Latest news with #creativeintelligence
Fast Company
a day ago
- Business
- Fast Company
Creative intelligence versus artificial intelligence
This may come as a surprise, but as a creative and an owner of a CPG design agency, I actually love AI. I just recognize its limitations. For me, those limitations are even embedded in the term 'artificial intelligence.' Could anything defined as being 'artificial' really summon the full range of what is natural? Especially when it comes to intelligence and what we can create with it? AI is only as good as what I give it. It helps me synthesize my thoughts and perfect what I'm prompting with my typed-in keywords and questions. In other words, AI helps me get crystal clear on what I want, and it lets me do it fast, which can satiate my desire or need to get things done quickly. But let's be real. When the highest excellence is your standard, AI can only provide a scaffolding from which to work. The end effect is always too bland, lacking the depth and details that provide a powerful, emotional pull for consumers. Sometimes, the things that are missing are hard to define, but in those intangibles, worlds are lost. AI simply can't compare to its more natural version—what I like to call creative intelligence—that irreplaceable human aspect that recognizes subtlety, synergistic connections, and what can't be translated into a simple search term. I want my creative work to always sparkle. AI doesn't offer that. But what it can do—sometimes—is offer a first spark. It can extend a starting point as I circle around an idea. Then it's up to me to drive that idea to the finish line using my creative intelligence to continually refine my request and see through what it churns out to hidden possibilities behind or around it. Can I get there without using AI? Of course. We creatives have been doing that for decades. But with this tool, we save time. It's a basic building block, just like much of the software and tools we use to create. It outsources some preliminary work so we can then direct more of our energy into the precise, specialty work that draws upon our deepest individual gifts of creativity. I don't fear this new tool. I do, though, take care in my use of it and teach my employees to utilize it the right way. When using AI to reach toward a creative starting place, I've learned it's essential to: Do your homework first. Know what your needs are. Be specific when describing those needs. Make your keywords as keen, laser-focused, and thorough as possible. Describe the tone you want. Using examples as details is key to getting what you want out of AI effectively. Use your strategic insight to continually refine the keywords and prompts you're providing until the results feel closer to something you want to work with. When you find something that inspires you, use it as a starting place—never a landing place. From there, bring your creative intelligence into the work and take it from good to brilliant. Clean it up. Add more detail. Personalize it more deeply to your voice and audience. Make the generic feel singular. Always remember that this tool is open-source, so nothing you feed it is private. Be aware that what you feed the machine—including names, ideas, and prompts—could surface publicly in the future. Don't lose your connection to basic skills. I'm a happy user of Google Maps, but if my phone dies, I can still read a map and get where I need to go. In the same way, as a creative, it's still important to know how to do what you may now outsource at times. There's no denying that AI has arrived, and it is advancing quickly. I believe by fighting it we just miss an opportunity to grow and learn new tricks. If we use it thoughtfully, it can help us be more successful. And more than that—it can, in fact, let us lean deeper into what makes us each uniquely human.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Winterberry Group Research Unveils How Marketers Can Improve the Effectiveness Of $1.12 Trillion of Global Media Spend
Anticipates Continuous Adoption of Creative Intelligence Solutions in Next 24-36 Months NEW YORK, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Creative, labeled as 'non-working' media, is responsible for driving 40-70% of an advertising campaign's performance, yet it has been deprioritized and undervalued. Global advertising spend is projected to reach $1.12 trillion by 2026, so investment in creative and content is expected to surpass $140 billion. Winterberry Group, a strategic growth consultancy, today released the findings of a new report that details how to collapse the artificial siloes of 'working' and 'non-working' media and achieve marketing effectiveness with media, audience and creative intelligence. The report defines creative intelligence as the ability to collect, structure and analyze creative decisions against performance data to continuously optimize assets for effectiveness and engagement. 'It is time to overhaul outdated thinking that the billions spent on creative production is non-working,' said Bruce Biegel, senior managing partner of Winterberry Group. 'To truly unlock the full potential of modern marketing effectiveness with greater financial discipline, media, audience and creative data have to converge into a full-funnel, personalized and measurable experience at scale.' Brands and agencies can connect every stage of the creative and campaign process to outcomes. Creative intelligence empowers smarter briefings, pre-flight analysis, real-time activation and optimization as well as creative lifetime value (Creative LTV). With the pace of AI advancements and budgets under pressure, Winterberry predicts creative intelligence will be widely adopted by leading marketers in the next 24-36 months. Starting in channels with the most accessible creative data – social, email and mobile messaging, and then expand into programmatic digital formats such as display, video, audio, and connected TV (CTV). Other key findings from the report include: Nearly half of marketers (49%) still equate 'creative intelligence' with ideation alone, rather than recognizing it as a system for measurement and optimization. Nearly all marketers (99%) view measuring creative LTV as important – with 72% calling it very important. However, only 54% say their organization measures creative LTV very effectively. Creative intelligence is most impactful for understanding brand awareness (41%) and performance outcomes (38%). Creative quality is universally valued as the most important metric for understanding creative intelligence followed by brand lift by both brands (49%) and agencies (38%). Brands then are more interested in measuring conversions (33%), while agencies lean into audience relevance (31%) and engagement (28%). Overall, brands and agencies expect creative intelligence to be led by marketing strategy and operations (but agencies favor external advisory roles more than brands). Brands prioritize agencies for executional support in the evolving creative intelligence ecosystem, while agencies see themselves having more of a focus on technology and strategic integration. 'Intelligent creative isn't an emerging trend, it's the new standard,' said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. 'With audience data in place, AI accelerating, and content demands at an all-time high, brands that harness creative intelligence are turning what was once marketing guesswork into a performance engine. The shift isn't coming, it's already here, and it's redefining how we drive growth with speed, precision, and impact.' 'Winterberry Group's research powerfully validates what we see every day: for too long, creative has been under-leveraged as a driver of marketing effectiveness,' said Wesley ter Haar, Chief AI and Revenue Officer at Monks. 'At Monks, we're focused on building the AI-powered connective tissue that unifies creative, media and audience data, enabling brands to drive measurable and scalable marketing effectiveness everywhere they show up.' 'Creative Intelligence isn't a theory—it's a system,' said Rob Rakowitz, head of marketing at VidMob. 'What makes this whitepaper so valuable is its attention to the mechanics: the inputs, outputs and feedback loops that turn creative into a measurable asset across the entire marketing lifecycle.' 'This valuable research aligns with over two decades of Analytic Partners' ROI Genome findings: Creative is the #2 driver of marketing effectiveness—right after spend,' said Nancy Smith, President and CEO of Analytic Partners. 'Advertisers must incorporate creative within their optimization and measurement programs to maximize commercial impact.' For this research report, Winterberry Group surveyed over 200 senior brand marketing and agencies executives, data, analytics and technology thought leaders across the United States and United Kingdom, conducting in-depth interviews with over 50 industry experts and influencers from customers and users of creative intelligence solutions. This is the first research report in the Winterberry Group series on creative intelligence – 'Demystifying Creative Intelligence: Enhancing Marketing Effectiveness at the Intersection of Media, Audience and Creative.' This report was made possible with the support of IAA North America, Analytic Partners, VidMob, Monks, APR and ContinuumGlobal. The full research report is available for download: About Winterberry Group Winterberry Group is a growth consultancy specializing in the intersecting disciplines of marketing, advertising, technology, data and analytics. We collaborate with stakeholders across those ecosystems—agencies, service providers, technology developers, brands, publishers and investor groups—leveraging deep industry expertise to build actionable strategies that spur growth and drive the creation of real and lasting stakeholder value. Learn more at Media ContactLacy TaltonEvergreen & Oak on behalf of Winterberry Grouplacy@ 252.467.5220 Ilisia ShukeWinterberry Group ishuke@ in to access your portfolio
