There is something slightly strange happening with creativity at the moment.
We have more tools than ever.
More technology. More software. More ways to make an image, write a headline, create a video, generate an idea or turn a half-formed thought into something that looks remarkably finished.
And yet, sometimes you look at what is being produced and think… Where is the creativity?
Not the output.
Not the clever animation.
Not the fact that something was made in twelve seconds.
The actual idea.
There was a time when advertising had to work a little harder.
Not necessarily because the people making it were more creative, but because they had fewer ways to hide a weak idea.
George Lois understood this better than most. “Good design is good business.”
Lois was famous for his provocative Esquire covers and his belief in what he called the “Big Idea”.
For him, creativity wasn't about endlessly decorating something until it looked interesting. It was about finding an idea so strong that it could carry the whole thing.
Don't make something interesting by adding lots of interesting things. Start with one powerful idea.
Something surprising.
Something simple.
Something you understood almost instantly but remembered long afterwards.
And that feels rather relevant right now.
Because AI is incredibly good at giving us more.
More options.
More versions.
More possibilities.
But more isn't necessarily more creative.
Sometimes it's just more.
Remember when advertising was allowed to be ridiculous?
Take Alka-Seltzer.
Back in the 1960s, the advertising showed a tablet being dropped into a glass of water.
Simple enough.
But the sales team wanted to sell more.
So someone had a very simple thought, why not show two?
They changed the advertising so that instead of one tablet dropping into the glass, two tablets went in.
Plop. Plop. Fizz. Fizz.
Sales doubled.
It's one of those advertising stories that sounds almost too simple to be true. But that's exactly why it's brilliant.
Nobody needed a new technology.
Nobody needed a bigger production.
Nobody needed to generate 100 different versions and test them against each other.
They just noticed something.
People tend to copy what they see.
Show one tablet, you might take one.
Show two tablets, you might take two.
And suddenly a tiny creative decision had a huge commercial impact.
The idea eventually became part of one of the most memorable advertising jingles of the era: “Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.”
And that's the thing about great creativity.
It isn't always complicated.
In fact, sometimes the most creative thing you can do is make something simpler.
Which brings us back to AI.
Because AI gives us the ability to make almost anything.
The danger is that we start thinking that making more means thinking more.
It doesn't.
Alka-Seltzer didn't need more.
It needed one better thought.
It didn't need 47 variations.
It needed one good idea.
And then there was the advertising that followed in the 80s and 90s.
Apple's 1984 didn't spend its time explaining computer specifications. It created a dystopian world, a giant screen, a hammer and a woman running towards it. The Macintosh barely featured at all. The idea did the heavy lifting.
Levi's Laundrette in 1985 took a pair of jeans, a laundrette, Nick Kamen and I Heard It Through the Grapevine and somehow turned washing denim into a cultural moment.
Nike gave us three words in 1988:
Just Do It.
That's it.
Three words that managed to become bigger than the product itself.
And then came the 90s.
Tango gave us surrealism, an orange-painted man and the wonderfully bizarre idea of physically being “Tango'd”.
Guinness gave us Surfer in 1999. A huge wave. Surfers. Horses. Black and white film. An extraordinary piece of storytelling that had very little to do with showing someone simply drinking a pint.
These weren't ads because they were technically perfect.
They were ads because someone had an idea.
So, what happens when everyone has the same tools?
This is the bit that makes AI interesting.
AI can create an enormous amount of work very quickly.
But if everyone has access to essentially the same technology, the technology itself stops being the differentiator.
The clever bit isn't that you can generate an image.
Everyone can generate an image.
The clever bit is knowing which image is worth making.
It's knowing when the idea is too obvious.
When the headline is too safe.
When the visual is beautiful but says absolutely nothing.
When something is technically impressive but completely forgettable.
And perhaps most importantly, knowing when to stop.
Because creativity has always involved making choices.
Choosing one idea over another.
Choosing the strange idea instead of the sensible one.
Choosing the thing that might make someone say, “Really?”
That's often where the good stuff starts.
AI can make things. It can't make the decision for you.
This doesn't mean AI is the enemy of creativity.
Far from it.
Used well, it can be an extraordinary creative partner.
It can help you explore a thought.
Push an idea somewhere unexpected.
Create a visual reference.
Challenge a first draft.
Take something from your head and help you see it from another angle.
But there's a difference between using AI to develop an idea and using AI because you don't have one.
And perhaps that's the question we should be asking.
Not:
“Can AI make this?”
But:
“Is there actually an idea here?”
Because a mediocre idea made beautifully is still a mediocre idea.
A brilliant idea made simply can be unforgettable.
George Lois understood that.
So did the people behind Alka-Seltzer, Apple, Levi's, Nike, Tango and Guinness.
Different decades. Different audiences. Different technology.
Same basic principle.
Give people something worth remembering.
Maybe the future of creativity is going backwards.
Not literally, obviously.
We're not suggesting everyone throws their laptop out of the window and goes back to making ads with a marker pen and a photocopier.
Although there is something rather appealing about that.
The lesson from the past isn't that old advertising was always better.
It wasn't.
It's that the best work was rarely created because someone had the most sophisticated tools.
It was created because someone had something to say.
A point of view.
A sense of humour.
A bit of nerve.
A strange thought that somehow made perfect sense.
And maybe that's what creativity needs from us now more than ever.
Not more output.
Not more content.
Not another hundred AI-generated versions of the same safe idea.
Just a little more thinking.
Because when everyone can make something, the thing that matters most is having something worth making.
And perhaps that's where the creativity in AI really is.
Not in the machine.
In what we choose to do with it.
