Do they hate creatives?
Being a Filter, Not a Bottleneck
Let me start with the caveat: I don’t believe AI is a replacement for creativity. Full stop.
I’ve yet to see a tool that can replace the brilliance of a great copywriter or a designer who doesn’t just make things look pretty but understands brand, vibe, and how it makes you feel when you land on that homepage.
That’s still magic. That still wins.
But….
The reality is a lot of companies, especially startups sitting on a pile of funding, are not optimizing for magic right now. They have insane growth goals to hit. Their number one priority isn’t building a massive brand or developing a creative department. Their number one priority is speed.
If they feel like going fast and getting to 80% good enough is the best path forward to hit growth goals, that’s the path they’ll take. It’s not personal. It doesn’t mean they hate creatives. It just means growth is sitting above everything else on the org’s to-do list.
Now, you could make the argument that actually taking the time to build a brand and investing heavily there is the smarter long-term path and I actually agree. But a lot of companies and founders just don’t see it that way.
So if you’re a creative working inside one of those companies, you need to be honest with yourself. Maybe that’s just not the right environment for you. Maybe you’d be happier at a company that truly values brand and creativity as a competitive advantage. And that’s okay.
If you are in that environment though, the way you survive and thrive isn’t by trying to bottleneck the process. If you force everything to go through you, the team will eventually find a way to route around you. And then people start asking, why do we even need this person if the machine can just pump things out at scale?
The move is to insert yourself further up the funnel.
Instead of being the last stop who edits copy, polishes images, or rewrites social posts, you become the filter that sets the direction early. That means:
Getting involved in prompt-writing, so the outputs aren’t generic.
Building brand guidelines for how AI-generated content should look, sound, and feel.
Training the team on what “good” looks like so they can self-serve better.
Being the one who can look at twenty AI outputs and quickly decide which is closest to on-brand, then shape it into something real.
When you do that, you’re not just reacting to sloppy outputs. You’re shaping what comes out before it even lands on the table. You’re guiding, curating, filtering. And that’s where your value shines.
Because the truth is, the difference between “meh AI output” and “on-brand creative that actually lands” isn’t the tool. It’s the person steering it. That’s you.
The creatives who want to survive (and thrive) in the AI age at growth focused companies aren’t the ones fighting the tools. They’re the ones using them as multipliers for taste, judgment, and brand instinct.
The stuff AI will never replicate.
Thanks for reading,
Adam