In this exclusive piece, Kate Ross, founder and group MD at digital agency eight&four says AI is speeding up a different kind of transformation — one marked not by brilliance, but by blandness at scale. The result? A saturation of ‘AI sludge’, enabled by tools that elevate quantity over quality. To Ross, it’s this outcome that proves the future of marketing belongs to marketers, and not to AI.
The ChatGPT/Ghibli/LinkedIn tidal wave kicked off the biggest “We’re all about to lose our jobs” moment since GPT3.5 launched in November 2022. My feed was a panic party. Market commentators lost their minds over Studio Ghibli-style remakes of The Office and ‘make yourself an action figure’, wildly agreeing, “This changes EVERYTHING” (again). Serious déjà vu.
And if you can ignore the troubling issue that just one Ghibli image generation = a full phone charge in terms of energy consumption, can we take a moment to think critically here? Like I’ve said from the start, can we look past the extraordinary novelty of all this, and try to think about what the real utility is?
Personally, I don’t think there’s a lot, when it comes to creative marketing. I think the technology won’t meaningfully transform the creative marketing industry – instead it will turbocharge templated, forgettable content. We’ll have the same briefs, same last-minute asks.
Just now it will all be drunk on GenAI Kool-Aid – so it will be 50 versions by EOD, rather than 3. AI won’t replace great marketers. It will replace restraint.
The Speed of Sludge
Without someone at the helm who gets it, these tools don’t create brilliance, they create volume. They raise the floor of design standards for sure, but they don’t raise the ceiling. AI isn’t inventive. It’s iterative. It makes more of what already exists. It is an endless roundabout we’re all going to get stuck on. And because the modern marketing industry is a slave to data, and volume, and ‘performance’, AI is a perfect accelerant to our thirst for volume and speed. It can help us flood the feeds. Personalise at near limitless ‘scale’.
The Myth of Personalisation at Scale
Let’s talk about this modern marketing religious pillar – “personalisation at scale.”
Sounds like a theoretical breakthrough. But usually translates to: “Here’s a nice enough idea we stretched to 47 underwhelming versions.” What might have started as a smart, cohesive, idea, is translated to a mass production of joyless templates. It suits agency’s well, as there is margin to be made in the delivery of those 47 versions.
But with AI set to decimate that margin, will we be brave enough to back coherent, creative ideas again? Does ANYONE need a Coca Cola web banner personalised to them? Can we agree they don’t, finally?
To the marketers and creatives watching all this noise and feeling (understandably) nervous – stay strong. If you’re actually good at this job, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Because while AI can churn, remix, and mimic, it still can’t do the thing that great marketing actually requires: taste. It can’t feel the gut instinct that says “yes, this is it” or “burn it all and start again.”
It can’t navigate nuance. It can’t build a brand that lives in culture and memory. That’s all still you. So whilst it can feel scary that technical barriers to creative outputs are falling (after years of slaving away at your technical craft), it doesn’t mean people know how to use these tools. They’ve got new shovels — but they don’t necessarily know how to dig.
Remember: the edge is not the technology. It’s the strategist, the storyteller, the curator behind it. It’s you.
What Brands Need to Do
We’re about to see an unprecedented flood of AI generated brand content. A tsunami of fast, bland, copycat templating.
Here’s how to cut through:
- Brief ideas, not outputs. Set your agency the creative challenge, and wait for the right idea. Don’t ask or focus on the formats. They’re the easy bit, and are not the gamechangers.
- Invest in authoritative creative thinkers. Hire people with strong opinions. Back creatives who can steer and influence, not just execute.
- Fight for depth. Your audience doesn’t need more brand assets, they need more brand meaning. Fight the Excel weaponisers, data obsessives, personalisation chasers, and defend the work that will mean something to your consumers.
Because the real risk here isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being replaced by people who don’t know how to use it well. Don’t get washed away in the onslaught. What’s coming isn’t a creative apocalypse. It’s a reset. A real test of who gets to lead the next era of modern marketing.
If you chase the AI hype blindly, you’ll chase your tail in volume and artifice. Know thy enemy, so you can master it simply as a new tool in the toolbox.
