3
min
By John-Paul Hughes, Executive Creative Director
People hate advertising.
It’s the uninvited guest at the party. We don’t want it to interrupt what we are watching or listening to.
56% of UK consumers never click on online ads and 61% find that online ads are increasingly more intrusive (Source TGI 2026).
And nobody has ever suggested leaving the pub early to get home and catch the ads before bed.
Around 1 in 3 people in the UK subscribe to ad-blocking software to avoid adverts.
Including yours.
So, your advertising has two choices: Earn attention. Or waste money.
And right now, some media owners are trying to convince you that AI is the solution. Faster output. More assets. Infinite versions.
Brilliant, they’ve just industrialised mediocrity.
Creativity replaced by convenience.
Efficiency at the expense of effectiveness.
But the problem was never production. It was impact.
The answer isn’t more ads. It’s better thinking.
And here’s how our Creatives do that:
Weapons of Mass Disruption
1. BLOW SH*T UP
You can be cautious, or you can be creative. You cannot be both.
AI will drag you towards the boring, cliché-ridden, predictable middle. It remixes what already exists, ideas that have already been done. That’s where ads disappear.
But humans who create genuinely impactful work? They take risks. They subvert category norms. They create work that gets noticed and remembered. That’s how you get results.
2. CLARITY IS CLEVER
People want the truth, told simply in an interesting way.
Advertising that overexplains is insecure.
It’s about stripping down until you’re left with a clear idea and message that makes someone feel something.
3. STRATEGY IS KNOWING WHERE TO STICK THE KNIFE
Strategy begins with the brief. The thinking before the thinking.
An unfocused brief guarantees messy work.
If you don’t have a sharp “why” that meets the consumer’s need, forget it.
AI can generate outputs all day long. It can’t decide the one thing that matters.
4. DO IT RIGHT FIRST TIME
When you don’t, it’s like peeing yourself in the snow.
The path of least resistance might feel nice and warm for a few seconds, but pretty soon, when the campaign bombs you’re left cold, smelly, and everyone is avoiding you.
AI will give you quantity. Talented Creatives will give you quality.
Inform, inspire, impress and even entertain consumers now to leave a lasting mark.
Bad creative always costs more in the long run, because you’ll pay twice to fix it.
5. THE GREAT TYPE-IT-IN DELUSION
Typing something into a machine is not the same as thinking.
Convenience isn’t creativity. Efficiency isn’t effectiveness.
But AI doesn’t kill creativity. Laziness does.
Great creative is still the most efficient way to be effective, because it stays in people’s hearts and minds way beyond the airtime you’ve paid for.
6. BE THE WOLF IN A WORLD OF SHEEP
You don’t win by being louder. You win by being worth listening to.
And you’re worth listening to when you’re saying something different from everyone else.
AI is currently flattening everything into algorithmic sameness. Originality attracts attention because it’s rare.
Differentiation and distinctiveness are your competitive advantage.
7. MUSIC GETS YOU PAST THE GUARD DOGS
People resist advertising. But they actively choose music.
Music doesn’t knock politely on the rational brain. It walks straight through the back door into the emotional centre, connecting memory and feeling.
Take Arnold Clark, we didn’t create campaign music for them; we built a sonic brand as a tangible brand asset That’s the kind of long-term competitive advantage AI cannot manufacture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SuI6neq7oY
8. IMPACT. COMMUNICATION. PERSUASION.
Impact to get noticed and remembered.
Communication means say ONE thing well.
Persuasion is giving the listener a reason why.
Don’t sell yourself short with AI-generated work that inevitably fails somewhere along that line. It can’t judge what matters. It has no taste.
9. MIX WITH THE BEST
Great creative work comes from tension. Challenge. Craft. Collaboration.
From people who know what they’re doing pushing each other to make it better.
That’s not something you automate.
10. HAVE A LAUGH
91% of people want brands to use humour (Kantar).
95% of brands are too scared to do it (Kantar).
Which is exactly why it works.
If you make people feel something, anything, you’re already ahead.
But somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that advertising can be fun
So where does AI actually fit?
It’s useful. It can help you explore, speed things up, get to a starting point quicker.
But that’s all it is. A starting point.
Because none of these weapons come from a machine:
- Fresh thinking
- Taste
- Timing
- Cultural instinct
- Knowing what’s interesting
- Human connection
Boredom is Fatal
You cannot bore people into buying.
And boring your potential customers is a choice.
As media owners push technology that can produce boring, ineffective ads at scale, faster than ever before.
If you want to win, don’t make more ads.
Make more human, creative and effective ads that people might give a shit about.
Get in touch for a creative review + workshop: https://hubs.ly/Q04d1kKG0