At Cannes Lions this year, WPP Global Chief Creative Officer Rob Reilly warned that human creativity is “under fire” as AI rapidly spreads throughout marketing, advertising and content creation.

Fair enough.

If you wandered through enough conference halls, panel discussions and beachside networking events, you could be forgiven for thinking that artificial intelligence had already become the industry’s new religion. Every agency has an AI strategy. Every consultant has an AI framework. Every platform has an AI solution. Every presentation seems to contain at least three references to AI and one image that was probably generated by AI.

The conversation usually revolves around what AI can do. Can it write? Can it design? Can it create videos? Can it build campaigns? Can it replace agencies? Can it replace marketers? Can it replace creatives?

Interesting questions. But I’m not convinced they are the most important ones.

The more interesting question is this: what happens when everyone suddenly gains access to the same tools? Because that’s what is actually happening.

Much of the current AI conversation assumes that the technology itself will become the source of competitive advantage. History suggests otherwise.

Throughout business history, technology has repeatedly lowered barriers to production. The businesses that ultimately won were rarely the ones that merely adopted the technology. They were the ones that figured out how to use it better than everyone else.

The technology mattered. The people mattered more.

AI appears likely to follow the same pattern. The question is not whether AI will make marketers better. It will. The question is whether it will make them different.

Throughout business history, technology has repeatedly lowered barriers to production. The technology mattered. The people mattered more.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

When word processors replaced typewriters, writing became dramatically easier. Editing no longer required retyping entire pages. Productivity exploded. Most writers became better writers because they could focus more on ideas and less on mechanics.

Overnight delivery transformed business communication. Documents, contracts and proposals that once took days could suddenly move across the country overnight. Business became faster and more responsive.

The internet accelerated everything again. Information became instantly accessible. Communication became immediate. Publishing became nearly free. Businesses gained access to knowledge, markets and customers that would have been unimaginable only a generation earlier.

Then came desktop publishing, digital photography, blogging platforms, social media and content marketing. Each innovation lowered barriers. Each increased speed. Each increased volume.

In every case, the technology improved performance. The important point is that it improved performance for almost everyone.

Technology rarely creates lasting competitive advantage on its own. Once broadly adopted, it becomes table stakes.

AI may be following the same pattern. The winners may not be the people using AI. The winners may be the people who bring something to AI that everyone else lacks.

For Years We Confused Activity with Talent

Marketing has spent years rewarding production: more content, more campaigns, more channels, more reports, more dashboards, more activity. Technology often allowed average performers to appear exceptional simply by increasing output.

AI accelerates this trend to an entirely new level. Presentations that once took days can be assembled in hours. Articles that once required significant effort can be drafted in minutes. Images that once required designers can be generated almost instantly.

Productivity is exploding, which is wonderful. But also dangerous. Because output and talent are not the same thing. They never were.

The winners may not be the people using AI. The winners may be the people who bring something to AI that everyone else lacks.

AI Does Not Democratize Distinction

For a while, I found myself buying into an argument I was hearing from many AI advocates. Perhaps we humans are arrogant to believe our organic neural networks are somehow special. Why shouldn’t synthetic neural networks, supported by enormous computing power and trained on vast amounts of information, eventually outperform us creatively as well? The more I thought about it, the more reasonable the argument sounded.

Then I realized something important. AI is remarkably good at several aspects of what we commonly call creativity. It excels at recombination, mixing existing ideas in new ways. It excels at pattern completion, extending, refining and riffing on established forms. It excels at volume and speed, generating hundreds of possibilities almost instantly. It excels at style mimicry, reproducing the surface characteristics of human creative work with astonishing accuracy.

Those are not trivial capabilities. In many situations they are extraordinarily valuable.

But they are not the same thing as originality.

What appears to be missing is motivation. Human beings create because they want something. Recognition. Understanding. Revenge. Love. Money. Legacy. Connection. Curiosity. Obsession. Every great creative act begins with a human desire.

AI has no stake in what it creates. It also lacks embodiment. Much of human creativity comes from living inside a body, experiencing time, physical sensation, aging, uncertainty and the uncomfortable awareness that one day we will die. AI does not experience any of those things.

Most importantly, AI struggles with genuine novelty. It works by finding patterns, relationships and possibilities within the universe of existing human knowledge. It can create surprising combinations. It can create beautiful combinations. But it cannot easily step outside the boundaries of human-generated experience.  It may come up with a great idea you never thought about.  But that’s probably because you weren’t very imaginative in the first place.

Above average work looks remarkable to average workers.

Then there is taste. Human beings make creative choices that cost something. They risk rejection. They risk embarrassment. They risk failure. They risk looking foolish. Great creativity often requires vulnerability. But AI literally has no skin in the game.

Which leads to an observation that may sit at the center of this entire debate.

AI creativity is less like an artist and more like a mirror. It reflects, refracts and amplifies human creativity at extraordinary scale and speed. But the light source remains human.

The mirror can produce remarkable images. But it generates no light of its own.

The New Premium Is Human Imagination

The widespread adoption of AI will almost certainly make marketers better. It will make writers better. It will make designers better. It will make strategists better.

The problem is that it will make nearly everyone better at the same time. And when everybody has access to the same amplifier, amplification stops being a differentiator.

Human imagination becomes the differentiator. Judgment becomes the differentiator. Taste becomes the differentiator. Originality becomes the differentiator. The ability to connect unrelated ideas becomes the differentiator. The ability to understand people becomes the differentiator. The ability to spot opportunities before everyone else becomes the differentiator.

In other words, the qualities that have always separated extraordinary marketers from average ones may become even more important. Not less.

AI creativity is less like an artist and more like a mirror.The mirror can produce remarkable images. But it generates no light of its own.

The Gap May Actually Get Bigger

Many people assume AI will level the playing field. The opposite may occur.

As routine production becomes easier, truly talented marketers may pull further ahead. And overreliance on AI will make the untalented fall further behind. When everyone has access to the same tools, differentiation shifts to the quality of thinking behind the work.

The gap between exceptional and average may actually widen. AI may not eliminate competitive advantage. It may amplify it.

The organizations that benefit most from AI may not be the organizations with the most AI. They may be the organizations with the most interesting humans using it.

A Different Kind of Creativity Crisis

Rob Reilly may be right that creativity is under pressure. But perhaps not for the reason most people think.

AI is not threatening creativity because it can create. It is threatening creativity because it is exposing the difference between creation and originality.

The easier it becomes to produce something, the harder it becomes to produce something memorable. The easier it becomes to generate content, the harder it becomes to generate distinction. And distinction is where value lives.

The future may not belong to the marketers who create the most content. It may belong to the marketers who bring the most imagination to the machine. Because the tool keeps getting smarter. 

The challenge is making sure the humans do too.

So this happened.

Starbucks Korea, the South Korean operator of the global coffee chain, launched a promotion for a large drinks tumbler called “Tank.” The campaign was called “Tank Day.” So far, so not so good.

Unfortunately, it launched on May 18, the anniversary of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, when South Korea’s military government violently suppressed pro-democracy protesters.

You can already hear the brakes failing.

Critics connected “Tank” and “Tank Day” to the military vehicles used in the crackdown. They also connected campaign language about putting the tumbler on the table with a “tak” sound to a phrase associated with the 1987 torture death of student activist Park Jong-chol.

Within hours, the promotion was pulled. The CEO of Starbucks Korea was soon fired. Shinsegae Group, the South Korean retail conglomerate that operates Starbucks Korea, publicly apologized. Sales dropped. Government bodies distanced themselves. Starbucks Korea later announced it would close all stores early on one day in June for mandatory training on history and social sensitivity.

All for a tumbler.

Was the outrage fair. Of course not. Haters gotta hate. But I’ll leave that argument for comment sections, panel shows and people with too much time and very strong views about drinkware.

For marketers, PR heads and CEOs, the lesson is simpler and far less comforting. A campaign does not have to be malicious to become catastrophic. It only has to be interpretable. Starbucks did not need to mean harm for the harm to become real.

“We Didn’t Mean It” Is Not a Crisis Strategy

Starbucks said the incident was unintentional. Shinsegae reportedly found no evidence the campaign was deliberate. I believe that. 

Inside the meeting room, “Tank” probably sounded like product language. Big. Solid. Durable. Heavy-duty. A tumbler with shoulders. “Tank Day” probably sounded like a neat retail mechanic. The launch date may have come from inventory timing, app scheduling or a promotional calendar. The slogan may have been intended as harmless product theater.

Nobody in the room was necessarily thinking, “How do we turn a coffee cup into a national wound?”

But that’s exactly the problem. Campaigns live in the real world, where dates have history, words carry baggage, images have echoes and people are very good at connecting dots. The dots in this case were brutal: Tank. Tank Day. May 18. Gwangju. State violence. A global brand. A slogan that critics tied to another ugly chapter of Korean history.

This is the part marketing people often hate, because we still cling to the fantasy that intent matters most. It does not. Not once activists, consumers, politicians, journalists and bored internet prosecutors concoct a narrative.

The outrage economy is not a courtroom. It does not need proof in any real sense. It needs symbols, timing, screenshots and a villain. And nothing makes a better villain than a large brand explaining that it did not mean to do the thing everyone is furious about.

AI Is Not the Adult in the Room

AI didn’t cause the Starbucks Korea crisis. Reporting says Shinsegae claimed marketers consulted an AI tool for the campaign slogan. Reporting also says some managers who approved the campaign had not opened the attachments showing the materials. This suggests AI may have been somewhere in the chain while humans failed to do the one job AI cannot be trusted to do: understand what an idea may awaken in a specific culture at a specific moment.

And let’s be honest. It is increasingly hard to believe that many campaigns today do not pass through AI somewhere. Naming routes. Copy options. Translations. Search prompts. Social captions. Internal summaries. Research shortcuts. Headline drafts. “Just give me ten options.” “Make it punchier.” “Any issues with this?”

The problem is not that marketers use AI. Everyone is using AI somewhere, in some form, whether officially, quietly or through the intern who is now mysteriously 400% more productive.

The problem is treating AI like judgment.

AI can generate options. It can produce a lot of words very quickly. It can summarize, translate, polish and imitate confidence beautifully. What it cannot reliably do is know when a perfectly ordinary phrase becomes toxic because of history, memory, grief, politics, language, timing or local trauma.

At best, AI is a brilliant intern. It is not the grown-up in the room. Not yet.

And if the grown-ups are approving campaigns without opening the attachments, then the chatbot is not the weakest link in the chain. The chain is the weakest link in the chain.

Context Hijacks Campaigns

Starbucks Korea is not the only brand to discover that a campaign can become about something it was never intended to be about.

Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer owned by Inditex, pulled campaign images in 2023 after critics said visuals of wrapped mannequins, rubble and damaged-looking figures resembled images from the Gaza war. Zara said the campaign had been conceived earlier and was intended to show a sculptor’s studio.

That may be true. It also did not matter. The campaign did not have to be about Gaza to become about Gaza.

This is what marketers need to understand. Context is part of the campaign. If the world changes between concept and launch, the campaign needs to change with it. A fashion shoot can become a war image. A product name can become a historical insult. A slogan can become evidence. A model choice can become a geopolitical statement. A joke can become a boycott.

Localization Is Not Cultural Intelligence

There is a lazy version of global marketing that believes every risk can be solved by localization. Translate the copy. Swap the model. Change the currency. Add local hashtags. Maybe use the right flag emoji if no one gets sleepy. Welcome to our world.

But localization asks whether the campaign fits the market. Cultural intelligence asks what the campaign could awaken.

Swatch, the Swiss watch brand, apologized in 2025 after an ad showing an Asian male model pulling the corners of his eyes triggered backlash in China and calls for boycott. The company removed the material globally and apologized for the distress or misunderstanding caused.

Again, perhaps someone saw fashion mischief. A pose. A face. A moment. A little visual attitude. The audience saw a racist gesture with a long history.

The most dangerous campaigns are often not the ones everyone knows are risky. Those get reviewed, debated, legally cauterized and PR-proofed until they have the pulse of a dentist’s waiting area. The dangerous ones are the ones that look harmless to the people in the room. Which is why the people in the room are often the problem.

“People Are Overreacting” Is Not a Plan

Whenever one of these controversies explodes, someone immediately says, “People are overreacting.” Often, they’re not wrong.

Sometimes outrage is sincere. Sometimes it is performative. Sometimes it is political. Sometimes it is opportunistic. Sometimes it is twelve people on X, three journalists, two politicians and a brand team having a nervous breakdown in real time.

But commercially, that distinction is not as useful as people think. Once the backlash is moving, the brand does not get to stop the train by explaining that the passengers are being unfair.

Adidas, the German sportswear company, revised a 2024 campaign for its SL72 sneaker after criticism over the shoe’s connection to the 1972 Munich Olympics, where Israeli athletes were murdered by Palestinian militants. The campaign featured Bella Hadid, an American model of Palestinian heritage. Adidas said the connections were unintended.

Again, I can see how this happened. Retro shoe. Global model. Fashion image. Campaign calendar. Nice lighting. Someone probably thought it looked great.

But the public saw 1972 Munich, Israel, Palestine, Bella Hadid and a German brand. Suddenly a sneaker campaign had become a political statement.

Whether Adidas meant that statement is almost beside the point.

The Numbers Don’t Care About Your Intent Either

YouGov found that more than seven in ten consumers across 17 international markets said they would boycott a brand if the company or its leaders acted in ways they objected to. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia, YouGov found that 66% of consumers said they had temporarily or permanently boycotted a brand following a scandal.

Kantar’s Brand Inclusion Index found that 75% of consumers say a brand’s diversity and inclusion reputation influences purchase decisions. McKinsey found that 88% of surveyed organizations regularly use AI in at least one business function, with marketing and sales among the most common areas of use.

So we have three forces colliding. Consumers are more willing to punish brands. Brands are producing more content, faster, across more markets. AI is increasingly embedded in the machinery of that production. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, obviously.

Speed Makes Stupidity Scalable

AI did not invent bad judgment. Marketing departments were perfectly capable of producing stupid ideas long before anyone asked a chatbot to “make this more premium but playful.”

What AI does is make speed feel like intelligence. It can produce a hundred lines in the time it used to take one human to stare out the window and have one useful thought. It can generate campaign names, social captions, slogan routes and localization options with impressive confidence and absolutely no fear of being fired.

And because the output looks finished, everyone starts behaving as if thinking has happened. More output is not more judgment. Sometimes it is just more rope.

Every Campaign Needs a Kill Switch

The answer is not timid marketing. God save us from safe campaigns. Most of them deserve to die quietly in the procurement department.

Brands should still be bold, funny, provocative, fast, strange, distinctive and occasionally dangerous. But bold is not the same as oblivious. Provocative is not the same as handing critics a loaded gun and a Wi-Fi connection.

Every campaign now needs a kill switch. Not a bureaucratic committee that makes the work worse by sanding off anything interesting. Not a late-stage legal review. A real kill switch. Someone with the cultural competence and organizational authority to stop the campaign before it becomes a case study.

That means asking, before launch:

• What date are we launching, and what does that date mean in this market?
• What do the words mean in local slang, politics, history and minority communities?
• Do the visuals resemble current news images, tragedies or conflicts?
• What is the most hostile good-faith interpretation?
• What is the most opportunistic bad-faith interpretation?
• Where did AI touch the work?
• Who reviewed it with actual cultural knowledge?
• Did the approvers actually open the materials?
• What would the headline be if this went wrong?

Those of you who know me, know that last one is my favorite. I often start from the headline and work backwards. It cuts through almost everything. If you cannot bear the headline, do not launch the campaign.

The Adult in the Room

Modern agencies are not just here to make brands more visible. The role of a serious marketing and PR partner is not to say yes more elegantly. It is to ask the irritating question before the public asks it louder. It is to protect the idea from itself. It is to see the second meaning before the internet gives it a lawyer, a hashtag and a moral position.

The adult in the room is not there to ruin the work. The adult is there to stop the work from ruining the company.

Starbucks Korea did not fall to its knees because of a tumbler. It fell because a product name, a campaign name, a date, a slogan, possible AI involvement, unread approvals and national memory collided in public.

Maybe the outrage was excessive. Maybe it was opportunistic. For marketing directors, PR heads and CEOs, that debate is secondary. The outrage economy does not care what you meant.

So. before the campaign goes live, find the adult in the room. And make sure it is not the chatbot.

Sources: Reuters — Starbucks Korea to give staff history training after backlash over marketing campaign; Reuters — Starbucks Korea head fired after “Tank Day” promotion sparks public uproar; Reuters — Shinsegae chairman public apology and reported sales impact after Starbucks Korea backlash; The Guardian — How Starbucks Korea’s “Tank Day” marketing stunt spiralled into mass boycotts; Reuters — Zara pulls campaign after Gaza boycott calls and later expresses regret over “misunderstanding”; The Guardian / People — Adidas apologizes and revises Bella Hadid SL72 campaign linked to 1972 Munich Olympics; Reuters — Swatch apologizes for “slanted eye” ad after backlash in China; YouGov — Global brand boycott survey across 17 markets; YouGov — UAE and KSA consumers boycotting brands following scandals; Kantar — Brand Inclusion Index 2024; McKinsey — The State of AI

Every June, thousands of advertising people descend on the French Riviera to celebrate creativity, drink rosé and compete for a small golden lion that somehow carries the full weight of an industry’s self-regard. I have attended. I have admired the work. I have marveled at the ambition. 

Of course, as the specter of AI has appeared, we are all left to wonder whether some of the work we’re marveling at is entirely, completely, unambiguously real.

Last year, the industry found out the hard way.

The Year the Lions Lost Their Roar

Cannes Lions 2025 will be remembered for three things, none of them a great campaign.

The headliner: Brazilian agency DM9, part of Omnicom’s DDB network, won the Creative Data Grand Prix for “Efficient Way to Pay,” created for Whirlpool’s Consul brand. A whistleblower tipped off Ad Age. Investigators found the case film contained AI-manipulated footage lifted from CNN Brasil broadcasts,  edited without permission to simulate news coverage of a campaign that never generated that coverage. Fabricated real-world events. Simulated outcomes. A jury misled. CNN Brasil filed a formal complaint. DM9 admitted “serious inconsistencies” in not one but three of its entries and withdrew all of them. Grand Prix gone. All associated Lions gone. CCO Icaro Doria resigned. DM9 had won 21 Lions that year, helping DDB claim Network of the Year. That crown now comes with an asterisk the size of the Palais.*

It was not DM9’s first rodeo. A 2001 Ad Age investigation flagged a previous Gold Lion-winning ad for Parmalat ketchup as a possible ghost ad, work that allegedly ran only after the Cannes entry deadline, in an obscure car magazine. Some agencies play a long game.

The supporting act: Publicis agency LePub São Paulo won a Bronze Lion for “Followers Store,” a campaign for New Balance and São Paulo FC. The case study claimed a geo-targeted push notification allowed fans near the team bus to pre-order an exclusive jersey on match day, with 45,000 shirts sold in a single day. Brazilian journalist Demétrio Vecchioli investigated and found no evidence the presale ever happened. Several media outlets named in the case study either never covered the campaign or no longer exist. Influencer content appeared to have been edited without disclosure. New Balance’s statement was short and devastating: all materials were made by LePub “without the knowledge or approval of the brand.” The client had no idea the case study existed.

Then there was the Budweiser situation. Africa Creative DDB won a Grand Prix in Audio & Radio for “One Second Ads”, a campaign deliberately engineered around using ultra-short song clips specifically to avoid paying music licensing fees. Technically within the rules. Morally, a different conversation. AB InBev issued a formal apology. An awards jury gave a Grand Prix to a campaign whose central innovation was finding a loophole to avoid paying artists. The industry noticed.

The Response Was Serious. The Question Is Whether It’s Enough.

Cannes Lions CEO Simon Cook’s response, in full: “Creativity is only valuable if it’s credible, and credibility must be earned, not assumed.”

Which is a remarkable sentence to need to say out loud at the world’s most important creative festival in its 73rd year.

The new Global Integrity Standards, announced July 2025 and effective for the 2026 festival opening June 22, are genuinely substantial. Every submission must now be approved and signed off by a senior leader from both the agency and the commissioning brand.  Meaning no brand can claim it had no idea what was submitted in its name. A dual-layer verification system combines human review with AI-led analysis to scrutinize every claim. A new Integrity Council handles disputes. An annual Integrity Audit will be published. Agencies found to have submitted deliberately false work face bans of up to three years. Cannes published a full Integrity Handbook in November 2025 and has been running support webinars for entrants ever since.

The agencies entering this year are already calling the new process burdensome. Which, translated from agency-speak, means it’s probably working.

This Is Bigger Than One Festival

Here is where it gets interesting. The Cannes scandal is a vivid, industry-specific example of something happening everywhere simultaneously. The technology arrived faster than the guardrails. Now the guardrails are being built in real time, and everyone from advertising festivals to governments to technology platforms is doing it at once.

The EU AI Act’s transparency rules take full effect in August 2026 requiring that AI-generated content be labeled, deepfakes disclosed, and users informed when they’re interacting with a machine. Fines for non-compliance can reach €15 million or 3% of global annual turnover. Italy has already passed its own AI law with prison sentences of up to five years for unlawful dissemination of AI-generated content. The European Commission published its voluntary Code of Practice on marking AI-generated content in December 2025, with the final version expected this month.

The advertising industry is not being singled out. It is simply the most visible, and in some ways the most entertaining, expression of a universal problem: when you give creative people extraordinarily powerful tools and no rules, some of them will use those tools to cheat.

All of this is good news. Not the cheating. The response to the cheating.

The reason Cannes Lions still matters. The reason a small golden statue commands this much attention and generates this much anxiety is that it represents a genuine standard. When that standard is enforced, when fake work gets pulled and careers face consequences, it reinforces rather than undermines the value of the real thing. The agencies who did honest work, who produced results that actually happened and campaigns that actually ran, are the direct beneficiaries of a system that just got considerably harder to game.

The same logic applies to AI regulation broadly. The brands and agencies building responsible AI practices right now, documenting their use, disclosing their tools, making sure their claims are real, are not at a disadvantage. They are building a competitive moat. Trust, it turns out, is not a soft asset. In an era of AI-generated everything, proof that something is real carries a premium that only gets more valuable as synthetic content becomes more indistinguishable from the genuine article.

Simon Cook is right. Creativity is only valuable if it’s credible. After forty years in this industry I’d put it slightly differently: creativity was always only valuable if it was credible. We just spent a few years forgetting that.

Cannes opens June 22. The new rules face their first real test. I genuinely can’t wait to see what happens.

* The Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. The main venue in Cannes where the Lions are awarded.

Sources: Cannes Lions official statement on DM9 entries, June 27, 2025 — canneslions.com, Cannes Lions Global Integrity Standards announcement, July 10, 2025 — canneslions.com, Adweek: “LePub Under Investigation After Cannes Lion-Winning Case Study Draws Scrutiny,” Audrey Kemp, June 27, 2025, Adweek: “Agencies Say New Cannes Lions Entry Rules Are Burdensome But Necessary,” Brittaney Kiefer and Rebecca Stewart, May 14, 2026, Campaign Asia: “Cannes Lions 2025 Controversies Casting a Shadow Over Big Awards,” June 30, 2025, More About Advertising: “LePub Is Third Agency in the Dock for Cannes Entries,” June 30, 2025, EU AI Act transparency rules — digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu, Charles Russell Speechlys: “AI in Advertising: A Regulatory Lookahead for 2026,” January 30, 2026, European Commission Draft Code of Practice on AI Content Marking, December 2025.

I recently landed on this story about Nike that hit home for me.

Recently, Nike posted on X about tennis player, Jannik Sinner. The line they chose: “This isn’t just history — it’s his story in the making.”

Within hours, a user fires back: “they let a GPT AI-ism through on the main Nike page?? I thought marketing teams caught this stuff by now.” Of course, true or not, hundreds then piled on. Nike says nothing.

That “it isn’t X, it’s Y” rhetorical pivot, is a timeless literary construction, which, of course, is the very reason the algorithm uses it so often.

Generative AI has certain “tells” and the internet has learned to sniff them out. The em dash that lands every other sentence. The “In a world where…” opening what shows up in so many social captions. Or, “The uncomfortable truth is…” trope that leads the most insightful paragraph in so many articles.  Including some of mine. And don’t get me started on The Oxford comma.

The deeply irritating part, and I say this as someone who has been using em dashes for forty years, and who may have, on occasion, opened with something uncomfortably close to “in a world where…”, is that AI didn’t invent these moves. It stole them. From writers. From us. The machines have pickpocketed an entire generation of stylistic habits and industrialized them into the default output of every content team on the planet. And it has left those of us who were doing it first standing in a lineup, looking guilty. I now actively edit out punctuation I’ve used since the nineties. I second-guess sentence constructions that were mine long before they were anyone’s prompt. The machine didn’t just copy our style. It contaminated it.

Even if the accusation against Nike was wrong, it didn’t matter. Nike was tried, convicted, and sentenced in the court of public opinion before anyone paused to check the facts. No evidence required. No response accepted. The copy wasn’t the problem. The suspicion was.

They were guilty by algorithm.

This Is Not a Drill.

This is not a niche internet grievance or a creative community having a moment. The anti-AI sentiment is hardening into mainstream consumer behavior, and brands are directly in the crossfire.

A poll from Stanford University and UC Berkeley found less than half of Americans now think the country should charge ahead with AI innovation. When former Google CEO Eric Schmidt mentioned AI at a University of Arizona commencement speech this year, he was rewarded with a sustained hail of boos from graduating students. He argued that resisting AI meant “surrendering your agency.” The students’ response, several hundred people in caps and gowns loudly jeering one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful figures, was the agency. And it was remarkably well-organized.

Then Merriam-Webster named “AI slop” its word of the year for 2025. Think about it.  The f’n dictionary, the institution that formally decides which words deserve to exist, added a phrase whose entire purpose is to describe your content department’s output as low-grade, machine-produced garbage. That means we are well past early warning signs. We are at the stage where the warning signs have their own warning signs.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

The uncomfortable truth (see what I did there?) is sitting in the data, and it ain’t subtle.

Only 7% of consumers say visible AI-generated marketing content makes them trust a brand more. 31% say it makes them trust the brand less. That is already a four-to-one negative ratio, a losing trade on its face. But here is where it stops being a reputation problem and becomes a revenue problem: 52% of consumers say they would stop buying from a brand after an inauthentic experience. Not post a complaint. Not write a review. Stop. Buying. And 58% say they trust brands less simply for using AI-generated content, not for doing it badly, just for doing it.

Meanwhile, 77% of senior marketing decision-makers plan to shift budgets away from traditional creator marketing toward AI-generated content. The industry is accelerating toward the cliff its customers are running from and calling it strategy. This is a controlled demolition being carried out by very confident people who don’t know how to read the room.

The Glitch That Stole Christmas

This is not a budget problem. It is a judgment problem. There is a meaningful difference, and confusing the two is how brands end up repeating the mistake.

McDonald’s Netherlands produced an AI-generated Christmas ad. They titled it, “The Most Terrible Time of the Year”.  It was pulled within days. Viewers called it “AI slop.” Many said it “ruined the Christmas spirit.” The studio behind it described, in a since-deleted post, a seven-week production involving up to ten in-house AI and post-production specialists, with each shot going through extensive iterative refinement.

McDonald’s response? They called it “an important learning.” That is corporate for: we spent a significant budget discovering what common sense would have told us for free. 

After significant backlash for AI-generated holiday ads in 2024, Coca-Cola released another set of AI-generated holiday ads in 2025. Their global VP of Generative AI explained the spots were guided by “human storytellers” to ensure “authentic and emotionally resonant” content. The internet looked at the AI-rendered polar bears, the trucks with shifting wheel counts, the otters in a winter cabin, and not so politely disagreed.

Coca-Cola owns Christmas in the global imagination. The red trucks. The original polar bears. Thirty years of emotional equity built one human feeling at a time. They chose, for the second consecutive year, to replace all of that with something that looked like a prompt.  The lesson here has nothing to do with technology. When your most powerful brand asset is warmth, the one thing you must never allow is for your audience to feel the cold.

The Brands Going the Other Way

Here is where it gets interesting, and where strategic intelligence wins.

Brands including Aerie, Equinox, and Almond Breeze launched campaigns in early 2026 explicitly calling out AI slop, positioning themselves as authentic alternatives to machine-generated fakery. Equinox, a gym, made “not using AI” a premium brand signal. Almond Breeze deployed the Jonas Brothers to mock the entire premise of AI advertising. Cheerfully. Effectively.

We have reached the moment where restraint is the competitive advantage. “100% Human” is now a marketing claim. Bottled water once bragged about having no calories. Brands are now bragging about having no algorithms. 

The consumer is not anti-AI. They are anti-cheap. That is actually good news, for every brand smart enough to understand the distinction.

Don’t Get Swooshed

Maybe Nike used AI.  Or maybe they didn’t.  It is just as likely that the line in question was written by a human copywriter doing their job, reaching for a construction that felt sharp and contemporary. It still went viral as an AI artefact. The copy was not the problem. The suspicion was. And after over four decades in the media and PR business I can tell you with all certainty that suspicion travels considerably faster than any clarification you will ever issue.

The question for every CMO and CEO reading this is not whether you are using AI. Everyone is, somewhere, in some form, on some channel. The real question is whether your brand has built enough of a distinctive, recognizable, irreplaceable human voice that your audience knows the difference instinctively, before the mob has a chance to decide for them.

If you are not certain of the answer, open your last ten posts. Read them like a suspicious stranger. Look for the tells. They’re not difficult to find. Just ask Nike.

I hate DJs. Not because they’re untalented or uninspiring. I can appreciate the artistry of spinning a great set. But let’s face it: DJs don’t create; they curate. They’re masters of creating a vibe. They take someone else’s music, remix it, and layer in a beat drop that makes us forget it’s just a mash-up of existing work. It’s entertaining in the club, and it may be great to dance to—but they are just repackaging someone else’s work.

Artificial Intelligence, in today’s content landscape, is that DJ. It takes existing information, stitches it together, and delivers something that appears shiny and new. It’s impressive. it’s just not very original.

Content creation has become so accessible that anyone with a ChatGPT account can churn out an article or social post in minutes. The result? A crowded space where everyone sounds eerily similar. But here’s the hard truth: the lower the barrier to entry, the harder the climb to stand out. Brands and creators need to do more than remix. They need to compose.

I don’t want to sound like I’m fighting the machines—an old dog unwilling to learn new tricks. In fact, I continue to be an early adopter and have fully embraced AI as a tool to expedite my content creation. I’m in the game. I just don’t think that AI should be used as a crutch for creators in a sad race to sameness.

Beyond the Algorithm: Why Originality Still Matters

It’s right there on the package: “artificial”. AI is a remix artist. It processes what already exists—facts, figures, opinions, headlines—and spits out something that sounds insightful but lacks one crucial ingredient: originality. Sure, it can appear polished and professional, but if your brand leans on AI too heavily, you risk blending into the mass of generically “good” content floating around. And in a saturated market, “good” is a death sentence.

We all know that AI is only as smart as the data it’s trained on. It doesn’t innovate; it regurgitates. Brands relying entirely on AI will find themselves locked in a rehashing arms race, competing to see who can remix yesterday’s trends the fastest. But audiences? They want the cutting-edge. They want the first drop of a new song, not the fifteenth remix.

The fact is: many content creators today are rank amateurs. But because the bar has been set so low, they think they are geniuses. They often behave like students rushing to turn in a term paper. Instead of tapping their imagination, they tap in a prompt to AI. And if they haven’t already developed real writing skills, thanks to AI, it’s possible they never will.

The Competitive Edge of Original Research

Original data is your golden ticket to staying ahead in a world where AI commoditizes content. Why? Because it’s rare. Most people (and let’s be honest, many brands) are lazy. It’s easier to rehash what’s already out there than to invest in primary research. But that’s precisely why gathering and sharing fresh data gives you an edge.

Want to lead your industry conversation? Publish an in-depth survey that answers your audience’s burning questions. Conduct interviews with industry experts. Dig into your own customer data for insights no one else has. While everyone else is remixing yesterday’s headlines, you’re creating tomorrow’s talking points.

A simple survey or a few well-placed interviews can yield insights that AI, no matter how advanced, simply cannot produce. And it’s easier than ever to conduct, tabulate and generate reports based on original research. In fact, that’s one of the best use cases for AI in the content arena.

AI tools like Typeform and SurveyMonkey can streamline the process of creating and distributing surveys, allowing users to quickly gather data from large audiences. For more advanced functionality, platforms like Qualtrics can design sophisticated surveys tailored to specific research goals. AI-powered transcription tools like Otter.ai or Descript can record and transcribe interviews in real time, turning conversations into easily searchable text. Once data is collected, tools like MonkeyLearn or Tableau use AI to analyze and visualize data trends, making it simple to identify key insights. Finally, AI writing assistants like ChatGPT or Grammarly can craft polished, professional reports, summarizing findings and presenting them in a clear, concise format.

These tools can handle the heavy lifting, quickly and affordably, leaving the meaningful analysis and storytelling to humans.

Life Experience as a Differentiator

Let’s talk about something else AI can’t do: live. It can’t watch a sunrise, endure heartbreak or belly-laugh at a great joke. It doesn’t bring the messy, beautiful texture of human experience to its writing.

This is where human content creators still have the upper hand. Your life experience isn’t just a lens for understanding the world—it’s a storytelling weapon. A statistic about customer loyalty is fine, but when paired with an anecdote about the time you personally and painstakingly chose one brand over another, it becomes memorable. Relatable. Real.

Brands that win will be the ones that infuse data with human stories. It’s the difference between a spreadsheet and a great novel. One gives you information. The other gives you meaning.

Avoiding the AI Dependency Trap

I know, I know. AI tools are seductive. They’re fast, efficient, and pretty good at basic, and not so basic, tasks like summarizing reports or generating drafts. But if your brand leans on AI for everything, you’ll quickly fall into the homogenization trap. AI can only remix what’s already out there, so the more you depend on it, the less distinctive your voice becomes.

Avoiding this dependency doesn’t mean ignoring AI—it means using it wisely. AI is an incredible assistant, but it’s a terrible boss. (Though that may be in our future. See “Who’s the Boss? AI Agents: Will They Work for Us, or Will We Work for Them?”) Use it to handle the grunt work (drafting outlines, compiling data), but let human insight, creativity, and originality steer the final product.

Practical Tips for Standing Out in an AI-Driven World

1. Invest in Original Research
   Don’t just talk about industry trends—create them. Poll your audience, interview experts, or analyze your customer data to generate insights no one else has.
2. Infuse Content with Personal Insight
   Your experience is your edge. Use it. Whether it’s an anecdote, a hard-learned lesson, or a fresh perspective, inject yourself into the narrative.
3. Leverage AI Strategically
   Let AI handle repetitive tasks like research or summarizing, but don’t let it define your content. Use it as a tool, not a crutch.
4. Focus on Depth Over Volume
   In the race to produce more, don’t sacrifice quality. One deeply-researched, original piece will do more for your brand than ten generic blog posts.
5. Build Emotional Resonance
   Data is important, but connection is everything. Craft stories that speak to your audience’s aspirations, fears, and challenges.

Winning with Originality

Take a look at brands like Patagonia and Oatly. I have no idea if they use AI tools in their content creation nor if its exclusively driven by human creativity. But I do know that both brands are known for their unique, authentic storytelling and often emphasize direct involvement in their content creation, which suggests that there is a firm human hand at the wheel.

Patagonia doesn’t just recycle environmental statistics; it tells compelling, deeply human stories about sustainability and activism. For example, their documentary series, like Public Trust, explores the fight to protect public lands through in-depth storytelling and firsthand interviews. Their website features long-form narratives from adventurers and activists who are on the ground fighting environmental battles. These aren’t just facts stitched together—they’re authentic stories shaped by years of field research, human connection, and direct involvement in the causes they support. This isn’t work that AI could pull from a database—it requires lived experiences, genuine relationships, and an intimate understanding of the issues.

Or consider a smaller player like Oatly, whose quirky, irreverent campaigns stand out in a sea of bland health-food messaging. Their “Wow No Cow!” slogan and offbeat content don’t rely on algorithmically generated trends—they’re deeply rooted in the brand’s identity as disruptors in the dairy industry. Oatly’s CEO even purportedly wrote the copy for some of the campaigns himself, and the brand famously created an entire department of disobedience to ensure their messaging always challenges norms. Whether it’s their straightforward ingredient transparency or their bold packaging copy, Oatly’s approach reflects intentional, human-driven creativity that pushes boundaries rather than playing it safe with preexisting formulas.

The common thread between these brands is clear: they rely on human insight, creativity, and lived values. Their work goes far beyond AI’s ability to remix; it’s grounded in authenticity and a commitment to original storytelling that machines can’t replicate.

The Business Case for Human-Driven Content

Now that everyone is in the content business, the easiest way to stand out is to stop doing what everyone else is doing. Original research and human insight make your brand not just another DJ but the songwriter everyone wants to hear.

Audiences value trust, credibility, and authenticity. And while AI can fake these qualities in the short term, true connection comes from something only humans can provide: a spark of originality and the courage to take creative risks.

In the end, DJs have their place. AI has its place. But if you want to lead, innovate, and make your audiences excited about your brand, you can’t just take the lazy route.

AI is a tool. Use it to streamline, enhance, and amplify your work—but don’t let it take over. The future of content belongs to those who combine research, insight, and humanity to create something truly original. And that’s a song worth listening to.