Redefining Creative Innovation: how AI and Human intelligence converge
By Jak Norwood – AI Strategist at DMS
In 2023, the World Economic Forum identified that 75% of companies are looking to adopt AI technologies in the next five years, however this same report concluded that analytical and creative thinking remain the most important skills for workers in 2023. How does this approach play out in-situ? As 2024 marches on and we enter a new financial year, we’re increasingly aware that artificial intelligence is reshaping our world at breakneck speed, ushering in a new era of rapidly evolving creativity.
In the face of such transformative change, our response as a company and as creators, becomes pivotal. Today, the million-dollar question all agencies are asking themselves is this: how can we harness the vast potential of AI to invigorate and elevate our creative processes? Interestingly, the solution may not exclusively rest with AI itself, but rather in the symbiotic interplay between human intelligence and technology. It’s about embracing AI as a dynamic ally, a force multiplier for our innate abilities. It’s about amplifying our unique strengths, not surrendering them.
Hence, maintaining an intelligent, human-led approach to innovation should be at the heart of any AI implementation plan. At DMS, we’ve woven this ethos into the fabric of our strategy, and our findings are supporting this outlook:
Here’s a glimpse into how this principle can propel agencies and brands’ creative outputs to new heights:
Curation and Context: While advanced AI technology empowers us, it’s our deep-rooted understanding of quality, audiences and our clients’ needs—cultivated over the years—that truly distinguishes us as an agency. It’s the expertise of our professionals that not only upholds the highest standards but also ensures that our content seamlessly aligns with brand expectations and resonates within intended contexts and mediums. This is why at DMS, we actively encourage our team to continually sharpen their skills in creative disciplines, recognising their pivotal role in unlocking the full potential of AI-generated outputs. So, this is the time for agencies to invest in specialisation, training and development of their creative and operational workforce.
A Good Idea Is Still a Good Idea: It’s hard to ignore the impact of generative AI, therefore we’re strategically integrating select tools in relevant areas of the business to enhance our workflows – from our motion graphics teams to our edit and audio departments. However, on its own, generative AI still falls short. AI may be helpful to generate variations and assist with initial ideation, but it cannot yet produce the truly original ideas and content that captivate audiences. In other words; AI’s strength lies in process efficiency and augmentation, not true innovation. To ignite the latter, human creativity remains indispensable—it brings the spark of the unexpected, the ability to weave ideas together in surprising ways, and the capability to tap deeper into emotions that drive engagement.
Balancing AI Analytics with Emotional Intelligence: while AI can analyse data quantitively, it lacks the ability to grasp nuanced emotional intelligence. It is this nuanced, human understanding that our clients consistently value and prioritise to ensure their marketing and publicity content strategies truly connect with their audiences, steering away from mere volume-based data. Hence, keeping a human-led, data-driven approach to campaign monitoring and analytics may just be the key for truly successful audience engagement.
AI Scales Content, Not Creativity: AI accelerates content production and ideation, but we strongly believe that a creative agency should always prioritise the quality and resonance of content delivered. Therefore, our advice is to maximise AI for automation of routine tasks to save time and mental energy, then redirect this extra capacity towards high-level strategic thinking, future planning and creative exploration.
In other words, innovation should be about freeing up time for strategic thinking and for piloting initiatives that will elevate both the quality of our content and of our services. This approach ensures that any additional capacity earned from AI implementation is being used to:
- create more unique content for higher impact
- resource-plan and future-proof any peaks in workload
- implement optimal operational workflows that will allow for even more effective content delivery to our global clients.
Looking Ahead:
AI Agents: We foresee the increasing importance of ‘AI Agents’ in the creative space. No, these aren’t super-bots lurking on around on the web, these are real people leveraging large language models, empowered with task-specific knowledge sets, for brainstorming, idea generation, research, and routine content creation. This specialised form of AI, with 24/7 availability, can quickly process vast amounts of data to uncover trends and insights that fuel compelling creative content strategies. This is something we would recommend preparing for.
Continuously Adapting with AI: As large language models become more intuitive, it’s essential that our teams continue to harness AI tools for dynamic suggestions, feedback, and optimisation. At DMS we are constantly refining our prompting and refinement techniques to ensure any tools leveraged amplify our creative vision and enhance our workflow. Equally vital is to keep on to of content copyright and content encryption regulations, as well as any other legal parameters which should frame and inform our AI strategy – this is paramount to us as a business. Our hope is that a fully AI literate workforce leads to a seamless human-AI collaborative environment with exceptional results for the foreseeable future.
In sum, as the ever-evolving landscape of artificial intelligence continues to set new benchmarks in innovation, creative agencies will have to continuously adapt and develop alongside it. That said, human creativity will always be at the heart of what we do, providing the vital spark and nuance that sets us apart. Alongside artificial intelligence, at DMS we will build upon our already successful track record to deliver superior creative results, and inspire our industry peers
The future of content creation is creativity augmented—and we’re ready.
