Real Thoughts
Personal insights from our team
Creative Taste Is Still Your Best Competitive Advantage
Ryan Swartz
Creative Director
The democratization of design and development tools has been completely accelerated by AI. If you ignore this shift, you’ll be left behind. If you dive in too far, you risk losing the one thing that made your work great…you.
I often return to a line from the Pixar movie “Ratatouille.” A food critic is reviewing a meal just cooked by Remy, a rat. His line, “Not everyone can become a great artist. But a great artist can come from anywhere,” is more applicable now than ever.
Just because you can create anything doesn’t mean it’s memorable or effective in addressing client and brand challenges.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER?
Clients and agencies are already generating large volumes of content using AI. What they cannot replicate is the strategic creative thinking that asks the question “Should we?” instead of “Can we?” It’s so easy for a brand to get caught up in the meme-content-generation algorithm-processing machine that the content becomes like the Tin Man: it lacks any heart.
REGROUP POV
Emotional storytelling and creative leadership are what build a distinctive brand over time. Without taste, you serve people a bland, soulless plate of content that will, at best, be ignored or, at worst, actively avoided. Agencies must balance the incredible AI tools at their disposal with sound creative judgment. There is still an art to what we creatives do and a soul to impart in our work, and we must never forget that.
Ryan Swartz serves as the Creative Director at REGROUP.