My god, will there ever be a time when the client just “loves it”. Just loves it without having to input. Just loves it without removing the heart of it, the idea in it, the thing that makes it stand out or, or more usually and, the thing that will make it work. Apparently not.
[Cover image: Jade Mitchell]
29 April 2041
Why is it just the creatives they’ve replaced with AI? What about the suits? Surely Jed and Bob could have dramatically reduced the salary bill with a bunch of bag carrying, appointment booking “Yes-Bots”. Maybe I’m missing something. I’ve never got that close to the money side of the business. Do clients pay a premium to have their asses kissed by human lips? That might be it. I guess there’d be a lot less satisfaction for them in making a junior robot their bitch. Mmmh… interesting.
Talking of suits; earlier today, Kirsty, the most tepidly insipid member of J&B’s 100% percent human account management department came down to bring me the debrief on the Keep it Clean Omatic Ultra script. “Great news!” she said, “they bought your script,” before taking me through a comprehensive list of change requests that mean that the script will soon bear no resemblance whatsoever to what I originally wrote.
“They’ve removed all the swearing,” I said.
“I know,” Kirsty replied happily.
“But the swearing was the whole concept,” I said, trying hard to resist a burning urge to tear the debrief up and make her eat it piece by piece. “We see a bunch of people swearing because their clothes are stained, then when they use Omatic Ultra there are no stains so they stop swearing – hence the campaign line, “Keep it clean with Omatic Ultra.”
“That’s clever,” said Kirsty, smiling enthusiastically. “It’s still very good without the swearing though,” she added, “and the client LOVES it.”
I wonder whether they’ve been unable to replace account managers with AI because intelligence – artificial or other doesn’t match the job description?
“Thank you Emily,” I said, while experiencing the kind of inner rage that drives people to commit the most brutal of murders.
I think I was secretly hoping that Omatic Ultra might have been the last straw; waiting for Jed and Bob to come down and “regretfully” have to let me go. But oh no, those 256 words of ill-concealed passive-aggressive human frustration squeezed into 30 seconds of film, weren’t enough to get me axed. Instead, the client bought it – with “a few small changes.”
I have considered resigning. The UBI (Universal Basic Income) is more than enough to get by, and with the money my wife Jen is making we’d have a comfortable life. There’s a bunch of other creative stuff I’ve always wanted to do beyond advertising – poetry, music, ceramics, woodwork, photography. The problem now though is that with AI taking over so many jobs, everyone seems to be a bloody artist. There are ex-miners painting apologetic landscapes, ex-cabbies exploring urban expressionism and ex-factory-foremen crafting bespoke designer furniture. I bumped into our ex-cleaning lady the other day – literally. She was dressed in black and had wedged herself into the doorway of the mini mart, so you had to brush past her to get in to buy a pint of milk. When I asked her what she was doing, she stared me intently in the eyes, blinked and said in her Romanian accent, “Art.”
I’m not anti the democratisation of art, I just don’t really want everyone doing it. And if everyone is doing it then I guess I want to do something else – and until I figure out what that something else is, or until they fire me, I may as well stick with advertising.
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