What was your favourite advert from the Tremendous Bowl LIX?
I couldn’t decide only one. As is true yearly, I like how artistic all of them are.
However OpenAI’s advert has stayed with me. With a brand new CMO on the helm, the corporate lastly appears to have captured a message that doesn’t really feel out of step with the zeitgeist.
The black-and-white advert confirmed a whole lot of dots swirling and recombining into photographs celebrating human inventiveness and creativity. The corporate claims the advert was crafted fully by people with some AI-driven prototyping and storyboarding.
The business’s solely scripted second actually resonated, asking: “What do you need to create subsequent?”
It’s a easy but profound immediate for entrepreneurs navigating content material creation in 2025. (And, no, the “prompting” irony isn’t misplaced on me.)
I contact on why within the video under and go into extra element in the remainder of this text.
Constructed vs. created content material
Advertising and marketing groups face an existential query in the present day: What occurs when AI can create content material quicker than people?
As you already know, quicker doesn’t correlate to higher. However sluggish doesn’t at all times correlate to nice, both.
It’s comforting to rationalize that “quicker than people” isn’t sufficient to place most creators out of their jobs anytime quickly. However that rationalization feels just like the door that Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio’s characters clung to in Titanic. It seems large enough to save lots of us each, however for some cause, it simply isn’t.
You would possibly discover a higher reply by understanding the distinction between constructed and created content material.
G.Ok. Chesterton articulated this distinction fantastically in his evaluation of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. He wrote:
“The entire distinction between development and creation is precisely this: {that a} factor constructed can solely be beloved after it’s constructed; however a factor created is beloved earlier than it exists.”
Created content material is the poem that kinds in your thoughts earlier than the pen ever touches paper.
It’s the portray vividly imagined earlier than the primary brushstroke meets the canvas.
It’s the article that takes form in a rigorously crafted define, deepens by means of analysis, and at last will get refined into simply the correct expression.
Constructed content material, in contrast, good points worth solely after it’s totally realized. Consider a technical handbook, a road signal, the concise abstract of a novel, or the summary of a thought-provoking lecture. Helpful and environment friendly however solely acknowledged for his or her value after completion.
Put merely, nobody anticipates these items with pleasure, however folks can respect them as soon as they begin serving their goal.
Content material output by prompting a generative AI software is, by nature, constructed content material. It’s assembled, optimized, and fine-tuned based mostly on algorithms, information units, and prompts.
It may be useful, environment friendly, participating, and even beloved. However it is going to at all times lack one thing important: the human spark — the origin of an concept that we nurture, wrestle with, and fall in love with earlier than it’s ever expressed.
Writing is writing, isn’t it?
I just lately spoke with a younger author at a B2B expertise firm with an interesting profession trajectory. She began at an company, crafting sensible weblog posts and articles. Later, she moved into an in-house content material position, the place she thrived on writing about business developments and conducting in-depth interviews.
However, after a number of organizational shifts, she ultimately discovered herself enhancing technical specs and product documentation as an alternative of making authentic items.
Three months into this position, she requested her supervisor if she may tackle extra different writing assignments. The response? “Writers are writers. And writing is writing.”
The primary assertion is true. The second shouldn’t be.
The younger author couldn’t determine why that remark bugged her a lot. She may see the hazard of her enhancing position being changed by generative AI. But it surely was how she felt in regards to the writing itself that was so unlucky. Her knack for storytelling had been quashed by dry reporting.
Some kinds of content material can (and doubtless ought to) be purely constructed, like product descriptions, compliance paperwork, and technical specs. These are helpful and essential, however they don’t precisely faucet into the enjoyment of creation.
Different kinds — thought management, model storytelling, and emotionally compelling content material — are created. They’re beloved earlier than they exist, they usually evoke one thing highly effective within the author and the reader (or listener or viewer).
This distinction issues now greater than ever. AI can assemble content material, but it surely doesn’t create in the way in which folks do.
It might probably’t really feel the deep satisfaction of discovering an thought and shaping it right into a compelling narrative. It might probably’t infuse a bit with the lived expertise, cultural nuances, and emotional resonance that make content material memorable to each the creator and the viewers.
The ability of friction in creativity
Right here’s a necessary level within the distinction between constructed and created content material. Created content material isn’t higher than constructed content material. Constructed content material could also be simply as efficient, participating, and appreciated.
The true worth of created content material lies in what it does for the creator. When folks create, they don’t simply specific an thought. They reside with it, refine it, battle with it, and finally fall in love with it. That journey transforms us, sharpening our minds and deepening our views.
The pushback to that supervisor isn’t to agree that “writing is writing.” Neither is it that the younger author can create content material higher than AI.
It’s that engaged on created content material makes her a greater funding for the corporate. She’s extra beneficial to the corporate when she falls in love with the concepts she has to wrestle into created existence.
Now, I get it. Your inside CEO would possibly say, “I don’t care about her emotions. If the content material will be simply as beloved, why not automate it?”
However right here’s what you (and your inside CEO) ought to care about: the underside line.
Wiser, extra artistic workers aren’t simply happier — they’re additionally extra worthwhile. Why?
As a result of a button-pushing robotic follows directions each time. Sensible artistic staff members discover higher directions over time. They begin fixing issues earlier than they occur. They’re extra prone to generate new concepts that push the corporate ahead.
When creators are engaged — wrestling with concepts — they’re not simply finishing duties. They’re inventing higher methods to do them. That’s not simply beneficial, it’s irreplaceable.
For this reason beneficial friction is so vital in advertising and marketing and artistic content material. Battling concepts, iterating, refining, and expressing one thing new results in actual progress.
Created content material is the byproduct of that battle, an artifact of human thought, perception, and artistry. And it’s the one factor that makes people extra beneficial over time.
Balancing AI and human creativity
Each constructed and created content material have their place. Generative AI can effectively deal with some elements of high-volume, data-driven constructed content material duties like:
Automating Search engine marketing-focused content material
Summarizing information and studies
Producing preliminary drafts for refinement
Creating product descriptions or FAQs
AI additionally has the potential for working along with people on iterative enhancing periods, thought technology, or turns of phrases that specific the concept the human loves and is struggling to place into phrases.
However solely a human can fall in love with an thought earlier than it’s expressed. That makes people not solely irreplaceable but additionally probably the most beneficial a part of the AI funding.
The most effective funding in generative AI is the funding it makes in us. Once you use AI to enhance moderately than exchange human creativity, you don’t simply create higher content material — you create higher creators. The most effective advertising and marketing methods will embrace this stability.
Because the OpenAI advert prompts: “What do you need to create in the present day?”
It’s your story. Create it nicely.
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Cowl picture by Joseph Kalinowski/Content material Advertising and marketing Institute