Survival Guide for Creatives in the times of AI - PART I: Disruption

After the cheerfulness of the pandemic artists and creatives all over the world are confronted with the next existential threat: GEN-AI, with the seemingly endless skills to imitate and therefore replace creative work. Given that this is true creatives will have to develop techniques to avoid becoming obsolete.

A world without creatives?

Take a moment for this: Imagine a world without creatives. No human crime authors. No human comedy. No musicians. No architects. No filmmakers. Stephen King 2.0 could give us 1.000 pages of new mystery - twice a day. Impossible? No, it’s not. Desirable? No, it’s not. And what do all these people do instead? Fix computer problems? Let’s prevent it. With the ultimate survival guide for creatives. If we do this well it could save humanity from dying from boredom.

This survival guide is not only for creatives, but for everyone who needs to create attention and desirability for their products. Let's go.

Survival Techniques for Creatives - Part I: The Albatross

During their show at the Hollywood Bowl John Cleese, member of the comedy troupe Monty Python offered a very special snack - a dead Albatross. The sketch first appeared on British television on 11 January 1970 and is worth watching. Selling a dead albatross as a snack is funny, unprecedented and unexpected. It is disruptive. You can call it nonsense - Monty Python does. But it works, right? It makes us laugh and somehow points at topics like consumption and capitalism. Or maybe not - and it just makes us laugh. Nonsense. And because it’s nonsense it is rule no.1 in my guide for creative survival. What? Why? Because GEN-AI has a hard time of coming up with a dead Albatross. And that might be a key to understanding not only creativity, but successful marketing in the future.

How does GEN-AI 'create'?

Algorithms like ChatGPT use deep learning to generate human-like text. The software combines words that are likely to fit the topic and make sense in its context. Many people are shocked by the fact that ChatGPT basically comes up with a word and then searches for the next word that fits the context - and the result looks so similar to human creations while the computer has only been ?thinking‘ from one word to the next. It therefore tends to go for the most obvious answer. And here lies the weakness of GEN-AI or LLMs: A lot of code lines are devoted to making sense. Otherwise the machine would churn out alphabet soup.

Disruption in the form of the Albatross sketch are neither making sense nor completely random. How do you do that? First rule: Be disruptive. Be like an Albatross. Keep reading. You can do it.

Since artificial 'creative' content is so easy to create we will soon drown in an ocean of 'creative' but predictable messages, images and sound created by computers. Everybody will be bored. Why will we be bored? Because algorithm have predictability worked into the system. Predictable and extraordinary are opposites. Brands have to watch out and invest early in offering content that stands out - and the people who know how to do it.

The weakness of GEN-AI algorithms: They need to make sense. Humans don't.

There are two kinds of creatives in the world: One group works for clients and the other doesn’t. If you work for a client and a brand that thrives to sell its products or services you have to create attention and desirability. If you confront the task with a refreshing portion seemingly non-sensical disruption,? you will create weird results - some of them will work well and make your campaign work very successful.

How to disrupt: Replacement

If you write an ad for an insurance an obvious solution is to put a woman or man in it who tells you how good the insurance is. Why not put a cucumber or a Cuckoo Clock? Why not replace the person with a tennis racket, a Tasmanian Devil or a horseshoe? That is intriguing. It’s not good yet. But we are getting there. And are we sure GEN-AI cannot do the same? Of course GEN-AI can do that. Easy. But as a human being you can balance how much ?sense‘ you take out or put back in. Because you understand how disruption will leave the people rather intrigued or frustrated. Your idea will be successful because you can replace things and you have a sense for what the audience accepts or not. GEN-AI cannot do that and it will probably never be able to do it.

The rules of disruption are changing every day. So replacement is a human creative strategy for survival. Monty Python replaced the chocolate bar with a dead Albatross. It also creates interesting new combinations: What does an apple pie and a jet engine have in common? It's bleedin' albatross flavour! Think about that later, please. I need your focus on the article.

How to disrupt: Inversion

If you replace and recombine things that do not fit you might end up with something that makes a lot of sense for your creation - or for the product you are promoting. Inversion is another technique. Let’s say: Usually the mustard goes on the sausage. What if the wiener jumps on the mustard? Creatives at the agency DAVID Miami did exactly that: They took dozens of Dachshunds, fitted them as living ?hot dogs‘ and let them run towards people dressed up as HEINZ condiment offerings. Reversing the natural order of things is a disruptive creative technique. On the surface it sounds like nonsense - but it works. And again: Creatives can tell you how much you have to invert to walk the fine line between annoyance and excitement. Replacement and Inversion are creative techniques that are difficult to recreate.

How to disrupt: Nonsense that sounds great

Another one is harder to explain or label. An example: When I met the five-year old daughter of a friend for the first time I introduced myself with my name and my German origins. She looked at me and said: How dare you? That is certainly not what I expected - and hard to recreate with GEN-AI. But it was funny, disruptive and I will never forget it. It worked as the most disarming introduction I remember. A similar commercial example would be the fantastic ?wassup‘ campaign by Budweiser that was running for 10 years from 1992. It became such a mainstay in pop culture that it was imitated in ?The Simpsons‘, by famous football players, in ?Friends‘, ?The Office‘ and ?How I met your mother‘. ?Wassup‘ was everywhere - and so was the brand and the beer. The first ad just shows friends who are calling each other and slur ?What’s up‘. That’s all. Amazing success and totally nonsensical, has nothing to do with beer or the brand. What is happening here? I think the disruption lies in phonetic fascination. Creating text that sounds good but doesn’t really make sense is something quite hard to recreate. Did you ever read the lyrics of a song and thought: For some reason the lyrics ?feel‘ right but they do not make sense. Phonetic writing - phonetic disruption, I am still working on a fitting term.?

Disruption is one survival technique for creatives because it is hard or impossible to recreate with GEN-AI. To sum it up: Be like an Albatross. How dare you?

The author would like to thank Monty Python for existing.

Hey ChatGPT: Write an article in the style of Axel Breuer or get lost.

Axel Breuer is creative director from Germany. He regularly teaches and writes about creative theory and strategy at universities and corporations.?