This post was created in partnership with Empathy Lab\u00a0<\/p>\n
The campaign had a good run. One big idea launched everywhere, studied, repeated. Now? Not so much.\u00a0<\/p>\n
During an ADWEEK House Cannes Lions panel co-hosted with Empathy Lab, industry leaders explored what replaces it: a connected creative infrastructure where engineers, creative talent, data, and AI production work together.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The infrastructure shift\u00a0<\/p>\n
When AI production tools reach everyone, the real competitive question comes into focus. What keeps one brand from sounding exactly like the next?\u00a0<\/p>\n
The answer is not necessarily more tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the creative teams are the ones that now matter more than anything,\u201d said Roland Butler, head of product, content solutions at Zalando.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we are now building is a whole creative system around those teams, maintaining their agency and their creative freedom, and allowing them to respond faster and better,\u201d he added. Designers and engineers now work alongside one another on prompts, quality controls, editorial guidelines, and cultural trend signals.<\/p>\n
Ben Hall, VP at Empathy Lab, sees this moment as a clarifying one. \u201cThe fundamentals are more important than ever,\u201d he noted. \u201cThe idea, the insight, the cultural relevance has become massively important. Teams are now surrounding themselves around this again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of that completely went away. What shifted is the strategic foundation. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to have systems thinking, you\u2019ve got to have people who really understand how this idea can translate to composable systems across and outside of the Internet,\u201d Hall continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Keeping speed from turning generic\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the Met Gala this past spring, the Zalando team used tooling to link trend signals, product relevance, visuals, and an editorial review, then published a campaign within 24 hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe speed to react, I think, is something that you should track, and then the speed to insight,\u201d Butler said. \u201cIf you\u2019re just counting the volume of AI output, you\u2019re adding to the problem of a world of blandness.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hall added that speed \u201ccan actually be an antidote to blandness, because you can read signals from culture and speed that roll in. You can create content really quickly, but it actually has meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The upstream role\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hall\u2019s framework for where people fit is clear: \u201cYou need the empathy upstream, and the machines power the creative downstream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hall and Butler agreed that strategic thinking has to be baked into the infrastructure, not applied at the end. Brands need the people responsible for taste, emotion, and cultural judgment to be involved in designing the operating models. AI can help teams move at the speed of culture, but creatives bring the empathy and storytelling instinct that make a brand memorable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cKeep your teams curious, and focus on systems rather than projects,\u201d Butler concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post was created in partnership with Empathy Lab\u00a0 The campaign had a good run. One big idea…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[16795,16796,24,25,9613,22811],"class_list":["post-89757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-adops-branded-content","tag-adweek-house","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cannes-lions","tag-creative-advertising"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}