A recent issue of The Economist has a solar plexus hitting writeup about advertising and Artificial Intelligence. The whoosh after this sucker punch was the subject of the annual Holy Grail meet at Cannes where adland titans revealed and predicted a doomsday status to creativity. The crystal balls revealed that human intelligence is overwhelmed by AI. But such “bare all” events are significant as Cannes proved. In this cockroaches and computers head on collision who will survive, who will be eliminated? Surprisingly, the legendary cockroach endures to see yet another epoch, because its survival instincts are too strong. TikTok, Meta and Google put on their fiercest Halloween masks to shock and shake the professionals in denial. Sam Altman, the Moses of AI predicted that 95% of marketing as we know may be AI delivered. The 5% is the surviving cockroach that shall still burrow into the $ 1-trillion ad spend annually on “workmanlike campaigns”. AI is definitely going to impact the landscape …some advertisers are shifting their communication onto billboards. Chennai’s iconic Gemini Circle proved this point in more ways than one. A huge billboard shows a very apt, creative copy (though oldies may be shocked) superimposed on the anatomy of unmistakable bums. The copy then fires …“let Elon Musk explore Mars. Our Mission is Uranus”. Discover a whole new world of colorectal care. The name of this clinic is even more creative — Assana Colorectal & Gut Wellness Clinic. A few years back, such an ad may have brought a smirk to the genteels, who do not discuss rectal troubles, pain in the arse including piles in a group. They called it anal fixation and anal retentive to be dealt with behind bathroom doors. AI has not killed the cockroach…yet.
