TL;DR: We use AI every day, and we’ll probably use it even more in the future. But when it comes to the creative work that defines our brand, we believe people should still be the ones making it.
AI is a tool. A very useful one.
I use AI every day. So does my team. It summarizes information, takes notes during meetings and helps us get through work that would otherwise eat up a good part of the day.
I’m a big believer in what that can unlock. If technology can take some of the repetitive work off our plates, that gives people more time to think about the work that actually needs their attention. But there’s a line we’ve chosen not to cross. We won’t use AI to replace our creative team or the human creative process.
Creativity is about more than the output
There’s no shortage of AI-generated advertising right now. It can be made quickly and, in many cases, for a lot less money. For some brands, that may make sense. It doesn’t for ours.
Creative work isn’t just something you produce to fill an ad placement. It’s one of the ways a brand shows people who it is. More importantly, it’s a chance to show the people you’re speaking to that you actually understand them. That connection starts with the people making the work.
Good ideas need people
This fall, we’re launching a new brand campaign at Journey Capital. The concepts came from people on our marketing team. They got questioned and rewritten. Our designer turned those ideas into ads. When it was time to bring the campaign to life, we worked with 5 Pound Media and real actors in real small-business settings.
We made those choices deliberately. Because creativity isn’t just the finished product. Someone has an idea and another person sees a way to make it better. An actor can give you a moment nobody planned. Sometimes the most important contribution is simply someone looking at the work and saying, “That doesn’t feel like us.” AI can generate something. People decide whether it’s worth making.
The more digital we become, the more human we need to feel
That distinction matters to me because we’re an online lender. A lot of our customers’ experience with us naturally happens through technology. They find us online and apply through a screen. Technology helps make that experience easier.
But that’s also exactly why I think we need to look for opportunities to break down the digital barrier instead of adding to it. Our marketing should remind people that there are real people on the other side of the screen. The same is true of the businesses we support.
Someone took a risk on that restaurant. Someone decided to turn an idea into a business and kept showing up to make it work. Our job as marketers is to understand something about those people and create work that feels like it was made for them. For us, that requires people.
Our creative partners are small businesses too
We’re a company built around supporting small businesses. Many of the creative partners who help us build our brand are small businesses too. They’ve built companies around their craft, just like the entrepreneurs we serve have built businesses around theirs.
It would feel pretty disingenuous to talk about how much we believe in small business while deciding the people behind the creative businesses we work with are suddenly expendable. We don’t believe they are.
AI should create more room for people
None of this means we’re resisting AI. Quite the opposite. We’ll keep using it, and I expect it will become a bigger part of how we work.
I want AI taking notes while my team is having the conversation. I want it helping us get through repetitive work so people have more time to do the thinking that actually matters. That’s the role I want technology to play. Help talented people do more, rather than simply look for more people to remove from the process.
Creativity should still feel human
When we’re trying to connect with the people running small businesses across Canada, I want people behind the work speaking to them. AI can make us faster. It can make certain parts of our jobs easier. But our brand is ultimately a human connection, and that’s not something we’re interested in outsourcing to a machine.