Onur Kece, Chief Creative Officer, The Refreshment ClubLet’s just say it how it is: Since the rise of social and digital media some fifteen years ago, strategy and ideas have been slowly chipped away at and replaced by the new god in advertising: content.
I entered the world of advertising just before this shift took place. Back then, campaigns took months upon months, built on rigorous strategy. We worked from a creative brief with a single-minded proposition, a deep understanding of the brand’s role, the product’s role, and most importantly, the consumer.
Once we absorbed the brief, the rituals of finding a way in would begin: word games, random sketches, playful juxtapositions, maybe a game of foosball to let the thoughts settle. Reflecting on the great ad books like Whipple Squeeze This and pacing the long walks back and forth to the creative directors’ offices. Then finally, with exhausted sketchpads piled up and Sharpies run dry, there it was, the golden nugget, the one idea that survived the agency gauntlet and earned its nod of approval from the client.
Then came testing, refinement, production, and the preparation for its launch, something as precise and calculated as a NASA mission.
And the mission was clear: make people feel something, think something, love something.
Messages so precisely created that the moment a consumer reached out towards the shelf, the subconscious remembered your ad, and almost like a joystick, pivoted their hand ever so slightly to your brand over the competition. Success. And sometimes ideas were celebrated in earned media and even became part of the vernacular.
Then came digital advertising and ROI, an array of metrics designed to measure a mouse click and, inadvertently, ignore entirely the immeasurable: the skip of a heartbeat.
And suddenly, meaning gave way to metrics over emotion. Facebook algorithms and dashboards replaced empathy and feelings. Marketers found an easier sell: ROI metrics.
Now, with generative AI, content appears before you can say abracadabra, for you, for anyone else, and even that clever AI agent. However, these days the ROI metrics aren’t delivering.
As attention to ideas continues to fade with the rise of commoditised content, media costs keep climbing and engagement, declining. The more the algorithm is fed, the higher the demand for space and the price. In this growing sea of clutter, all that remains is the struggle to make people pause and feel.
At the Futures Now AI breakfast held by Campaign Middle East, someone compared ads on Meta and Google to driving down Sheikh Zayed Road, crowded, fast, and easy to miss. They suggested brands explore alternative routes, the scenic ones, the quieter paths of smaller publications and niche media. It was a great analogy, but perhaps something was missed.
If you’re a hundred-metre superyacht on wheels driving down that crowded highway, the whole world will talk about you, not just those on Sheikh Zayed Road.
That, is the power of an idea.
In the era of extreme content we live in, ideas are now more valuable than ever. And perhaps the greatest use of AI lies in helping us uncover them.
Today’s tools (yes, along with execution) can help us uncover powerful insights, trends, and social and cultural shifts, all the pieces that form the backbone of ideas that truly resonate. But the spark, the instinct, and the desire to dig, question, and go again has to come from us.
So does the readjustment of our ROI indicators, from mouse clicks to skipped heartbeats once again.
With this approach, we can demand more from our ideas: earned media, real conversations, and genuine brand love.
In today’s world, achieving brand love is more competitive than ever, and there’s no shortcut. You can’t make an incredible seven-hour ragu in five minutes. You also can’t create an emotional connection by flooding the world with content.
By Onur Kece, Chief Creative Officer, The Refreshment Club
