Where Do You See Your Company in 10 Years?
A client asked me this. You can tell by the question that he’s a sharp guy, and out of respect, I wanted to respond cleverly. But despite the temptation to sound eloquent, I looked him straight in the eye and simply admitted, “I don’t know.”
Why did I blurt that out? Both of our eyebrows raised simultaneously. Perhaps his brows raised because this revealed a lack of vision from someone he thought to be an authority. Mine raised because I was surprised by my own honesty.
Believe me when I say I’ve replayed that scenario nineteen times already, thinking about all the things I could have—or should have—said. I could have crafted more strategic phrases, thrown in some multi-syllabic terms, flexed some lesser-known acronyms, or at least offered a clever, folksy maxim like: “As long as there are humans, there will always be advertising.” Stuff like that. But I didn’t.
I said “I don’t know” because… I don’t. In the past few months, artificial intelligence capabilities have grown so exponentially that even the inventors and investors behind them are confessing their genuine fears. Just this week, Mark Zuckerberg (CEO of Meta) said their new AI platforms will entirely disrupt the advertising world—and I believe him. It already has.
Copywriters? They were the first to go.
Data analysts? Don’t need you anymore.
Digital campaign targeting experts? I’ll just ask AI, thanks.
Website coders? Best wishes on your next career. We can now build websites without writing a single line of code.
With the progress we’ve seen in just the last month, artists, production houses, and content creators are starting to pucker at AI’s speed and accuracy in generating images using only voice prompts.
Once again, most of us didn’t fully comprehend or appreciate that this was coming. The industry now considers this the most disruptive innovation of all time.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can easily identify the key innovations that shaped media and advertising. First, the printing press—marking the beginning of mass media consumption through books, flyers, and newspapers. Then the telephone. Then radio. Then television. Then the internet. Then wireless smartphones and cell towers. Then satellite internet, delivering signals to remote frontiers and markets that were previously unreachable.
Each invention unlocked new opportunities for advertising. And now… we have artificial intelligence.
Will it demolish agency structures again? Yes.
Will it replace most human jobs with machines? It already has.
Will it provide more informed decision-making? Yes.
Will creative productions become easier for clients to handle without an agency? Absolutely.
So, back to the client’s question: “Where do you see your company in 10 years?” Answer: “I don’t know. Nobody saw the Spanish Inquisition coming either.” (An old Monty Python joke.)
But… there is one thing I do know: AI will never replace taste.
Taste is the only one of the five human senses that robots still don’t have. I am not talking about our tongues, however. Im talking about our natural, human appreciation for harmonious form— and our instinct for authenticity—will always remain superior to that of a machine.
For example, User-Generated Content (UGC) is currently the best-performing creative because people scroll right past computer-generated images. The ability to detect authenticity is subjective, and robots still think objectively. Our human tastes in design is what makes art meaningful and variable in the eyes of beholders. Successful art creates emotional connections, and human expression can be communicated through abstract, nuanced delivery. Our aesthetic sensibilities are shaped by lived experiences and emotional memories—things deeply personal and entirely unique.
I welcome the improvements AI can bring to our lives, especially in healthcare: better diagnoses, more effective preventative treatments. It's already proving beneficial across every industry, and it's only just begun. My hope is that it continues to assist humans and enhance our efficiency— because the nightmare alternative could resemble a real-life Terminator scenario.
But when someone asks me where I see my company in 10 years, I can’t ignore the lessons of the past and pretend to know the future with certainty. Claiming to know reveals an academic failure to recognize the potential for variables we previously never saw coming.
What I do know is that creative humans with good taste will always be essential to society—one way or another. There will always be a business model for them.
