Battling Creative Apathy in the Age of AI
Why It Matters
AI is excellent for research and initial drafts, but it lacks taste and gut instinct. Relying on it to decide the "big idea" can lead to uniform-looking ads. Hannah Houg noticed her own copywriting skills diminishing after months of depending on AI-generated drafts. The solution: present AI with a hypothesis rather than asking it to think independently, and keep the brainstorming and gut-checking processes human-only. Being efficient doesn’t automatically mean being effective. The top strategists aren't the ones prompting the fastest; they're the ones bringing ideas worth prompting for.
Who This Is For
Creative strategists, media buyers, and team leads using AI in their creative process who want to stay sharp instead of outsourcing the judgment that actually makes ads work.
AI is making creative teams a little lazy.
In a recent Scalability School episode, Brad Ploch and Andrew Foxwell sat down with creative experts Hannah Houg and Matthew Gattozzi to answer the question most teams are avoiding: how do you use AI for creative strategy without losing the judgment that makes ads work? If you’re running ads, leading a creative team, or just dipping your toes into AI-powered marketing, this is a conversation you need to hear.
The Big Question: Is AI Helping or Hurting Creative Strategy?
AI is everywhere. We’re using it for research, brainstorming, even cranking out first drafts of ad copy. But the more we let AI handle the actual thinking, the more we risk losing that gut instinct and judgment that separates a killer ad from just another scroll-past.
If you let AI decide what’s interesting about your customer, or what your ad’s big idea should be, your work starts looking just like everyone else’s. And that’s exactly what Hannah and Matthew are seeing: creative briefs and ad concepts everywhere are starting to feel… the same. Efficient, yes. Quality? Different from competitors? Memorable? Not so much.
Where AI Fits (and Where It Doesn’t)
Hannah and Matthew made a point that AI is amazing for research when you need to sift through thousands of reviews or pull together a mountain of data. But when it comes to the heart of the creative process, like the insight, the “big idea,” and the killer hook, that's where you need a human because AI just doesn’t have taste, experience, and a gut instinct for what will break through the noise.
Hannah even admitted that after a few months of letting AI crank out the first draft of every script, her own copywriting muscle started to atrophy. When she tried to write from scratch, it felt like running a marathon after sitting on the couch for weeks. If you’re struggling to start without AI, that’s your cue to hit pause and ask if you’re letting the robots do too much of the heavy lifting.
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How to Use AI Without Losing Your Edge
Come to AI with a hypothesis, don’t ask it to do your thinking for you. Do the heavy lifting up front, then let AI help you test, validate, or riff on your idea.
Guard the core creative steps from automation. The brainstorms, the gut-checks, those moments when you decide what your ad actually needs to do.
Let AI handle the research and grunt work, but don’t let it shortcut your insight or judgment.
Give your team room to actually think. If everyone’s pumping out 20 ads a week just because AI makes it easy, you might end up with 20 flavors of the same vanilla (and potentially bad) idea.
The Leadership Challenge
If you’re running a team, ask yourself: are you pushing for pure efficiency, or are you giving your strategists time to do the deep, slow, intentional, creative work that leads to real breakthroughs?
It’s tempting to automate everything, but the ads that actually move the needle still come from humans who connect the dots, break the rules, and bring the big idea that potentially hasn't been done before. AI can help you move faster, but only if you know the direction you’re headed.
Final Thoughts
Shortcuts have their place, but shortcutting creative judgment is a recipe for sameness. AI is a powerful tool, not a replacement for taste, context, judgement, hypotheses, or experience. Use it to accelerate your work, not to do your thinking for you.
So next time you fire up an AI tool, ask yourself: am I bringing it something worth building on, or am I just hoping it’ll do my job for me?
That’s the difference between being a creative strategist and just a prompt engineer. Let’s make sure we’re the ones bringing the big ideas.
Listen to the full episode of Scalability School podcast
Looking to harness AI without sacrificing your unique touch? That's exactly what Foxwell Founders members are exploring together. Not just in theory, but through real ad accounts, genuine creative reviews, and honest conversations about where AI truly adds value and where it might start taking over your thinking quietly.
Note: This blog was written by a human, but AI helped draft the outline and synthesize ideas.
