Aggregate #004: shifting creative bottlenecks, Manus, and the demise of the Greggs sausage roll
This week's aggregate is brought to you by Ballpoint's finest: Ryan and Mark
Hello reader, and apologies for the interruption to your regularly scheduled programming. With Josh currently AWOL as he hares around California, it falls to my colleague Ryan and I to bring you this week’s wee catch-up on what’s happening in the world of growth and beyond. We were quite touched that Josh didn’t delegate this task to Claude.
I’m Mark, Ballpoint’s new Head of Creative Strategy. My background is as a copywriter (and I basically still think that’s what I am). But something strange has been happening to me at work recently.
A good chunk of my week is spent writing creative briefs for our clients. Once signed off, they are then passed onto graphic designers or video editors who turn my ideas and copy into finished ads. The whole process generally takes a few days.
One important piece of these creative briefs is the visual reference: pictures or videos or other ads that demonstrate the kind of thing I had in mind. It can take me ages to find one that I’m happy with, so I started using AI to make little mockups instead. I made sure to label these as “rough” and “for reference only” so nobody got confused.
Then I started seeing some of my mockups popping up on Instagram. Our creative studio had decided that they were good enough to work with after a few tweaks.
What does this mean? Have I transcended strategy? Am I “full stack”? One thing that is for sure is that my design skills haven’t improved. The tools have just got good enough to make that irrelevant.
It does feel like the bottleneck in creative is shifting from production to thinking. Soon, the hardest part won’t be making the ad; it will be knowing which ad to make and why. None of which is to say that designers and editors become less valuable. If anything, when anyone can produce something passable, teams who can produce something excellent matter more than ever.
Anyway, here’s what caught our eye this week.
Key Stat
Signals
Key signals for builders, growers, and operators.
Meta embeds Manus into Ads Manager [Meta Ads / AI] – Meta’s $2bn AI agent acquisition is now being quietly rolled out into Ads Manager. Unlike tools that just make suggestions, Manus executes multi-step tasks like campaign analysis, creative briefs and performance reports, all with minimal human direction. Worth watching closely.
Agency headcount is falling (and AI hasn’t even landed yet) [Industry / AI] – The IPA’s annual Agency Census: open roles down 41%, graduate recruitment down 56%. As Josh wrote in this week’s essay on becoming AI-native, the cuts are happening in anticipation of AI, not because of it.
We appear to have hit peak Greggs [Consumer] –Total sales rose 6.8% to £2.15bn but pre-tax profit fell to £167m, with like-for-like growth slowing to just 1.6% in early 2026. Shares are down 25% in a year, partly on fears that GLP-1 drugs are killing demand for sausage rolls. If the UK’s most beloved value brand is feeling it, it says something about where the consumer is right now.
The Stack
A shortlist of stuff I recommend you read and watch this weekend.
📝 The tension between scale and discretion. The Stanza (£)
📝 The death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete. The Artist Economy
📺 5 OpenClaw agents run my home, finances, and code. Jesse Genet
📝 How De-Yan is shaping the future of brand experience. Creative Review (£)
📝 The Data Centers Have Arrived at the Edge of the Arctic Circle. Wired (£)
📝 Chupa Chups ‘final boss’ in new wrapper launch. Creative Review (£)
📝 What It Takes to Make Good Decisions: Judgment, Not Calculation. Behavioural Scientist
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