Every's Kieran Klaassen describes AI work as a human sandwich: A person sets the frame, AI does the task, and a person judges the result.
The same can be said for advertising. At the start is strategy and the idea: deciding what a brand should say, to whom, and why they should care, then finding the creative idea that makes people feel it. In the middle is production: making the assets, adapting them for every channel and market, and distributing them. At the end is the finished work in the world, where an idea either moves people or doesn't.
Over 20 years, scale has turned much of advertising into logistics. It’s the middle of the advertising sandwich, and AI is already consuming it. In 2024, Reckitt (the parent company of health and hygiene brands like Gaviscon and Finish) piloted generative AI in its marketing arm, cutting ad localization time by about 30 percent. That was two years ago, long before the power and capability of current models.
But the middle was never where the magic happened. AI can have it.
The other two ends stay human. When every brand can produce unlimited competent assets, competence stops being worth paying for. The value moves to a strategy grounded in what a specific customer cares about, and an idea that comes from a human reading of culture as it is this month. Through its use of generative AI in the making of its Christmas ads, Coca-Cola has demonstrated repeatedly that ignoring this fact leaves audiences cold.
AI changes both ends of advertising, and both changes favor the brave idea. When AI pushes everyone’s output toward sameness, it’ll create demand for difference. Audiences will start rewarding brave work over safe work, meaning the CMOs backing brave ideas will win.
I’ve pushed for great work throughout my career, and I couldn’t be more optimistic about the ability for great work to show through than I am now. Because while the flabby middle of the ad world is getting gutted by AI, I think the other two ends are getting stronger. More volume in the middle adds assets, but it does nothing for the relationship between a brand and its customers.
