Jess Wheeler’s Post

Skills of deduction not seen since the days of Sherlock Holmes.

Sometimes disparate messages from the universe can all be trying to illuminate the same thing. This is not meant to be easy. A post about thinking and AI that somehow references Theodore Roosevelt, Elden Ring, and mech warrior suits.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but it feels like the dreaded 'watermark' is back. I just watched an ad with three on-screen logos and two verbal brand mentions in the first five or so seconds, still accompanied by a permanent on-screen watermark that sat over the footage for the entire ad. Why are we still doing this? NOBODY likes this. As Ron Mather used to say, “If you’re going to walk into someone’s lounge room uninvited, the least you can be is polite.” We are an interruption. People don't want to watch ads. It's our job to make something worth watching so you don't have to run a watermark over the top of it. We can still earn people's attention without being disrespectful in the process. Not all attribution is equal. We can't simply pretend that positive and negative attribution doesn't exist. Making 100% sure I remember it was your brand that gave me a negative experience is not the goal here. I wrote about this last year.

Facebook execs if LinkedIn follows up adding birthday updates and dinky online games with weird aunties posting conspiracies about all the 5G in the tap water.

Studio Ghibli's Hayao Miyazaki, after seeing the first piece of AI-driven animation, was famously quoted as calling it an 'An insult to life itself.' Call me dramatic, but that's how this Toys R' Us 'brand film' makes me feel. And I'm not anti-AI. I use AI just about every day. It's not going anywhere and is already a regular part of our workflow. But if it's to become a regular part of our lives as the final execution of art and entertainment and advertising and culture, then it needs to be judged just as anything else would. If you're going to call it a 'film', then it needs to be judged as a piece of film. If a junior creative presented that Toys R' Us script in folio school, you'd barely blink and ask, 'what else have you got?' If a working creative in an agency presented it, you'd seriously start asking questions. If a production company put forward that treatment, you'd never work with them again. 'We made it with AI' is not a smokescreen that makes up for a soulless, unimaginative, creepy void of nothingness. It doesn't replace the need for insight and idea and craft. Just like any other technology or technique or aesthetic that came before it. And for toys of all things. Physical, tactile, playful objects that unlock worlds of imagination and childlike wonder. And not a single scent of it throughout the entire 60 seconds. There's already better examples of AI content out there, anyone praising this is simply suffering from an atrocity of taste. (My new favourite phrase, Jake Turnbull) It's brought back this piece I wrote in March about discernment and taste and opinions, and how we're going to need them more than ever now. And this is living proof.

My condolences to everyone else getting ready for a stressful week of work after a stressful weekend of playing Elden Ring.

If you hadn't noticed, it's award season. Awards can make careers. So, win awards, celebrate them, promote that you won them, and use them to build your career. But don’t just chase awards. Because it’s not the only way. You’re a creative. You don’t need permission to create. You can create whatever you want, whenever you want, and make something that sends a tiny ripple across culture that might last longer than an award. Maybe you can make something that lives in a museum for 100 years. Let me regale you with a story from the deep dark depths of the ‘most locked down city in the world’ during the 2020 pandemic.

waiting to see if my joke in the slack receives more laugh without tears reacts or laugh with tears reacts

If anyone was actually honest about their 'creative process'. (meme stolen from Mitch King with reckless abandon)