Future Forecast for Agencies using Creative AI

If you’ve read our Agency AI Integration report, you’ll know that agency leaders are in a perfect position to reap the benefits of this evolving technology.

The feedback we have received has been staggering! So, we’ve decided to answer your questions and forecast key GenAI developments you need to be aware of.  

To help, ex-Ogilvy Creative Technologist, Joel Lim has kindly shared his expert tips! Joel brings the wisdom of working with the likes of Google, Coca-Cola, LEGO, Huawei and Ford!

Joel is a creative with a tech brain. He has over two decades of experience spanning the fields of advertising, digital/social campaigns, experiential, innovation and artificial intelligence. He has led creative teams and developers to bring extraordinary ideas to life. Ultimately, he sees his job as building brands people will welcome into their lives. And ideas, strategy and technology are a means to that end. Outside of the 9-to-5, Joel has offered branding and digital marketing consulting for social impact startups. And he's been an interactive marketing judge at D&AD.

In our chat, Joel forecasts a huge push on Text-to-video GenAI over the course of the next year. The rise of impressive longer-form video tools which will be used to create video concepts! There’s a warning too... as the AI evolution continues, Agencies who don't invest in new tools will lose talented Creatives to Agencies that do!  

As a Creative Technology and AI Lead, how would you describe your blend of responsibilities? What’s the balance between external client facing and internal stakeholder?

JL: As a creative tech, I am expected to know a bit about everything, and a lot about some things. As an AI lead, a big part of what I do involves Generative AI ideas and solutions. Client-facing work is currently a larger chunk of my day-to-day: Understanding requirements, providing solutions, consulting, preparing proposals and pitching would make up 60-70% of my workload. Guiding creative tech and AI output, solutionising, brainstorming with creatives, researching for solutions and finding the right internal or external folks to fulfil a task would make up about 40-60%

How do you approach educating the wider team on the adoption of AI? Has there been any hesitation from the team to embrace the new Tools?

JL: The team are pushing for new tools to be used! AI literacy is an ongoing project and one of the things I do is to prepare and conduct interactive learning sessions with all stakeholders within the agency. I also provide advice via backchannels e.g. Slack and Teams to anyone who has a question on AI/GenAI or other tech.

Where are Creative Agencies seeing the biggest benefits of Gen AI in their workflow at the moment?

JL: Put rather simply, as the name suggests "Generative" AI is useful for assisting the creative team in the generation of text (copy) or visual (art) assets, rapidly. One example is to use Gen AI to rapidly (hours rather than days) create a storyboard once the narrative is sorted. Things are getting really interesting in the realm of text-to-video and soon, we will have impressive longer-form video tools which could be used to create video concepts. Outside of the creative team, planners can use optimised LLM apps to ingest several long reports and mine for insights and find patterns in the data. There are many, many ways Gen AI can be employed in creative agencies. We are just getting started.

How fast is the tech moving and do you have any forecasts on developments over the next 12 months?

JL: Text-to-video will become a huge thing over the course of a year. We will see metahumans plugged into LLMs and grounded on proprietary data. Better guardrails will be embedded into LLMs to mitigate unwanted responses. "AI is liquid" as I like to say: the malleability, mixability, transformative power and pervasiveness of AI will surprise us. 

What are the ramifications / pitfalls for an agency that doesn't invest in and embrace the technologies?

JL: The agency that does not utilise any new tech will fall behind in terms of speed to those who do. This is not about taking the time to come up with great ideas! As a former Creative Director, I know how important this is. I'm talking about being faster at presenting these ideas and even producing the final work. I also believe that agencies who won't invest in new tools will lose talented creatives to agencies that do. 

Finally, as Gen AI becomes more widespread within Agencies, what do you believe are the implications for Talent (Creatives / Designers / Artworkers etc)? 

JL: You're probably already using Gen AI tools to write, draft, think, design, create visuals and more. What needs to happen next/soon is to work with management to select the tools that best fit your agency and deploy training for those who will use it to ensure adoption and maximisation of these tools.

Interested in hearing more about AI in Agencies and the Talent needed to harness its power? Book a discovery call with me here.