Vijay Kumar, Creative Director, Liwa Content Driven.In agencies today, briefs, brainstorms, and banter have a silent partner: ChatGPT. And in Liwa’s hybrid world – part ad agency, part production house, all chaos – the oldest rivalry still thrives: creatives vs. account management.
One side wields imagination and caffeine, and the other side wields client emails and panic – now, with a new AI referee in town.
A daily morning ritual: Account managers (AM) stomp in, bleary-eyed from last night’s binge-watch while staying green on Slack, saying things like, “We’re in a good place.” Creatives drift in later, equally groggy – casualties of a party that, like everything else, overshot its timeline – arguing that pink fonts are the next big disruption. Someone says, “Let’s circle back.”
Enter ChatGPT, the elephant in the room. Creatives are a tad jealous of it, secretly Googling “how to prompt like a pro.” AMs are convinced it writes better headlines, whatever the deadline. “I got my first draft of the brief from ChatGPT!” an AM beams. “And that became the final draft,” mutters a creative.
The AM’s brief, somehow, looks like a copy of the client’s. Dead giveaways: “Make it fresh, but make it familiar.” “Let’s stand out, but also blend in – or we’ll alienate our current customers.” And the eternal classic (allegedly from the legend Lee Clow): “Let’s have three original ideas – with three references.”
But the one thing that truly unites creatives and AMs? Panic. A next month deadline suddenly becomes next day. Laptops everywhere go berserk with prompts. ChatGPT and its many cousins – Perplexity, Manus – are summoned like digital interns. Creatives cobble together concepts, scripts, and AI videos. AMs wrestle with decks that almost resemble strategy. Then the upload happens – one minute before the client call.
So, what qualifies as great work? Insights refined from a thousand online echoes. Ideas distilled from stimuli both perceptive and desperate. Prompt-writing is the new copywriting.
The two frenemies can’t live without each other. Creatives need someone to stop them from pitching a million-dirham idea to a 10,000-dirham client. Account managers need someone to make them look like superheroes in meetings.
Late evening: The creatives are clocking out when AM calls out. “We’re in a good place,” comes the echo from the morning. “The client just wants the video in 9:16 – by morning.” Feedback #47.
And that circle again. Chaotic, insane, fulfilling. We wouldn’t have it any other way. And now with ChatGPT helping us, our famed rivalry is truly in a good place.
By Vijay Kumar, Creative Director, Liwa Content Driven.
