Answers without questions.

I recently got into a discussion with an ‘AI expert’ on LinkedIn sharing the latest Vodafone spot. Here’s the work, if you haven’t seen it.

One comment made in defense of the piece was that ‘clients are rightfully seeking answers to new opportunities’. To me, this was one of those moments where you see a person almost achieve sentience but still manage to stumble and land in the same place. Like pro-gun advocates in the States acknowledging that more school shootings happen in the US simply ‘because we’ve got more guns here’ but then follow that moment of near lucidity with ‘that’s why we need more guns in schools’.

In a way, he’s right. Just perhaps not in the way intended. Yes, clients are ‘seeking answers’. And rightfully so. But, to what? Answers don’t exist without questions. To seek the right answer you must first ask the right question. And that’s what everyone seems to be glossing over in this conversation.

All advertising starts with a problem, a question, a brief, and then marketers and strategists and creatives seek the most resonant way to communicate and execute the answer to it. At least, that’s what we should be doing. The advent of AI is going to drastically change the world of commercial creativity. It already is, and in many positive ways, we use it all the time in our agency. We might hit a certain stage of a process, question the way forward, and decide that AI could be the answer. What we don’t do is force AI to be the answer for no good reason other than ‘just because’. Frustratingly, that seems to be the only way major brands are thinking about AI.

To make an ad about babies being born and children taking their first steps and adolescents finding themselves and falling in love and getting married and travelling the world and living out their dreams and then finishing with ‘In the rhythm of life, we just keep the beat’ assumes that a brand wants to empathise and connect on a human level. It assumes that this is the strategy Vodafone has embraced as a brand. So why would the best answer to ‘the rhythm of life’ be to make a film without a shred of life in it? Why would the answer be to create a soulless husk filled with creepy horror movie smiles? And why would the crescendo of this film be a man sitting on top of a mountain, with the view of the whole world around him, yet he ignores it to STARE AT A PHONE with an expression as stone cold as the rock he’s perched on? Peak irony. Literally.

Because the question probably wasn’t to empathise and connect and be human, was it? Watching this, it feels like they never genuinely asked the question they’re feigning the answer to in this film. They likely started with AI as an answer and then flimsily reverse engineered a question. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they did start with a question. But maybe the question was ‘How can we save money on our advertising by not paying people to care?’

And this is why, so far, every AI ad sucks. Because we aren’t asking the right questions. I don’t want to come off as scathing or technologically ignorant, I love new tech, I’ve written my own AI code, created and coded a viral bot, manually created and sold NFTs on the blockchain, I just genuinely feel repelled by how strategically ‘off the mark’ these ads feel. And I feel for the (few) people that did work on them. Really, I do. Because I can feel the frustration bleeding through the forced smiles of the prompted drones. And maybe soon we’ll all be in this position, and I’ll be just as a big a hypocrite. There will undoubtedly be great ads driven by AI. I can’t wait. I hope to one day make one. But we won’t see them until someone asks the question unto which AI is the right answer. 

So far, every big AI ad is attempting to be warm and fuzzy and human and conveniently diverse (I say conveniently because now they don’t have to pay the talent). Like Coca Cola’s bizarre Christmas nightmare.

And Toys R’ Us decision to tell the story of a young boy’s dream to make toys (tactile physical objects that foster human creativity and imagination) in the most terrifying-sleep-paralysis-demonesque way possible.

These ads aren’t the failing of AI. They’re the failing of human decision making, or lack thereof. Because these are not questions to which AI is the answer. These are human stories and human moments and human emotions and with where the tech currently is at - not conducive to being answered with AI. And if the REAL question you’re asking is ‘how do we use AI to save money’, which I’ll go on the record to say is a fair question, then these are the worst possible answers to that question.

In a way, scarily, it feels like AI is actually more self-aware than some of the people behind this work. If you’re a brand wanting to invest in AI, and I completely get why you would, I’m just asking you to THINK ABOUT THE QUESTIONS YOU ARE ASKING.

Be cognisant. Be present. Be self-aware. The world is not in a great place right now. People are afraid. They’re afraid of algorithms distorting the minds of their children. They’re afraid of AI replacing their craft or trade. They’re afraid of not being able to tell what is real and what isn’t. They’re looking for something, anything, real and stable to grasp on to.

Attempting to make a touchy feely montage of uncanny valley fake parents coddling fake babies or a fake gay couple fake kissing at their fake wedding or children of the corn smiling at six-fingered Santas is not the way to have people warm to this brave new world.

If you want AI-powered ads to feel human, like ACTUALLY human, then you’re gonna have to read the room.

Like Melbourne indie, ATime&Place, recently did.

This is, in my opinion, the best AI ad so far. Because it acknowledges what it is. It is cognisant and self-aware and HUMAN enough to be genuinely real with itself. If you read the comments under any article, any post, any conversation, outside of the marketing bubble - this is how people still see AI. As a weird, demented, intrusive piece of tech.

So, while we’re all still learning and adjusting, lean into it.

This is genuine playful, fun, intelligent creativity that intuitively harnesses a new piece of tech. Like the widely shared memes of Will Smith furiously eating a bowl of spaghetti, it kinda makes the failings of AI endearing. It acknowledges its own shortcomings rather than clumsily plaster over them with sickly smiles, and in the process turns them into a POSITIVE.

And, to be perfectly blunt, it’s not an exercise in lying to people’s faces.

In this instance, and only this instance, AI was the right answer to the right question.

Who’s gonna be next?