Human Creativity vs AI

This year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity provided some interesting takeaways regarding AI and Human Creativity. Join Mark and Lorraine as they discuss the importance of the human touch and why it’s still needed in the creative process. The positioning duo will also provide updates for the Krispy Kreme and McDonald’s partnership as well as Jaguar’s recent sales.   

Join Mark and Lorraine for 30-ish as they discuss all things marketing, advertising, and of course … positioning! 

Transcript

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Mark Vandegrift 
Welcome to another episode of the Brand Shorthand Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Vandegrift, and with me today is our creative catch, Lorraine Kessler. Lorraine, guess what? We have a lot to talk about. So we're gonna jump right into today's episode, and we have a couple brand updates to catch up on. So the first one we talked about not too long ago was the Krispy Kreme and McDonald's partnership. And that was just a few episodes ago. And to catch everyone up on the timeline here, because I'm sure they're like, wait, that was just yesterday. But in March of 24, so last March, not this past March, but 2024, Krispy Kreme and McDonald's announced that they would be expanding their partnership nationwide after limited testing. And this partnership was all about Krispy Kreme donutsnbeing sold through McDonald's restaurants. And of course, being positionists, we had to write about that. And so our wonderful creative director, our executive creative director, Scott Edwards wrote about it and he gave it a two thumbs down. He said, this would never work. It'd be a very bad brand move. And guess what? He was right. So the partnership was supposed to last to 2026 but they put a pause on it in May to reassess the plan. And just after that short pause period, and this is why we're bringing it up again so quickly, is they, here's the words, jointly decided to end their partnership effective July 2nd, 2025. So Scott can now officially say, I told you so. Lorraine, any words about this?

Lorraine 
Well, I think sometimes the hardest decision for marketers to make is to just cut the line, right? When something isn't working. That takes a lot of putzpach. And I recall someone very close to me, my husband, who was a product manager at the time who had a product line that a lot of work went into. It was a partnership. And he was young, but he saw that there was no way for this to really be successful operationally there were just too many hills to climb and cut the line. And he was actually applauded for doing that after a very big success he had on another introduction. And that taught me something. So I think, you know, both realize this isn't working. Now, as a contrarian, it looks like Scott is right, right? But I don't think their problem was mainly positioning. I really don't.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay.

Lorraine Kessler
Dunking Donuts sells sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, hot. I think Scott's idea was, well, McDonald's is known for hot and this isn't hot. Well, the Krispy Kreme used to be hot donuts. I don't really think the issue was positioning so much as it was submarineed by other missteps. Now, maybe the positioning isn't great, but I think they could add this to their menu without really, as a fast food breakfast item without really causing too much mental confusion in the mind of the buyer. But if you look at the articles, it's like Krispy Kreme operationally really didn't do a good job. They over-promised to their stockholders what they thought the success was. They had financial problems. There was just so many executional things that went wrong that, you can say, it was positioning 100%, but I think you'd be missing some of these other things. Did it contribute? Possibly, maybe more than I think, but these other issues were definitely too many weights to make this work.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, yep. Well, we have another update and this is Jaguar, which, yeah, that takes us all the way back to the first episode of this season. So if anybody wants to see that, we're at episode 20 here. So it's been a few weeks. But again, just to give our listeners a quick overview of this, because it seems like it's forever ago. Back in November, Jaguar released its copy nothing. That was the name of it. Teaser ad to give a sneak peek into its rebrand. Okay. And I think you and I talked about, it felt more like a PR stunt than anything because it got the chatter. We looked at the online search for Jaguar and it went like this, but literally it went like this for maybe two weeks. And then it went clear back to nothingness. Even at the car show, which was later in like mid December, the Spike didn't go back up, it stayed flat. And the ad, for those that don't remember, I don't know how you could forget this ad if you saw it. It was literally androgynous people folk, I don't even know what to call them, they didn't look like humans, in really, I don't know, bright, vibrant colors, but there was no car, there was not even anything shown. The only thing that was revealed is their new logo, which changed the font a little bit, right? 

Lorraine Kessler
Changed it quite a bit actually. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
So yeah, yep. And we even talked a little bit about that, but we always like to say if we're right or we're wrong. And again, you and I were like, two thumbs down on that. Are you ready? I mean, we could say Krispy Kreme McDonald's was a flop. This might be the ultimate all time flop. Now, part of that might be because, well, they only ran the ad and it only ran for a few weeks, maybe one, I don't even know. I didn't see it very much. But here's the deal. Jaguar sales in Europe were down 97.5 % in April 2025 compared to April 2024. Now, hearing they're down 97.5%, what would you guess is the number of vehicles that were sold in Europe during that entire month of this, just this April. I mean, tell me what you think being down that much. I mean, that's almost a hundred percent down, which would say you're down to zero. How many cars do you think sold?

Lorraine Kessler
heck, I would have no idea. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Okay, well, here's the number in April of 2024, almost 2000, was 1,961. In April this year, they sold 49.

Lorraine Kessler
49 worldwide? 

Mark Vandegrift 
No, in Europe.

Lorraine Kessler
In Europe. Well, still, that's unbelievable. That is just, that's an all time failure. They win the award for failure. And I thought Ford messed them up worse than this commercial.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, why do you think it happened? Give us some input.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I mean, I think inauthenticity is a killer. They disrespected their core audience. And when you do that, you fail fast. This is part of, you might want to call it part of wokeism, but rather than that, I just say when a brand puts its own cultural agenda, right? And tries way too hard to try and look like they're on some edge of something culturally. Above, meeting customer understanding, valuing what customers do care about, what they really think about the brand, what they desire. And you totally disconnect from that as if to indoctrinate the customer into a hive mind of what you think the culture's about. That is unmarketing. I mean, it's a very basic marketing is understanding customer wants and needs and then appealing to them. It's not about you trying to change those wants and needs or desires or values. It is about you appealing to them. So this is where the hubris of the brand gets way out of whack. The only measure for the success or not of this commercial isn't even how many people watched it and how did it spike in the PR, right? It's sales. And at the end of the day, no one invests in advertising just to do entertainment. Advertising's purpose is to drive sales and profitable sales. So this is a bad one. This is a very bad

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, you know, it it it reminds me of something that I don't know if I should really share this and maybe we'll have to cut it out and post it. But it makes me think of when, say, you're a family member or a friend says, hey, I know a really great guy, you know, talking, talking to you, saying, Lorraine, I know this great guy I want to set you up with. And you go, well, what's he look like? You're like, oh, he has a great personality.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, great personality. Yeah, just look at the person.

Mark Vandegrift 
Ha ha! Yeah. So it's like, don't look at the product, just great personality. So I love the term unmarketing. That's good way to describe it. Yeah.

Lorraine Kessler
It's really un-marketing at its best. And I think it would be a great case study for people to study today, for people in marketing classes, as we've taught, to really take a look at what went wrong. The other thing is, you know, beyond the customer, I would have to say they didn't honor the brand and what the brand stands for. Of course, we always talk position, but Jaguars look, it's traditional, but it's also classy. We owned a Jaguar. We loved Jaguar until Ford bought them and made them look like the taurus. There's just something iconic about the Jaguar look. I can't, it's not to say that you can't update that, but you have to be, as Trout would say, you're repositioning, like trying to refresh in the brand for maybe new wealth versus old wealth, is that you have to connect to the past. You can't just completely disconnect. And they did a complete disconnect in every way.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. I don't know. All I ever think about is the spy world and driving a cool vehicle. And that is my impression of Jaguar. And you can't get me away from that, but I would not buy one now because they've like thrown that out the window and said, we're not that anymore. You know, it's funny. You said when Ford bought them, my wife and I, when we first met, she had a Mazda that was Mazda. Right. And we got married and a couple of years later we needed a new car. And so we decided to go buy a Mazda because guess what? We like that Mazda. Well, in between that period of time that she had that one Ford bought Mazda, we get a Mazda and it was rather bad. So Ford must not know how to buy cars or other brands and do anything good with them because that's two strikes right there.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, it's just when they bought Jaguar, my husband and I looked at each other and we said, we hope they're smart enough not to make the Jaguar look like a Ford. And of course they weren't. That's what they did.

Mark Vandegrift 
That's what they did. Yeah. Okay, well, let's get to today's topic. I sent you this article from the drum recently that it was a kind of covering the topic of 2025 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and it was human creativity versus AI. And I'm just gonna start this topic off with a quote from the article because it sets the kind of discussion points that we want to go through. The industry consensus seems to be that while AI can accelerate execution brilliantly, the spark of original thinking alongside the ability to understand cultural moments, tap into human emotions and craft narratives that resonate remains distinctly human territory. Okay. So what that's saying is the human brain so far is the only one that can pull together original thinking that is overlaid by cultural moments and human emotions, and then create the narratives that resonate with humans, which is the goal of marketing. Right. So I think a lot of people still have this perception that AI is going to take over and be the sole resource responsible for developing creative. And I would say, and I think industry leaders, and this was the tone of the article, believe that instead of a threat, AI will act as a partner or a tool. Okay? We had this long discussion the other night. We were at some friends, had this really long discussion, and he's an AI researcher. And we were just talking about this notion of the creative capability. And he said, it won't be that our jobs are replaced by AI. It will be people that can't use AI that will be replaced. So I thought that was an interesting statement. In the big scheme of things, I don't think that AI is going to do all the heavy lifting and the nitty gritty. We've talked about the fact that even finding a position for a company is very nuanced. And to run that through the grid of AI, just don't think that at least AI isn't there today. So I don't think AI can replace human creativity. It just doesn't have that ability to know how to touch on the emotional connections and the powerful results on its own. Okay. Now we can use it over time. I mean, frankly, you and I have used AI for 25 years. If you've used word processing, then when it goes through and does a spell and grammar check, you're using what still today is known as AI, right? It just does a lot more things. So technically we've used AI for 25, 30 years, but let's go to the, let's just focus on creativity. What are your thoughts on the involvement of AI in the creative process?

Lorraine Kessler
Well, I think I'll start by quoting one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century. It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. That's Yogi Berra, which is a way of saying we only see half-darkly through this crystal ball. So we already heard from Jeffrey Hinton, you know, the godfather of AI, how dangerous this is, his serious concerns. He resigned Google over this because of these risks and I think that those risks can't be minimized. I think there is a great deal of risk. I think there's a danger in being overly optimistic. First of all, I think we have to define what we mean by human creativity, right? I mean, you gave a definition. It's so theoretical. I can't get my hands around it. And can AI learn creativity? Possibly. I think it can. I mean, in our lifetime, in all the work that we've done, what has been truly breakthrough, creative? Very little. It's almost all creativity is somehow iterative. And AI is iterative. It learns from something that went before and it makes a connection. So I don't want to discount the idea that human creativity can't be replicated, because I think it possibly can. I mean, we've seen the evolution of AI has been fast in the last three, four years, much faster than any of us, I think, anticipated. And it's gone much deeper. And so we know that in terms of other risks, we know that there's possible misuse by bad actors. Nefarious reasons. We know it has bias, just like it can be programmed by bias by how much information, who's putting it out in the density and the volume. That kind of has AI say, well, this is the norm when it isn't. And we also know, gosh, regulation always lags, right? I mean, it's just government moves so slow. And I guess maybe I'm a little bit jaundiced. I think human creativity is highly overrated because I mean, look at the movie industry. Everything's a remake. It's all Marvel's. It's new Superman 4, new Jurassic Park. I mean, where's the creativity? 

Mark Vandegrift 
Are you saying Hallmark movies are not creative?

Lorraine Kessler
They're pretty iterative, right? There's a formula. Here's the formula.  I bet you if you said, let's get an AI script, it could be written right.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well Lorraine, I've always told you, I tell my wife, we're an hour and a half in. So the tension will start now and within the next 10 minutes it will be resolved.

Lorraine Kessler
It'll be resolved. That's right. So now in terms of jobs, think, you know, we had much of the same conversation at the brink of the internet, right? There was the gloom and doom and, you know, the world's going to be going to toilet and jobs are going to be lost. Well, it actually is a both end. And I think that's where I would like to leave this. It's a both end. I think AI will become more creative. I think humans will still have a role and a role that AI can't duplicate and jobs will be lost, but jobs will be created. so net-net, it might just be that we're in a different time, in a different world, doing different things.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, I think leveraging AI, absolutely. Anything we do with a platform makes a big difference. I think I mentioned to you what we've been able to do with 30 people took 40 people about 10 years ago, right? We're producing the same volume of work, but we have 10 less people. technology has allowed us to be more productive and more efficient when we create things. Now that didn't mean that we fired 10 people over time, it's just we didn't, as people left, we didn't necessarily replace them every time. yet we've still, yep, yep.

Lorraine Kessler
Our productivity went up with less people. And we saw that even when the transition, I'm a lot older than you, but the way we would reach out to clients quickly who were distant when I started was fax. No, actually it wasn't fax. At first it was express mail, then it was overnight mail, right? It was FedEx, then it was fax, and then it was computer. And in that time, 50 people could do what 100 did. So we've seen this constant kind of decline of employment in our knowledge business because of productivity and productivity went up. So, you know, I think we're gonna see it shape and change. And the other thing I would say.

Mark Vandegrift 
I'm just glad you didn't go back to the Pony Express.

Lorraine Kessler
No, no, I would have, but I don't know how to ride ponies.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, I'm gonna give you a different quote and I think this is worth discussing a little bit. The Creative Marketer of the Year was Apple's Vice President of Marketing Communications and I think his name is pronounced Tor Myron, okay? And he said this, the good news is AI is not going to kill advertising. The bad news is that AI is not going to save advertising. We've got to save ourselves by believing in what's always made this industry special, human creativity. Okay. And the article then goes on and describes human touch as a differentiator. You know, AI is so universally accessible now it's easier for marketers to fall into the pattern of relying on AI because of its efficiency. And in a lot of areas, you know, you snap your finger and the results already back for what you're asking. But we recently had to introduce a policy here that if the expectation is original work, that AI is not allowed to be the one to create that original work, right? Because what we've seen about AI is what you were saying before about copying. AI is going out to, they call it a large language model. They're looking at all the existing content and returning a result that might be a new combination, but it's not original thought. So from that standpoint, I think the reason we need to do that is one, that's what we're selling is the originality of our creative thinking and strategic thinking, I might add. But also we understand the human touch. And this kind of suggests that human touch is what will set apart our work and allow us to make campaigns that matter to the success of our clients. So do you have any perspective on this notion, you know, we talked creativity a little bit, this idea of human touch and how that can be a differentiator and more effectively be part of portraying your brand in its position.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, the whole term human touch or concept is again squishy. I don't know what that means. How do you tell a human touch versus an AI touch or an AI produce something? I mean, right now there's some tells, but the technology is becoming so great. So I'm a little confused about what exactly is that human touch? And as a former artist, years ago, I predicted that the more things become mass produced, the more people will gravitate towards things like pottery and paintings and things that were made by human hands. But what's happened is that this has just become a niche. Like Etsy is a niche versus Wayfair, right? Mass customization versus one of a kind, we are towards mass customization. Now there will always be surprising breakthroughs, the unexpected. And I think that's what the human creativity can bring. But the norm, it seems to me the bulk of what we see every day is less surprising. And it's this battle again between neophilic and this fight in neophobic, being once the familiar or being afraid of something too different. And I think we're always going to have that. again, the whole concept to me is just squishy. And it's just going to have to see what happens with the technology and where this thing moves, I guess.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah. Well, I guess I define the human touch. If I'm sitting by you and I reach out and I hold your hand in tough times, that's the presence of a human that can't be replaced by machinery. A machine can't hold my hand and connect with me. It can't convey the things that a human conveys, even just spiritually or, you know, they talk about this feeling of you get when you first fall in love and pheromones and all those things that happen between people that make a human connection. I think that still flows through a lot of advertising when it's done right.

Lorraine Kessler
Well, that's, yeah, that's, that's what I was going to say. How does that relate to advertising? Because there's a part of advertising that's so contrived, right? And to get that kind of authenticity, that kind of sincere feeling without pandering, it, to me, it remains to be seen. Yeah.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, but that is the key though, isn't it? Like, don't we have that, we have that radar and it's up more than ever in terms of what feels fake and inauthentic versus the stuff where it really feels like the advertising that's produced is genuine and authentic and they're trying to make a connection versus what you just said, which was contrived, which is a word that it's that when you see it, you know, not to dump on a industry that doesn't have a good reputation, but a used car salesman, right? You get the icks, as I call it, or the ickies.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. You just dumped on them. You just dumped on them by the way.

Mark Vandegrift 
I did. I know.

Lorraine Kessler
Let's see. Lawyers, advertisers. Yeah. Okay.

Mark Vandegrift 
advertisers, we're in that mix too, but you get that icky feeling of, okay, just get away from me. I know you're lying to me and I don't trust you, but that's what we would call either contrived or bad advertising versus I think we still know when we see a truly powerful commercial. I always think of Paul Harvey's, the farmer one. How powerful was that? I watch that every so often just to be inspired, even though I know it was an ad for a truck, right?

Lorraine Kessler
But that could be so done with AI today. You could take someone's voice with that script and a created voice. It's the story telling.

Mark Vandegrift
Yeah, but that's the execution of it. That's not necessarily the writing and the human touch portion of it. It was the script that was wonderful and it was Paul Harvey's voice that was wonderful. Now, can you replicate Paul Harvey's voice? Yeah, you can. But could you get that script out of AI?

Lorraine Kessler
I don't know, we'll see.

Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, I don't know that you could.

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah. Well, I think I will leave it as an open question mark.

Mark Vandegrift 
Well, we're allowed to agree to disagree. You know, one of the things I always go back to, and you know my spiritual makeup, Lorraine, but in Job, it says when God created everything, the angels looked down upon it and were amazed. And I think that idea of creation is still something that God's given us as an ability to do that can't be replicated. Can it get real close? Probably. Is it going to make things more efficient? Yeah. If we're not leveraging AI, then we're losing. But that doesn't mean that...

Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, absolutely. But you have to remember, we created AI. It didn't create us. So right there is your scriptural, what I would call that, paradox.


Mark Vandegrift 
Yeah, it is a challenge. So, well, let's wrap up today's session and hopefully our producer doesn't need to edit out too many of the crazy things that we said today. But that's what makes this fun, Lorraine. Advertising should be fun. So thank you for being with us again, Lorraine. Thank you to our listeners for joining us this week. And don't forget to like, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe. Maybe I can get AI to like come up with a jingle.


Lorraine Kessler
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Vandegrift
That's the whole lyric is subscribe, subscribe, subscribe and share. 

Lorraine Kessler
Subscribe, like, share, click.

Mark Vandegrift
Yep. And share with a friend. And until next time, have an amazing day.