Prompted creativity

AI makes many creative processes easy, fast and cheap. Perhaps I should add “supposedly”; because, like many technologies and applications, there are two sides to AI creativity. For a person who has been involved in brand development for many years, the introduction of ChatGPT and the like opened up a real wonderland. From brand names to logos and advertising motifs to commercials and advertising songs, the AI delivers everything immediately and virtually free of charge.

You could perhaps save money for graphic artists, songwriters, composers and even models, although a number of rights issues have not yet been resolved and have sparked exciting discussions.

Even though AI-generated images and texts are often recognized as such today, this will soon change (apart from more requirements for labeling AI-generated content). Why should someone spend 3,000€ or even 300,000€ on logo development when you can also have it for $20 — including almost any number of correction loops.

There are reasons, but they don't lie in the executive act of creation. If I know exactly what I want, if I have a clear positioning profile as a brand, then AI can provide me with suggestions, impulses and sometimes solutions. Critics say that such logos and names, for example, have not been legally verified. That is correct, but such a review must be carried out in any case, regardless of whether the suggestions come from an AI, a brainstorming session or a single idea.

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What is creativity?

Many books have been written about this and I don't want to adopt the definition that an older agency accountant once presented to me: “Anything for which you have to pay into the artists' social security fund is creative”. ChatGPT answers the question of what constitutes creativity, including the following:

Creativity is characterized by the ability to develop new and original ideas and implement them in an innovative way. It comprises several key features.

‍This AI then mentions seven points, each with their own detailed explanation:

1) originality, 2) flexibility, 3) associative thinking, 4) curiosity and openness, 5) problem-solving ability, 6) willingness to take risks and 7) imagination.

I can co-sign that, although I consider points 3) and 7) to be of paramount importance. Outstanding “associative thinking” might even require a new word because the old one has been damaged in recent years. It is about "Querdenken", freely translated to “lateral thinking,” i.e. the ability to combine seemingly incoherent ideas under a common strategic goal.

AI is still having a bit of a hard time thinking outside the box, although there are ways to do so. In future, the main work of branding and advertising agencies will be strategy development, provided that this is not their central competence anyway. This includes the basic idea of a brand as well as that of a campaign. When I delegate these development tasks to AI, I easily lose authenticity and credibility. That's when what poses a brand's biggest risk happens: it becomes interchangeable.

Executive activities in the creative process will undoubtedly suffer from the use of AI. Original media designers, copywriters and catalog models will have less work to do. Good strategists, on the other hand, can get better, partly because they can try out more with AI in a timely manner and can sometimes develop new ideas themselves through AI-generated suggestions.

In the meantime, a number of online agencies offer supposedly creative output at ridiculous prices, such as 10 logos for 300€ or 50 names for 500€, etc. Anyone who is considering using something like this doesn't need an agency, can also — even cheaper — prompt ChatGPT or Copilot himself. It remains to be seen whether this will bring the desired economic success.

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AI & creativity: It's all about teamwork

In our own business, verbal branding and brand name development, our customers and we benefit from the use of AI: for example, when we replace one or the other brainstorming session with well-prompted AI contributions. Creation workshops are also sometimes more effective with AI support; used correctly, they inspire human creativity.

It doesn't matter whether the end result ultimately comes from an AI process or humanoid intelligence. If the former is the case, it is less due to the AI program than to the correct prompting and the latter, conversely, may well have been inspired by AI output.

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So how does one buld the right branding foundation for successful AI creation? Let's chat about it.

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