The question: why are audiences pushing back on AI work?
The IPA piece sets out a clear tension. AI tools are booming, ChatGPT is part of daily life for many, yet AI-generated ads are increasingly met with online ridicule, accusations of laziness, and concerns about creative jobs.
The piece runs through a series of well-publicised flashpoints: Coca-Cola’s AI Christmas spot, McDonald’s Netherlands pulling a fully AI festive campaign after a week, and Nottingham Forest FC being mocked for an AI-written club announcement. It then asks adland how to respond.
Adam’s contribution
Adam’s argument is that audiences are not reacting to AI itself. They are reacting to three different things that often get muddled: poor quality work, broken trust, and broader fear.
Most of all, he points to a loss of authorship. When a campaign needs thousands of AI generations to find a handful of usable frames, the machine has more control than the humans do. That is not creative vision. It is roulette.
The fix, he argues, is not to hide AI or to over-disclose it, but to keep human vision at the centre and use AI where it serves that vision. Build creative systems around human judgement, taste, and direction, and let AI handle exploration, refining, and scaling.
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"Use AI to raise the floor, not lower the ceiling. Let it do the work, not the thinking."Adam Cleaver
Founding Partner and Executive Creative Director, Collective
Why this matters for how Collective works
Adam’s view aligns with how we think about content systems at Collective. Reusable foundations, governed product truth, and human authorship at the front of the pipeline. AI fits in where it earns its place, not as a substitute for craft, but as a way to scale what craft has already defined.
Read the full article
Read Adam’s full contribution and the wider industry perspectives in the IPA’s forum piece on AI perceptions.
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