideas in the shape of online banners. There wasn’t time or place for the role of a CD to approve anything. Given technology, the better approach was to give the creative team a performance dashboard and instruction to beat the winners. In other words, the audience’s behavior—what they clicked on—would inform creative direction.

Notice how technology didn’t replace strategic insights, or the value of big ideas. It has chipped away at elements of craft, for sure.

And now there’s AI.

It, too, is removing barriers to various crafts—more than we might want to admit. It is enabling widespread mediocrity. It is encouraging creativity where there might have been reluctance. Like the arrival of software, then the Internet, AI is suggesting a different type of focus. It is revealing a type and range of creative outcome that was previously impossible. And that’s where I think Creative Direction is heading.

Still rooted in the primacy of ideas that change behavior. But asking now, if and how these new capabilities can help unlock ideas we couldn’t before. That’s what having taste means to me.

Here’s a framework I’ve been messing with across a few different aspects of my professional life to try and make sense of the evolution.

What do you think?

Looking back, the creatives who understood the fundamentals of discerning a potent insight and unearthing a fresh idea always thrived, regardless of the technology involved. I think because they never confused the means and method with their core duty to leverage taste. AI just complicates the picture a little more.

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