Creative in the time of Claude
How creative strategists can survive and thrive alongside our omniscient new colleagues
RIP creative strategists! Claude is here and now you are all dead!
If you spend any time in the corners of the internet where performance marketing people rage bait each other, you’ll have seen two types of post about AI. The first is some variation of of the above: “It’s over for [insert job title], time to get into pest control.” The second comes from copywriters and designers arguing that AI is fundamentally rubbish and always will be. Dread or wild exaggeration on one side, dismissal of its potential on the other.
Obviously, both of these extremes are way off. I’m a creative strategist, I’m alive, and our agency is looking to hire more of us. Also, I use AI all the time and it makes my output much better than it was six months ago. The question isn’t really whether AI is good or bad at creative strategy; it’s where the line is between what it’s good at and what it isn’t, and how you work with it once you’ve figured that out.
What AI is very good at
Performance creative strategy has always involved dealing with a lot of information. Customer insight reports, creative sprint writeups from your growth strategist colleagues, Notion databases full of past results. Even when all of that is well maintained, it’s a big ask for any individual (especially one who says they’re “more of a creative than a systems person”) to spot every pattern across hundreds of tests and thousands of data points. There’s too much.
Not a problem for LLMs. Given the right context, working with Claude is like working alongside a strategist who remembers every test you’ve ever run, sees every possible correlation across visuals and copy, and works at ridiculous speed. The combinations of format, visual style, and customer insight are essentially endless, and AI can map that stuff faster and more comprehensively than any human team.
What AI is less good at
The data that AI works from is either (a) insights from ads you’ve already tested or (b) insights that it knows we’re yet to test in a certain format. It can tell you what won, what patterns your best ads share, what combinations you still need to try.
But a strategy built only on what has already won will always have limitations. The tests AI suggests will be very sensible and certainly worth briefing, but always fundamentally unoriginal. AI won’t intentionally break a rule and it won’t ever decide that a strange, untested idea is actually a good one. Rely on AI alone and things will stagnate quickly.
Why new ideas need people
The further you push into new creative territory, the more you need someone who’s engaged with the subject matter. Somebody who has spoken to customers and who has spent time thinking about what changes for them when they buy the product you’re selling.
If no emotional being has really thought about whether an idea or a message is in some way moving or persuasive, it probably isn’t going to move or persuade anyone. It might tick every best practice and creative diversity box, but it probably won’t make you feel anything. And ads that don’t make you feel something do not work.
Division of labour
Where does this leave the creative strategist? I think the job divides fairly neatly. AI handles the heavy lifting: pattern recognition, diversity mapping, the structured side of testing at volume. The creative strategist handles new creative directions, judgment calls, and the parts of the role that come from engaging with people and products.
The judgment aspect here is important, because when the possible combinations of format, visual style, and customer insight are endless, someone has to decide what’s actually worth testing. A lot of people are calling this “taste”, but I think it’s closer to instinct. Taste implies a kind of refined sense of what’s relevant or cool, but really we’re talking about a feeling for what people actually connect with.
TL;DR
AI isn’t killing creative strategists and it isn’t rubbish either. I’ve come to think of it as an incredibly capable coworker that may ultimately create the space to do the work that we’re especially good at, and dare I say, enjoy. Something like that please, make it sound like me and don’t use any em dashes.
If this sounds like the kind of work you want to do, we’re hiring creative strategists at Ballpoint. Drop me an email at mark@weareballpoint.com.