When efficiency is a mandate for every business, what’s the case for designing friction into brand and creative strategy?
If you are a marketer, a brand leader, an agency strategist or creative, you are being asked, if not required, to use and apply AI in your work to achieve more, in less time, with less cost.
This need is not new - in fact it is an underlying requirement for businesses of all sizes, especially the largest ones with the most growth to drive.
The risk of overuse of AI leading to mediocrity has been well documented. It’s why phrases like “human in the loop” have been used countless times. In truth, it devalues the role of the human as a checkpoint to the work AI is doing, instead of the one driving the thinking.
The reason this risk is being discussed so heavily is because it is real. In a recent opinion piece for The New York Times, Debbie Millman argues we aren’t ready to use AI until we have experienced what going through the “agony of the blank page” feels like. Until we understand what it takes to form our own point of view. In fact, this newsletter was written this way. Rounds of arguments and rewrites to land the argument and narrative.
Meanwhile, the business community is actively building AI into workflows to remove friction. Faster handoffs, fewer approvals, getting more done with less effort. We offer a counter perspective. Seek tension. Find differences. Embrace the discomfort of not having an answer yet.
This is not about adding friction everywhere. It is about deciding that it is critical to developing brand and creative strategy. It is about building it as a deliberate system. Thoughtfully designed AI and proven tools handle the volume and speed. Taking a systematic approach to cultural intelligence surfaces signals much faster than traditional surveys. Strategy and creative experts are set up to apply their judgement at the moments where friction needs to happen.
Originality is hard. It always has been. As technology keeps making data and information more accessible, arguably it gets more difficult to develop original thinking, novel ideas and differentiated brands.
The fact that it is hard is also what makes creating exciting brands so rewarding. The brands and the people who develop them that embrace curiosity, look at things sideways, and understand that experience is everything, are the ones that will win. The ones we will reach for and talk about and care about. Bold, distinct, even a bit weird.
Which tends to run counter to what we have to do in business. Drive business performance, deliver the numbers. It pushes us, the companies and service providers who work with them, toward safe and mediocre solutions.
If asked, we will all wax poetic about how important creativity is, but when it comes down to making decisions about how to run a process, deciding how much to spend, how many rounds of thinking to include, how much time to dedicate, we “streamline” it to the bone.
The pressure is real. The demands of the business world are powerful. Perhaps, intentional friction is an antidote. A principle to commit to and build into the processes and workflows we design. To get anywhere different than where we and others already are, we must have some space to seek and embrace tension. To reframe a situation. To find the odd, the unexpected, the exciting. We also have to bring people along, because going somewhere new can be scary. Part of the human condition is to reject and rebel against what is truly new, but that is often where the real potential lives.
Whether you are leading a major consumer or corporate brand, running agency projects, or working from your own independent practice, which of your last three briefs were signed off on the first draft without time to push back?
What part of your process does friction belong in?
How do you ensure your teams or your clients are committed to the role of divergent thinking, before committing to a direction?
The problem worth solving
At BeenThereDoneThat, it’s a never-ending pursuit. We designed SOLVE™, our problem definition methodology that we’ve run over 900 times with clients, to find the real problem worth solving. Not the obvious one that gets heads nodding. The one that you have to dig for. The one that leads to a shift. The one that gives a business the chance to design for significant change, not for incrementality.
We’re here for those who share the ambition to build brands that are relevant, distinctive, famous and loved. It’s the work we push for day in and day out.
If this sparks something for you, we should be talking.
Contact us
At BeenThereDoneThat, we work with leadership teams to find the problem that's actually worth solving. The one underneath the obvious brief. If the wanting/liking split has landed somewhere in your pipeline thinking, we'd love to chat: enquiry@beentheredonethat.co