TL;DR
AI excels at production efficiency, not creative strategy. Use it to accelerate workflows and generate custom assets, but keep humans in charge of brand strategy and emotional connection.
You need the perfect background image for your campaign. A modern kitchen with specific lighting and brand colors. Hours of stock photo hunting later, you've found nothing. This is exactly where AI shines: not replacing creativity, but eliminating production bottlenecks.
Let's get clear on what AI isn't first. It's not your creative director. It's an exceptional production assistant.
Right now, we're still deep in the exploration phase of these tools. It's best to approach AI tools as part of the creative process, not a replacement for it.
The sweet spot? Custom backgrounds, rapid A/B test variations, and visual concepts that would be cost-prohibitive to shoot. Instead of expensive photo shoots or settling for mismatched stock imagery, teams can generate cohesive, on-brand assets in minutes and focus energy on strategic creative decisions.
The platforms you already use (Photoshop, Figma, Google Suite) have integrated AI so thoroughly that you really can't avoid it. This reflects AI's genuine value in eliminating workflow friction.
For visual thinkers, AI transforms ideation. Teams can generate mood boards, create storyboards, develop custom backgrounds, and iterate at the pace of modern testing cycles.
The advantage is speed without sacrificing brand consistency. Incorporate brand reference images into AI prompts and generate authentic-feeling assets while dramatically reducing production timelines.
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Here's where marketers stumble: assuming AI can handle the full creative process. This damages brand credibility.
Our team is direct about this: you don't want to create any trust issues with your audience, especially as you're trying to best represent a brand. AI-generated imagery featuring people often falls into the uncanny valley. Close enough to real to be unsettling, but not authentic enough to build trust.
Current limitations can include AI-generated humans appearing unnatural (this is changing but we still advise proceeding with caution here), struggles with emotional nuance, and generic content without careful curation. Smart marketers use AI for environments and objects while relying on real photography for human elements.
Based on our work with brands, here's what actually works:
Start with strategy, not technology. Define your creative objectives before touching AI tools. What emotion should the ad evoke? AI executes vision. It can't define it.
Use AI for rapid prototyping. Generate multiple backgrounds, color variations, or layouts quickly, then apply human judgment to select and refine the strongest options.
Maintain brand guardrails. Make sure you're honoring the brand standards as you're using AI to supplement rather than replace. Develop clear guidelines for approved use cases (backgrounds, objects) and restrictions (faces, brand ambassadors).
Focus on curation over generation. You can't just toss in a few inputs and then slap some text on and call that a finished ad. There needs to be way more in the curation process. The skill isn't prompt engineering. It's curation.
AI amplifies human creativity rather than replacing it. The brands that thrive will view AI as a powerful tool requiring skilled operators who understand both capabilities and limitations.
Full creative control shouldn't be handed to AI, but that doesn't mean AI can't contribute to emotional storytelling. With skilled prompt engineering and thoughtful curation by the creative team, AI can help bring emotionally resonant concepts to life. The key is developing this new skillset: learning to guide AI toward authentic emotional expression instead of expecting it to just get what your audience needs.
The performance marketing landscape is transforming rapidly. The key isn't chasing every new tool, but thoughtfully integrating those that genuinely enhance your ability to connect brands with audiences in meaningful, measurable ways.