I've worked in advertising for fifteen years and I was told then that the glory days where over. I actually don't think so, not even today. But nobody likes ads. People go to great lengths to avoid them and they pay for services that block them.
So here's a good ad for reference.
Everything about this is wrong. It's so completely unhinged and ridiculous, so much ad-land but still very rough and real somehow. The editing. The uncomfortable silence where you think, "Is something wrong with the audio?" and ultimately makes sure no one misses the payoff: "Here's to waiting. Good things come to those who wait."
This was made 30 years ago. I know there are people who believe AI will be able to do something like this. Maybe it will. But if you believe today that you can produce this with a one-shot prompt, then you don't know what it is that creatives actually do.
There are a million ways to say and do things. Why exactly was this done the way it was done? Someone made the decision. This could have been done a million different ways—a million different ways back then, as well as today.
That's the amazing thing about this. Knowing which of the million ways is a good one.
Saying yes to something should mean saying no to a thousand other things. Finding the thing we should say yes to is hard. Has always been and it still is. Ai makes it harder in some ways and easier in others.
That's fine. Now there's more time to do try to make good decisions.
The Deep End
Right now, a large number of people are somewhere between fear, cautious adoption, and being a bit too excited about this bubble that's about to burst.
Using ChatGPT for brainstorming. Using GitHub Copilot for some code completion. Dipping their toes in.
Meanwhile, some people are swimming in the deep end. They're not swimming because they're braver or smarter. They're swimming because they've realized something: the water's fine. It's actually kind of nice. You can do things here you couldn't do on land.
It's uncomfortable when I've spent about six months in total of my life (this is a conservative estimate) learning how to mask out hair in Photoshop. I've mastered a lot of tools that are now obsolete.
But this assumes that what makes me most valuable is my knowledge of specific tools.
It's not. If you've been swimming, you already know this.
The water's fine.