DDB taps AI to quickly produce creative proposals

• DDB developed The Uncreative Agency, an AI-powered tool that generates a creative proposal based on a simple one-sentence brief, according to a press release shared with Marketing Dive.
• In the first five days of its release last month, The Uncreative Agency developed proposals for more than 12,000 users, including senior marketers at Coca-Cola, Heineken, Salesforce, Google, Nike, Accenture, Deloitte and the U.K. and Australian governments, according to the agency’s website. During its run, The Uncreative Agency has been able to generate two proposals a minute.
• The tool is meant to show how the industry can incorporate AI into creative development. The agency said combining machine learning with human creativity could significantly boost its output. 

There has been some concern within agencies that creative roles will eventually be filled by machines, though the general consensus around the industry is more muted than that. The Uncreative Agency, developed by DDB EMEA’s chief strategy officer, George Strakhov, and a team at Nord DBB, could help address some of these concerns by showing how AI can be incorporated into the creative process without replacing humans. 

It arrives as AI-powered content generation tools remain a focus of discourse throughout the industry, hitting a fever pitch this year in the wake of new campaigns from brands like Snapple and Mint Mobile that leverage the technology. Research firm Gartner predicts 30% of marketing messages from large companies will be AI-generated by 2025.

“Great ideas and innovation usually happen when two or more known things are mashed up into something new, and AI is great at that if prompted in the right way,” said Andreas Dahlqvist, chief creative officer of Nord DDB, in a statement. “To me it’s not about if AI is creative or not, but what people and talent it rubs up against. It’s about how we can get to better ideas faster.”

DDB said it will continue to invest in further development, testing and internal implementation of AI-powered tools in its creative process and its Rand hybrid creative platform at all of its offices and within the Omnicom network.

The agency holding group’s interest in AI extends beyond leveraging it in the creative process. In a recent earnings call, Omnicom CEO John Wren spoke about the potential of automation to handle some of the more mundane tasks and support the network’s talent. 

“We’ll be embracing it as quickly as we possibly can because we think it’s good for our smartest people, and therefore, it will be good for … the work they do on behalf of our clients,” Wren said.