How AI-Native Teams Deliver Creative Work Differently

Galen Low: Some say that AI is killing creativity and artistic expression in favor of commodified slop. But that's also what some painters said when the camera entered the fray, and that's also what some photographers said when camera phones entered the fray. Oh, and truth be told, before there was AI slop, there was just straight-up slop.

Bad quality creative outputs have always existed. So when it comes down to disruption versus innovation in the creative agency space, many of the same rules apply. No one's an expert yet, and there's definitely a lot of AI-generated output that's missing the mark, but the technology also has the potential to elevate creativity as well.

To explore that idea, I brought in the co-founders of Original Model, an AI-native creative agency. They join me live while on location at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to share their approach to using AI in their process and how forward-thinking agencies like theirs are embracing AI in a way that might redefine marketing and advertising forever.

Oh, and please excuse the audio. My guests had to change location at the last minute and ended up literally on a beach in the thick of the festivities in Cannes. Consider it part of the vibe. Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome to the Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real-world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks, and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it.

Okay, today we are diving into the state of the creative agency and what modern agency teams are doing to redefine marketing and advertising against the backdrop of AI. Specifically, we're going to be zeroing in on where creative agencies should be placing AI tools and technology in their process to find that sweet spot between profitability, efficiency, and creative excellence. Joining me live from Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity are Tom Brown and Eric Oldrin, co-founders of Original Model Creative Agency.

During their time at Meta, Eric and Tom witnessed multiple waves of technological disruption that reshaped how brands, creators, and audiences interact. And today, they've taken those lessons and built Original Model, an AI native creative agency producing everything from brand films to integrated campaigns to experimental artistic cinema using AI throughout the entire production process.

Tom, Eric, thanks for being here with me today.

Tom Brown: Hey, thank you, Galen.

Eric Oldrin: Yep. Thank you.

Tom Brown: Wonderful introduction.

Eric Oldrin: Yeah, I love that.

Galen Low: Thank you. Yeah, so, for folks who are listening, you probably hear the sounds of some things happening in the background, maybe some waves crashing against the shore because Eric and Tom are literally on the beach in Cannes.

I'm gazing at this beautiful vista, so I know we've got some background sound on this, but I thought we would try and bottle some of this energy because you two, I mean, it's what, day three of the festival?

Eric Oldrin: Yeah, day three.

Tom Brown: Kinda lose track, honestly.

Galen Low: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all blurring into one. I mean, this is one of the most celebrated creative festivals in the world.

There's a lot going on there right now. Even coming on to the studio here, I know y- your original location got bumped by someone called Oprah. Again, thank you for spending the time with me here today. I'm hoping we can kind of get that Cannes Lions vibe. I, of course, am stuck here at home with my coffee and slippers, but I will live a bit vicariously through you and hopefully our listeners too.

I thought what I might do is kinda start off with a bit of a spicy question and then just see where the wind takes us. Along the way, I'm hoping we can just touch on what genuinely great AI-powered creative work looks like and why so many people are getting it wrong. I'd like to kind of touch on how you actually use AI throughout your creative process, and what checks and balances are in place to maintain your standard of quality, and I'd also like to just talk about what creative agencies might look like three to five years from now if AI continues to improve at its current pace.

Tom Brown: That sounds fantastic. And we think about all those things.

Galen Low: I imagine. Imagine they're top of mind, A, right now, and B, just you know, you're building a business in a space and context that just didn't exist before, but we'll get into that. I thought maybe I can start with a spicy question that creative agency folks have on the brain who may be listening and who may be curious, and let me take a running start at this because you all do a lot of really good video work.

One glance at your YouTube page is all I needed to understand that. But for some folks it might fall into the category of AI video, which is a term that can send some people running for the hills. And then the thing for me is that AI video tools are improving almost every day, and in the past year we've gone from janky Super Bowl ads to realistic celebrity fight sequences, to convincing propaganda, to AI influencers, to entire feature-length films being generated with AI.

And yet, with all of these advances, AI video is still haunted by notions of slop, with everyone trying to pick out obvious AI, and in some cases actually getting it wrong. So I thought I'd ask you, why do we, as humans, want to hate AI video so much?

Tom Brown: I think there's a-- at a very high level, people don't like bad content.

AI slop, those two things coming together is part of the vernacular in the industry today. Slop has been around for a long time, and AI's just kind of been bolted on, in part because the tools allow so many people to create a plethora of content. And so there's just more opportunity to put out work that is maybe not really designed, there's no real craft or direction, there's not a story arc.

People haven't really invested in the idea itself And so I think it, it just, when you have that percentage of content out there, it becomes a big target. But there's also other things that contribute to anxiety around it, whether it's dislike or just sort of, you know, people are averse to it. I think in general, people are averse to new things.

Eric and I have both spent a lot of time at Facebook and Instagram, and ultimately at Meta, and we saw firsthand all these new opportunities for marketers and advertisers to create interesting things on the technology stack that company had to offer. And there was just natural resistance to try that because it's hard, because it's different, and so that's probably another reason, but there's probably a few-- I mean, we talked about a few others as well.

Eric Oldrin: Yeah, I think there, there's some adversity to that. You know, for us, you have seen, like you said, some examples of AI that's a very tangible output for a lot of our creative thinking. But as a creative agency, we look at AI as a tool, and we use whatever means necessary in order to communicate an idea, in order to build a brand, and to build a messaging platform around that brand.

And so that might be a practical shoot. You know, I heard yesterday that the Coinbase commercial, that was all shot practically, that won in Cannes Lion, you know? And, you know, there's a hunger for authenticity, and there's also a hunger for all sorts of other forms of expression. Maybe it calls for claymation.

Maybe it calls for audio only. The medium should be dictated by the idea, which is purely human. And so at Original Model, that's really how we think about, at least when it comes to AI for production it's a tool within the toolkit, but I come from a filmmaking background and traditional animation and moved into digital.

And so I think when it comes to our expressions, they live in that space. But as an agency, we look at AI as having even more to offer beyond production. You know, we look at it as having an opportunity for us to unpack insights and understanding about audiences, about sort of what kind of business objectives our partners might be trying to build against.

And so I think all those resistance that Tom mentions are true. I do think slop and bad content precedes AI, and it's just accentuated that because it's pretty easy for people to create a lot of content, and then people are also resistant to change. I think the third thing, though, that people tend to sort of react to around AI that we hear particularly in the agency world but beyond, you know, is the sense that it's disrupting the workforce, and there's a lot of skills and a lot of capabilities that people have had and a knowledge and expertise they've built that it is now overlapping with.

I think the answer to that is that there's an opportunity to evolve those skills based off of this new medium, and there's really upleveling the game.

Galen Low: I really love that. I think those are all really good points, especially just the plethora of content, how easy it is to create content with AI.

You have a filmmaking background, Eric. You know, you and I both know that there were bad movies before. It would just take a long time to make them, a lot of people to make them, and, you know, so they're not a dime a dozen, you know, in your feed every day. And then, like you both said, right, your experience at Instagram and Facebook and Meta, you saw a lot of change.

It takes a while for people to, A, accept that change, and B, get good at it even, right? It's I come back to photography as well. Photography used to be a craft. The moat used to be, well, cameras are expensive, and you really have to take the time and understand the craft, and then suddenly they're in our smartphone, and everyone can take a picture.

And Tom, you're right. There's a lot of bad photos out there, just like there's a lot of bad AI sloppy videos out there.

Tom Brown: People don't blame the camera, they blame the photographer.

Galen Low: Yeah.

Tom Brown: You know, right now people are blaming the tool as opposed to the people behind that, and you get it, you know.

And I think there are some tells to some of the AI production. That gap is shortening. It's just getting so much better and better.

Eric Oldrin: But it is great that people are blaming the slop, that they're recognizing it. You know- ... humans, I have a clear hunger for storytelling and creativity that connects with them.

It's interesting if you look at Sora, for example. They were really built around very quick and lightweight production of content, and they built that app that was just purely all people creating a lot of AI content, and then they would rip on it. And interestingly enough, they deprecated that product.

You know, it went away. And there's probably lots of reasons for that, but it's also really interesting that the sort of daily active users, you know, for Sora sort of started out early in the year, like in 2025. They shot up. It was phenomenal. People were really excited. And then if you looked at January and February and out towards when it was deprecated, it just went off a cliff, and I think that's because people stopped wanting...

They stopped m- they went there, they looked at all this content, and they said, "This isn't really... It doesn't have any depth. It doesn't have any sort of substance to it." And so there is a hunger where they are out there blaming. And yeah, you're right, they might be blaming the tools, but regardless, it's great that they're blaming something when they see something bad because we really wanna create good content, and we want others to as well.

Galen Low: Yeah. I really like that perspective. You know, we're kind of voting with our views, right? It's not just human taste as a creator, that's important too, but also the taste of the people who are consuming this content to be able to say, "Yeah this isn't good," and push us forward as creatives but also push the technology forward as well.

I wondered if I could zoom out from that, and maybe we can look at industry and also kind of get into the sort of creative agency space. But, you know, you mentioned during your time at Instagram and Facebook and Meta, and probably elsewhere throughout your careers both of you have seen a lot of change and a lot of technical and technological disruption in both the creative space and the business space.

What's something from your respective backgrounds that gave you the confidence to build an entire business around AI-native creative services when most of your competitors were still sort of struggling to figure out how to double down on AI?

Tom Brown: I think it's just we're wired, and some of it was just because our job was to do this, but it's also just kinda how we're wired, which is to be curious and to unpack interesting value by learning how to master a new technology.

We're just really interested in it, and at a minimum, starting Original Model, we are guaranteed to learn a ton. We're not within a large organization that asks you to do eighty-five percent of your job and figure out how all this new technology can work Our business model is predicated on learning that faster and finding both new sort of opportunity, but also efficiency in doing that.

And so I think that was the main thing that drew our company. So it was probably less about confidence, just more about curiosity.

Eric Oldrin: I mean, as we went through that process, though, we, you know, we started to experiment and to start to sort of shape our approach. And I think the thing at least now that gives me a lot of excitement, particularly being here among a lot of other really amazing agencies, big and small, is confidence in the approach that we're starting to form.

You know, we build the equivalent what we would call an original model for each of our clients, and that is a corpus of information about everything they know about themselves, every conversation we have with them, ideas that we have during brainstorming and during, you know, workshops with them as we develop things going forward.

And over time, it creates institutional knowledge about that brand or about that partner that we have. That's very similar to what we have done in the past with AR relationships. You know, so you hire R/GA, you have them, you know, as your agency, and you have a switching cost because they have so much understanding, there's relationships.

I feel like we have this opportunity now to do that in this very comprehensive way that is in some ways even more powerful because it doesn't forget. You know, you can lean on this model that we're creating almost as a third partner within our agency in order to help us do better work, solve bigger problems faster and in more interesting ways.

But ultimately, that is just feeding sort of Tom and I, and we joke because it's just created sort of a higher order of work, more work. We have to listen to this partner and then sort of rip with it. But I would say that, that's the other reason. I'm excited about that approach. It's very new and novel.

Tom Brown: There's, you know, when you're in this business for a long time, you see a lot of Like work, this business is the idea of ideas, and you see a lot of good ideas essentially vaporize. You're in a great session, or you send out three creative teams to brainstorm ideas, but at the end of the day, a lot of that falls through the cracks, gets lost in the conversation, gets forgotten because you've moved on to some other fire drill.

And what we're seeing with sort of building a AI-driven approach that's connected is that doesn't happen, and it helped us make those connections that we would have struggled with without it. Some really brilliant idea that somebody on the project thought of in a room three weeks ago, an insight on an audience, and then this other idea surfaces later, and those connections now become much more short-circuited.

And that, you know, that's about proliferation of ideas, which is really important in today's landscape as well, because there's so much opportunity to put content out there on all these platforms. And so that's kind of a long way around to expressing some enthusiasm around.

Galen Low: I love that. I love that curiosity is driving it.

I love that, you know, you're not seeing it as necessarily the confidence to dive into a business, but the focus, right? So not having to figure something out on the side of your desk, being able to dive right in. You've seen change before, you know. You've seen social media come up and through. You've seen sort of AR and VR and, you know, here's AI.

You can use it as a thought partner. And Tom, what you said about the fact that yeah, a lot of this ideation in the creative process, it evaporates. It gets lost along the way, you know. And you think we've captured the spirit of it, and in some ways we're distilling it, but in, in a lot of cases, good ideas are just falling by the wayside that would've helped make the creative work better.

That's sort of, the short-circuiting, but the synapses, right? The connection between ideas throughout a discovery process with a client, you know, throughout you know, workshopping with the team to be able to make those connections and create a better product. I really like that.

And actually, you know, Eric, I didn't know. I'm sure you explained it to me at some point. The whole idea of the original model is that. There was this corpus of information that accrues along the way that is the brief, that is the ideas, that is the work, and that should be cohesive, and it should be referenceable.

And before AI, that couldn't have happened.

Tom Brown: It's underscored by this reasoning as well. So, let's not undersell what these LLMs can do- Yeah ... which is not all kind of coalesce information, but actually push And surface and, you know, I still think that not to the level of what we're doing and the importance that the human kind of taste and craft and cognitive sort of approach, but it is a, another layer to the value.

Eric Oldrin: It is in many ways a third partner, you know, to the agency. It's not just, you know, a reference. It's a participant in a lot of the work that we're doing. And I would add though that this approach, the original model approach, the way that we sort of get to ideas, that was I think one of the biggest reasons we were excited to be part of this podcast.

You know, because it really reimagines the way that digital project managers sort of drive work forward. The way that we think about getting through ideas and working with partners is a much more of a system and much more organic and fluid than sort of in some ways the traditional process has been very sort of linear, almost waterfall, and this is beyond that.

You know, we talked about Scrum type of project management in the past. This is Scrum on steroids because you now sort of have this sort of ability to sort of go anywhere within the process.

Tom Brown: It's a very sur- you know, sort of- replicates, I think, the way creativity, humans come up with creativity. It's not linear.

It's a little messy. You can still see momentum towards the end state. You still have to make something, produce it, execute it. But I do think it has a really interesting implication on those who are in charge of actually keeping things on the rails, because the rails are a lot more curved. And, you know, we talked a little bit about this before, you know, talking to you, Galen, and one of the things that we thought would be a requirement for our project management is for those who are the PM to actually lean in and be more involved in that creative process, because I think that accountability and understanding of how that works would just make them much better at knowing, well, when do we need to push off?

When do we need to slow down, maybe go backwards? But all in the spirit of moving forward. I think it's exciting new way to think. I think it's gonna reap better outcomes, but it sounds a little scary as well as you're thinking about taking on the responsibility of making sure that we're going through the right stage gates.

Galen Low: I really like your framing there, the fact that it kind of lets in people who are not necessarily folks who self-identify as creative. For example, you know, a project manager is not necessarily a creative project manager. Historically, we've been like, "Okay. Well, you guys speak that language. Do your thing, and just tell me when it's done."

I like that idea of hey, actually, we can all be closer to the work because some of that translation is happening, some of that understanding is being supported, and we can all be in the conversation. I really like that.

Eric Oldrin: Yeah, you know, from the film world, there is the role of a project manager, I guess.

But, you know, oftentimes a twin to that is producer. And so I think what differentiates a producer often is they are closer to the work in many ways, closer to the creative idea. They're closer to sort of bringing different pieces of a project together, and I've always thought that was a very weird division.

I don't think there should be. You know, I think that there's a lot of opportunity for project managers to think that way and to be closer to the work. I know that being on my side, on the creative side, working with producers, I probably welcome that, you know, this sort of "yes, and" type of mentality, where they very much see the forest and the trees.

Galen Low: I really like that. And honestly the-- every day I think about it, especially in the agency world, I'm like, we've been working with compromise this whole time. Even though it's the way we've always done it, it's always been a compromise. Resourcing has been a compromise. You know, a project manager with eight active projects on the go, just running from meeting room to meeting room, that's a compromise.

You know, this should be an opportunity for us to collaborate better, take a page out of the book of the film industry, and have everyone really fixated and passionate about making a film, right? It's like knowing along the way.

Tom Brown: Yeah. I like the pivot even just from a positioning standpoint, because a producer, their title is about making something, and a project manager, their title is about the process of making something.

And so just a little bit of a like of a tilt towards that, no, this is about celebrating the thing that you're making, and obviously you play a critical role. The other thing about advertising and the work that we do is that the idea actually is not just the eureka moment, hey, this is the line or this is the story.

The idea manifests through the entire execution. And so the PM Has the ability to shape that in profound ways if they sort of look at it through that lens. So how it shows up in the world, how it gets executed, what the channels are, how those channels are leveraged, all of that expertise as a project manager, because you're seeing that all the way through the life cycle.

If you're empowered to kind of have a voice in that, it's gonna make the work better.

Galen Low: I'm curious, how are you using AI in your process at Original Model, and like what guardrails or quality criteria do you have in place to achieve quality and make really good decisions, while also still remaining competitive in the agency space in the AI-powered marketplace?

Tom Brown: I'll start by saying I think we, we have a lot of confidence in ourselves and that being a key differentiation in terms of what is our positioning. Our positioning is our experience, our aspirations, our ideas, our enthusiasm. That said, I think that the way we've set up our AI tooling and our stack is a much more integrated, holistic approach.

You look at a lot of places where AI is kind of finding its way into agencies or into marketing departments. It's this mandate for all these different functions within those organizations to experiment and see what you can stand up. So you've got production people standing things up. You've got creative teams standing up, you know, ways to ideate.

You've got strategy people sort of experimenting with ways to do research. And that's all good, but it still reinforces this sort of separate but equal approach, as opposed to the fact that we operate as a function, as a team across all of those, and we build a core AI sort of partner or strategist, and then convert that as the process evolves into a creative partner and then into a production partner.

And some of that is just 'cause it seemed like the right thing to do, and as we've done that, we've discovered that continuity because honestly, the idea doesn't start-- like the ideas oftentimes start with a really good definition of the problem. And then it, you know, if you do that well, and then you really unpack and understand people on sort of what their motivations and barriers are well, and then you convert that into a way to ideate and come up with ways to fill those gaps well, and then ultimately a way to, the best way to produce that.

So, you know, that's I think our secret sauce, but there's lots of ways that I'm sure that other agencies are doing, you know, bringing AI into the fold as well.

Eric Oldrin: And I would say our safety measures are very much of, like Tom said, our own expertise and confidence in what we do and what we know and the experience behind that.

I would say we have learned more in the last year or so as we've stood this up and we've been inspired more, but I feel like I've also worked harder than before I had AI. And I think it's because the AI Is sort of elevating the output, the proliferation of possibilities in the strategy, and then the opportunity for creative.

So it puts a lot of pressure on us to then play our role, which is this sort of high-level thinking and the decision-making and the creative direction, and it really is generating this sort of concepts and ideas. You know, we are ... One of our clients is sort of on the precipice of a really beautiful integrated campaign.

They're part of this big launch moment happening here soon, and as part of that there was coffee and there's like a tagline and there's a campaign, and, you know, AI did not come up with that. Right. Tom and I came up with that. But AI played a really nice role in helping us sort of get to that, helping us sort of understand the audience and understand all the sort of territories and sort of the best place to point our thinking.

And so I'd say our safety measure is really, I guess, our brains between us.

Tom Brown: Yeah. And you know, we were able to then train basically the original model that we built on that project to understand the idea, what worked, what didn't, to come back with different things that could be alternative executions or headlines, and then some were, like, brilliant, others were garbage.

And that feedback loop then further trained. So it suddenly becomes a partner. The last decade of my career before s- you know, joining Eric and starting Original Model, I was in a position where a lot of folks on my team were sort of owning the pen on that and then coming to me, and my role was to push them and to find where the juice was.

And so in many ways, these models can play that similar role, and you can play them off each other. You can ... Y- you know, we use all the big sort of labs, and so we'll see which one responds in different ways, and we can ping pong that. I can do a three-hour session with a few of those models- Yeah ... that used to be three weeks with a couple different people.

Eric Oldrin: And we can even set up instances where they talk to each other, where they play different kinds of roles. It's like focus grouping in, within each lab. Of course, they have multiple models there too. So there's a lot of room for us to create a team of sorts that helps us to validate. I would go ... Our other safety measure, you know, even when we're bringing ideas to life and making tangible output, on the filmmaking side, you know, we do have a history of having dabbled and played with generative output and made a number of dif- films.

We're finalists in the London AI Film Festival that's happening, I think, tomorrow for two films, and our process there is very much about leaning on the tools. But you know, Tom and I were talking about this morning, is that there's these pieces within that creative filmmaking process that are just so deeply human- Mainly because they're odd and they need the oddness.

They need sort of the kinky sort of quality out of it. Of course, human performance within actors. You know, there's just some new-- We were talking about the opening of Pulp Fiction and just the way that, you know, "Everybody be still, this is a robbery." The way they delivered that line, like that's not...

AI's not going to get to that place because it is so off-kilter. Editing and the way that you actually build the nuance and timing and the sort of put framing against, you know, two shots and the continuation that happens in editing, that's something we need to finish up. And then all the way down to color correction.

There's been tools forever. By the way, AI and a lot of these AI production tools, you know... I know LLMs have accelerated a lot of this conversation, but you know, Final Cut has AI in it. As it's tweening. You know, we had AI when I worked at Macromedia. Tweening is AI, you know? Right. But I would say that those finishing elements are the piece, that extra 10 to 20% is the part that really differentiates any kind of storytelling, any kind of production creation.

Galen Low: A, I like that, you know, it's a holistic approach, and Tom, what you said earlier just about the fact that a lot of organizations and a lot of agencies are letting each individual sort of team or department do a thing, and they're equal and together, but it's not emerging as something holistic that is greater than the sum of its parts.

So I like the idea that it's holistically embedded from start to finish, that the idea of an AI focus group I think is genius. And Eric, I do agree that yeah, there is that X percentage of the creative work where, yeah, it needs that humanness, and the humanness might be kinda weird, and the models might not come up with it because we've trained them on what is not weird.

And the sort of culmination is something that is very human. And then I wanted to go back to something because I opened this with "Oh yeah, you guys create some great AI video," but then also you were like, "And we just came from a shoot." We're talking about commercials that are still being shot practically, some hybrids.

I guess, where in your process do you make that decision to say, "Okay, well, based on the ideas we have and based on the brief and based on the problem we're trying to solve, yeah, let's hire, you know, some human actors and get a crew, and we'll do a shoot at the studio," versus, "You know what? This should be okay.

We've got great sort of realistic models that we can generate here for this purpose." What drives that decision?

Eric Oldrin: There's not one answer. There's a lot of just different considerations. One consideration, as project managers know very well, is the pyramid of time, money, and quality, you know? And so time and money particularly will drive whether you're picking up a camera and what kind of production and whether you can have a location and whether you can actually have actors.

And so there's some constraints that can be built in there. And so, you know, a lot of small businesses really love the idea of being able to generate assets in ways that they never could imagine before. You know, a lot of my films, I just had stories I wanted to tell that there was no way on Earth that I was gonna be able to do a beam shot on the top of the Himalayas or-

whatever was required, you know, in order to bring that to life. So the practicality, I think, is one consideration is there's a pathway. But then the foil to that is a lotta times there's reservations from a lot of different brands, understandably, about all sorts of parts of AI. Just as you mentioned before, there's questions that people have just in audiences and customers, and there can be backlash, and so they have to be very careful.

And those questions can come from all sorts of different places. Oftentimes when we're working with clients, there's a very careful process that you'll go through with the legal team and their policy team and decide sort of what roles at all should it play. And does it sit next to the brand? Ooh, does

Is the brand well-suited for AI or is not the brand well-suited for that? And so, you know, I think that's the second sorta consideration. The third one I'd mention is probably the most pure. I think both Tom and I would probably Point to the most is just, is the idea well-suited for-

Tom Brown: Yeah, the brief. Yeah.

I mean, the other thing that factors in is generative AI allows us to do prototyping in ways we couldn't do before. Yeah. And so sometimes that step reveals whether or not the opportunity to then do finish work in that medium, parchment in that medium. So that's also a really good... Not only is there value in prototyping, 'cause before if you were just doing storyboards or animatics, you kind of had a sense of what it was.

You can get a lot, but you can get 75% of the way to the feeling of that asset if it's video, and that's really exciting as well.

Galen Low: Yeah, it's a hugely good point, and I, you know, I'm thinking of my, you know, as a younger person watching behind the scenes of The Matrix or something, right? They're doing all this pre-vis work, and it was, like, cutting edge at the time to be able to just shot for shot, figure out if it's gonna work before you bring the actors in, before you bring the, you know, stunt performers in, before you do all the rigging.

And I think, you know, like, all those considerations, especially the brief, right, is apt because, like you said originally this is a tool. We gotta pick the right tool for the job. There are constraints. No, we can't always fly to the Himalayas, but maybe that's the shot we want, and maybe the audience will be okay with that.

Or maybe they're not, you know? Maybe the legal team has an issue with it. There's all these sort of requirements, and it starts to really, you know, not just as a creative corpus, but the original model is actually, you know, in my world, the requirements and assumptions and considerations and risks and things that we need to be thinking about every step of the way.

And with creative projects, oftentimes not everyone is thinking that, even the PM, 'cause we're focused on the creative work and the output and, you know, it's difficult work. But I love that idea of that sort of active partner being like, "Okay, but have you considered this?" And making that part of the conversation for everybody, so everyone can kinda be like, "Yeah, well, is that gonna be okay?"

And maybe the model's "Actually, you know, we've determined that this is an organization that has customer bases that are kind of anti-AI, so maybe we won't use that," or vice versa. I think that's really neat.

Tom Brown: Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, I... We should probably set this up front nobody's an expert in this space 'cause it's so new and evolving every single day, so it's just a ton of questions like the ones you just sort of surfaced that we're asking ourselves, we're talking to our clients with.

But I do think it, you know, in six months, in a year, in two years, the separation from shooting something live to producing something through generative AI, that gap continues to shorten. And, you know, the cultural response to AI as a tool and a medium We'll see how that evolves. I think it will be like a lot of other technology in the past, whether it was photography or film or mobile or whatever that is, like it just became part of life and it wasn't as controversial.

But a lot of the benefit and a lot of the thing I think our partners love is that they're learning with us on this as well. And I think a big principle of marketing and advertising, it used to be like you bet the farm on one campaign. You cross your fingers that it would move the needle. And now the principle is try a lot of things.

You know? Don't break the brand's sacred cows, but experiment, and this just gives you that ability to do that in ways that you couldn't do before.

Galen Low: I love that, and I love that your partners and your clients are excited about this, excited to do this with you. I know there's a lot of folks in my networks who are like afraid to take that step because they think that their clients are gonna think that they're not experts and they don't know what they're doing and, you know, they're gonna get fired, versus your framing, which is actually no one's an expert.

There's sort of confidence in the creativity and the delivery. We're running a lot of experiments. We're not betting the farm. We're not betraying the sacred cows, but we are iterating forward, and that's a good motion for most businesses that are doing marketing and advertising, right? To kind of try some things, stay ahead of it, get noticed without necessarily getting canceled, and I think that's a really good -- I mean, it sounds like a really good client relationship or partner relationship that you kind of take on.

Tom Brown: There's no doubt that we're discovering parts of the process and the workflow where we're bringing AI in It's undeniably valuable. I think that the last mile, which is the production piece, is, and how, you know, the brand and the idea shows up in the world, that's probably the most controversial, but I think a lot of that is starting to melt away as well.

Galen Low: That's really interesting. Maybe let's go there. Our working title for this is How Creative Agencies are Redefining Marketing and Advertising. What is the big shift and what is the big impact that you're foreseeing over the next year or two that will sort of change the way we look at marketing and advertising, and the way agencies operate, and the way clients see value?

Tom Brown: I think that, you know, one of the points Eric brought up earlier, which is the constraints of budget and time, I think that starts to go away. I think that the opportunity to whatever dream you have for an idea, that those constraints on 50 different exotic locations and extremely expensive casting, I think it's gonna open up the aperture for ideas, and that's really exciting because I know I've seen a lot of great ideas that have just been kicked to the side of the road because they were just too cost prohibitive.

And then it comes down to just puts further pressure on the human creativity and the idea itself and the craft around that. So I think that's one of the biggest shifts that we're gonna see.

Eric Oldrin: I also think that the AI itself sort of opens up new creative opportunities new types of surfaces for brands to connect with customers.

You know, we were on a panel yesterday, and one of the people on the panel with us was an old friend from Spotify, and they were talking about new ad formats, and I loved that. He was talking about an ad format where you would have a conversation with the ad. You know, you can imagine that. You come across something, you hear it, and then you can ask a question, and the ad actually becomes, you know, a little intelligent.

So it's kinda interesting to imagine the evolution of marketing and advertising and the role that AI can play to, to hopefully make things more effective and more valuable to people and not creepy and- Yeah ... and play a role in that way.

Tom Brown: Absolutely. Yeah. As it gets integrated into just the world, suddenly the way that you imagine executing that idea is really wild.

It feels very futuristic, but it's not that far away.

Galen Low: That's really cool. I love the sort of, yeah, new formats. I love the idea that it can be engagement, not just you know, we've gone from eyeballs to actually engaging through an ad, I think is a really interesting sort of idea and prospect.

I know that some folks are like, yeah, creepy, you know, or like whatever Minority Report style things where it knows your name as you walk by the billboard. But at the end of the day, it's about the sort of quality of the experience and the value that's being sort of exchanged.

Eric Oldrin: And it's also about the idea.

You know, I think you have to have your sort of brain in the right place, and I think if the idea or the intent can take it to very other places. One of the biggest themes that I've heard here at the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity is the sort of elevated importance of creativity and of that core idea more than ever.

And six months ago, there was sort of this forest of people feeling as if creativity was being sort of displaced by AI, and now all of a sudden-- Not all of a sudden. I'm happy to see this sort of embracing of the fact that actually the idea and the human point of view and the creativity that we bring actually is what fuels all of these supercharged sort of means to be able to get to output and ideas and executions.

I was at another little event, and I heard the CEO of BBDO, a woman called Emma Armstrong, and I got chills listening to her talk about creativity. And she was speaking from the heart, and she was speaking from a place of this groundswell that she was feeling around her here and the importance of that.

So yeah, I see AI doing interesting things, but to Tom's point, it really is about the intention behind it.

Galen Low: I love that. And actually maybe that lets us round out where we started. You know, we started talking about this notion of slop and people really wanting to pick out AI and, you know, and hate on it a little bit.

For anyone who's kind of working in, especially in an agency context, but even just in a creative context, who feels like they're being pressured to, you know, output things that are, in their opinion, soulless and forgettable and things that won't actually engage and ideas that are maybe not good, what advice would you give them to sort of rediscover that creativity and attach it to value rather than participate in this race to the bottom to say, "Well, that's okay.

I can produce 50 shorts in a minute. Yeah, they won't be good, but at least we got paid"?

Tom Brown: Well, I mean, I'd say find another agency to work at if they're under pressure to produce work that they feel is soulless. I mean, there's a role for content at different phases, right? There's high volume, high velocity performance marketing.

You have three seconds to sort of trigger a reaction, and there's a space for that. I don't think that... I guess I would disassociate AI from pressure to produce things that feel like they're s- not valuable or, you know, just not high quality. My advice w- I would just flip the question, and my advice would be to lean in and experiment.

There's-- You can learn so much around what your sort of center of excellence is and turn these models and this technology into a superpower that, again, we just decided to do 'cause we started this agency. It's mind-bending, and so I would encourage people. I think the quality, the... You know, again, it starts with you.

But to me, you have the ability to turn this into elevating work versus escalating volume of crap.

Eric Oldrin: I think 1,000%. My advice to someone who feels locked into that is go to the beach. Go for a walk, get out of your own head, read a book, and get to an idea because the tool's not the thing keeping you from creativity, you know?

Back when the camera was in- invented, it was, like, 1862 or something like that, they called it the end of art as we know it, you know? Be- they felt like it was channeling light into a machine, and the machine was all there was, and the artist went away because, you know, they were all painters, right? And so they were used to taking a brush and putting it on a canvas.

It was very physical, very tactile. And all of a sudden, you could capture an image, you know, in front of you through this machine. And I think it took a little while, but they sort of embraced the medium for what it was after that. And out of that, Impressionism was born. They found new ways to do painting, and they also found new ways to, to use a camera.

Galen Low: Tom, Eric, thanks so much for spending the time with me. This has been so much fun. I'll post some links to your YouTube channel and your profiles in the show notes as well. And thanks again for joining me while you're there live at Cannes Lions. Enjoy yourselves.

Tom Brown: We really enjoyed this. Thanks again. Thanks so much, Galen.

Eric Oldrin: Thanks, Galen.

Galen Low: All right, folks. That's it for today's episode of the Digital Project Manager Podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies, and playbooks, create a free account with us at thedigitalprojectmanager.com.

Until next time, thanks for listening