Thinking

Welcome to the Meta Goo

| Art Director Nerd

Mark Zuckerberg somehow reminds me of DATA in Star Trek the Next Generation. That slightly-too-precise walk? That measured, almost-synthesised speech pattern? The enthusiastically grey wardrobe? He probably has his socks folded away in alphabetical order. Maybe he wants to be an android? Remember he wanted us to live in the Metaverse with him – eek!
Now he’s architecting another world of algorithmic grey goo – that includes advertising. By 2026, he plans to pump it into every Meta ad. The promise is seductive for SME’s and small brands: save time and money, gain flawless targeting, enjoy optimised CPC/CPV, and churn out slick, scalable creatives. Of course it’s appealing. It will probably work to certain degree for those brands who have little time or money for marketing or advertising.
But what about larger brands? What happens if every brand uses the same AI tools, ticks the same boxes, and generates near-identical images? What makes YOUR brand different? Meta’s AI hands you the “perfect” ad. It hands your competitor the exact same one. Suddenly, your unique message dissolves into a sea of sameness. Your brand vanishes. Yes, you’ll get technically perfect, emotionally barren ads – joyless, toneless, and culturally vacant. What’s your edge over your competitors – Budget?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I expect that Zuckerberg doesn’t hold human creativity in much regard. I wonder what he would feel staring at Michelangelo’s David or the Sistine Chapel: Would he see human genius? Or just inefficient data, thinking “Our AI renders faster with 98.7% anatomical accuracy compared with Michelangelo’s 96.4%.” Or sitting in the Louvre “The brush strokes on the Mona Lisa are inaccurate by a factor of 0.85%. AI has an accuracy on the human form of 99.9%.”
AI is undeniably here to stay; it has transformed marketing forever. But it is not the holy grail. The most successful brands of the next decade won’t be those that reject AI outright, nor those that surrender to it completely. They’ll be the ones who use AI to amplify their humanity.
John Hegarty’s wisdom strikes a chord: “A brand isn’t a logo. It’s the sum of every interaction a customer has with you.” That’s what Meta’s ad generator could destroy: your brand story, your humanity, your reason to exist beyond conversion metrics.
In a world that is starting to drown in AI generated ad sludge, the challenge now is to fight to tell human stories. And more than ever embrace imperfection and authenticity. Thoughts?
(Note: Image generated in Midjourney / Photoshop) hashtag#ai hashtag#generativeai hashtag#meta hashtag#aiinfo hashtag#artdirector hashtag#irishadvertising hashtag#advertising

Aimed at the stars

| Art Director Nerd

Faced with the threat from it’s online competitors, Click&Go Holidays identified a critical disparity. While rivals boasted expansive online reach and ample budgets, their failure to deliver on promised customer service and comprehensive holiday offerings left dissatisfied customers in their wake. 

Moreover, their actions tarnished the online travel industry’s reputation, prompting a necessary intervention. In contrast, Click&Go proudly upheld its status as Ireland’s favoured online travel company, backed by an exceptional Trustpilot rating.

To highlight this advantage, we devised a campaign leveraging the company’s 5-star Trustpilot rating. Through visually striking, impactful creatives, the campaign not only reassured Click&Go’s clientele but also sowed seeds of doubt among those considering other online platforms for holiday bookings.

The creative executions allowed us to showcase aspirational locations, and are flexible enough to work across all the different types of holidays that Click&Go offer.

This campaign marked a notable departure for us due to budget constraints, making traditional photography and stock images impractical options. In response, we generated these visuals initially within Mid Journey, refining them further in Adobe Photoshop using the software’s dedicated Generative AI plugin.

The campaign is due to run during Q1 and will be on all of Clic&Go’s social media channels as well as online display and VOD.

Perception, a reality check

| Art Director Nerd

A few years ago on a cold January morning during rush hour a man walked in to a metro station in Washington DC. He was carrying a violin case. He stopped near the enterance were hundreds of busy commuters were being channeled in and out of the station.

He opened the violin case, took out the violin and carefully placed the open case at his feet in front of him.

Over the course of an hour he played six of the most complex and intricate pieces of classical music ever written.

“Chaconne” Partita No. 2 in D Minor Johann Sebastian Bach

“Ave Maria” Franz Schubert

“Estrellita,” Manuel Ponce

“Meditation de Thais” Jules Massenet

“dour Violin Concerto in G Minor” Max Bruch

“Chaconne” (reprise) Johann Sebastian Bach

During that time’ six people stopped and listened’ including a young boy who force his mother to stop in her tracks.

A few more people tossed coins and notes as the quickly passed by. Once he was finished he packed away his violin and left the station with the $32 dollars he had collected in his case.

The man was Joshua Bell, one of the world’s finest classical musicians. He played each piece on a three hundred year old Stradivarius valued at 3.5 million dollars. A week earlier in Boston’s Symphony Hall, the cheapest seats at his concert cost $100.

This was an exercise sponsored by the Washington Post in to studying perception, priorities and awareness of people going about their daily lives.

It reminds us of how people are so wrapped up in the own lives and how little they take notice of the world around them. It’s also a reminder how difficult it is to interrupt our audience from whatever else they are doing and engage with them.

If six musical masterpieces played to perfection by Joshua Bell can only stop a few people in their tracks and out of their everyday routine, imagine how good your advertising has to be?

Failure is good.

| Art Director Nerd

Failure is good.

There is a building under construction near St Pancreas in London and it is somewhat unique in the modern world. It’s the culmination of investment by the UK government and six of the UK’s top scientific institutes to the tune of a billion euro and will operate on an annual budget of 150 million euro.

Its primary purpose is to create a working environment where thousands of scientists and researchers from all different backgrounds and specialties can work togther under the one roof and exchange ideas.

But what will make this building unique is that for the first time since the Second World War scientists will have the freedom to explore new ideas without commercial goals or pressures. But above all they will be allowed the freedom to fail.

If you can remember being taught in science class in school. That all your experiments should be recorded whether they where successful or a failure. This was considered good practice.

Most of the great scientific leaps have been built on failure. This was a process happened for years. If a failed experiment was recorded it could be referred back to later with a fresh perspective. Or others could learn from the failure and see where it went wrong and turn it into a success.

The discovery of penicillin and the microwave, the invention of dynamite, plastic and the pacemaker were all results of experiments that initially had failed.

In the post war period science has changed. Commercial pressures have resulted in the failures being abandoned and forgotten and the successes nurtured and developed. This has left huge gaps in certain fields of science.

At the Crick Institute they are taking a very long-term view. There will be little or no immediate return on the investment and some of the results of this process will take decades.

But by encouraging this way of working and accepting failure is part of the process that in the long term the results could be outstanding and revolutionise science.

We are less forgiving in modern business – including advertising. There is huge pressure to get it right first time and not much flexibility to allow for failure.

Should we learn from the philosophy they are adopting in the Crick Institute? That we work in a way that accepts the role of failure as part of the road to success?

The Eureka Moment

| Art Director Nerd

As a creative person working in an ideas business an important part of the job is to sit down, either on your own or with a colleague, and try to crack a brief to find that illusive idea or insight.

Most of us know the story. After many hours or days of stress and perspiration something happens. You go off take a break and do something completely different or just stare out the window. Then the answer for no apparent reason enters you head. You know it feels right, it feels good, and it’s the answer you have been looking for. A rush of euphoria and an aura of invincibility usually follow this Eureka moment.

It’s a mental process that most of us haven’t thought too much about. However, I was struck by an article by American Neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer who was promoting his latest book ‘Imagine: How Creativity Works’. He thinks about this stuff a lot.

Lehrer is a bit of a genius. He’s only 32, he’s a Rhodes Scholar and has already written three books on Neuroscience. He’s a contributing editor to Wired Magazine and to the New Yorker Magazine. He frequently lectures around the world too.

Now if you’re thinking John has gone off on one of his science benders please bear with me. Lehrer is just casting a bit of light on something we do everyday. So I thought I’d share it.

He believes there are number of factors in us arriving at a moment creative insight or idea. He backs this up with anecdotal evidence and experiments from the science lab. He uses a simple example of how our brain works coming up with an idea. It is called Compound Remote Association Problem – CRAP for short. In the video in the link below he asks the audience a CRAP problem.

Experiments have shown that during this process of Compound Remote Association Problem our brain uses same patterns when we go through the brainstorming process to arrive at an idea or insight. These brain patterns or waves are called Alpha waves.

We produce the most Alpha waves when we‘re relaxed and calm, or simply daydreaming.

Bob Dylan wrote his best music when he decided to quit the music business. Einstein came up with the theory of relativity while staring out the patents office window daydreaming. And Isaac Newton took long walks in his garden while mulling over gravity.

So, daydreaming is good.

However Lehrer is not saying we should all go out, lie in the grass, and chill out. The moment of insight usually follows a lot of hard work and is followed by more hard work. ‘Grit’ as he calls it.

Lehrer describes Grit as being single-minded in our focus to succeed and our willingness to learn from failure. Great ideas are still 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/45162748

If you’re engaged by all this stuff you can also read about how experience and environment also affect the way we come up with ideas. Some of the examples he uses in this area seem to contradict his observations about being relaxed and calm. Moments of extreme stress, like a life and death situation can result in an insight.

He has been accused by other Neuroscientists of trying to simplify how the mind works. They point out many processes of the mind are still a mystery and undefined.

I have highlighted the area that is of most relevant to us. But if you want to know more you can read and see a bit more of him in action on the links below. Or, if you’re really impressed you can buy the books.

http://www.jonahlehrer.com/

http://www.thelavinagency.com/speaker-jonah-lehrer.html

My friend Dave

| Art Director Nerd

For two years now I’ve been an avid follower of Dave. He has become a mentor a advisor and a friend of sorts. The funny thing is I have never met him.

I was reading an article on blogging in the Sunday Times and at the end of the piece there was a list of what they thought was the best blogs. And since I work in advertising low-and-behold there was big complement for one blog by Dave Trott.

So I logged on and was immediately hooked. There are anecdotes, experiences, accidents, incidents, quotes moments from history. He even imparts everyday experiences from his private life, as well has dozens of stories from his years working as a copywriter. There are some gems of advice that have been past down from generations of creatives.

He’s a big fan of Bill Bernbach (every creatives mentor) but admires the all thinkers and dreamers who broke the mould and had to fight to get their ideas believed. Darwin, Newton, Plato, Picasso, Hirst, Hitchcock, Spielberg, to name a few.

He loves the fighting spirit of Winston Churchill, Brian Clough, Mohammed Ali and his big sister who once looked an armed mugger in the eye, dared him to nick her handbag and then scared him off.

His blog imparts the importance of creative thinking, being different, being a bit of an  odd ball. But realise the importance of been the rebel, being fearless and never giving up.

Reading his blog is empowering stuff. But it’s not just for creative folk, it’s good advice for having a good attitude to life. So here’s a humorous anecdote below.

When I worked at BMP, the head of Television commuted in from Brighton ever day.

He started reading The Exorcist on the train.

He said he thought it was the most evil book he’d ever read.

In fact, he said it was so evil he couldn’t finish it.

So at the weekend, he went to the end of Brighton Pier and threw it as far as he could.

So I went to the bookshop.

I bought another copy.

Then I ran it under the tap.

And left it in his desk drawer.

For him to find.

You can find Dave’s blog at     http://www.cstadvertising.com/blog/

You can buy his book Creative Mischief  – somewhere online