"In the pursuit of scale, speed and efficiency, the industry created a new kind of output: synthetic creative, engineered to perform rather than to connect. Solutions amalgamated from a mishmash of data signals, trend forecasts and platform "best practices," resulting in polished, efficient and instantly forgettable content that looks right, sounds right and feels completely hollow. I believe that the future of marketing will be defined by its rejection of that modality-because it doesn't resonate."
"Synthetic creative isn't inherently bad. In fact, it's often very good at doing exactly what it's designed to do: hit benchmarks, satisfy algorithms and move quickly. But that's also its fatal flaw. Synthetic creative exists in proximity to culture; it does not participate in culture. Audiences feel this instinctively, responding to it with disengagement. Audiences today are extraordinarily skilled at detecting inauthenticity and know when culture is being "borrowed" rather than something your brand is an active participant in."
Marketing pursued scale through speed—more content, impressions, optimization, and automation—leading to impact being conflated with output and a homogenized landscape. The industry produced synthetic creative optimized to perform for algorithms and benchmarks but lacking cultural participation, yielding polished yet forgettable content. Synthetic creative excels at efficiency and metrics but fails to earn attention because audiences detect inauthenticity and disengage. A significant portion of consumers judge brand expressions as less distinctive and inspiring, and optimized content risks losing the remembered intention behind investment. The crucial shift in marketing is behavioral: attention must be earned through distinctiveness and genuine cultural participation.
Read at Forbes
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