Walk through any city, scroll through any platform, flip through anything print, and you’ll notice something unsettling: most advertising within the same category looks disturbingly similar. Luxury watches all feature dramatic lighting and Swiss heritage narratives. Car ads invariably show winding roads and engineering prowess. Banking commercials default to handshakes, families, and “your future” messaging – and digital bank apps are bright and feature tote bags.
This isn’t just creative laziness–it’s a semiotic prison. And artificial intelligence is about to eat its lunch.
The Semiotic Determinism Problem
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the more predictable your advertising becomes, the more susceptible it is to AI replacement. We’ve created what I call “semiotic determinism”–advertising categories so locked into visual languages and narrative formulas that they’ve become algorithmic by default.
Think about it. Luxury equals gold, black, minimalism. Cars equal motion blur, chrome, dramatic lighting. Financial services equal trust signals through handshakes and security imagery. These aren’t creative choices anymore; they’re conventions so entrenched they’ve become mathematical. I even see it indoctrinated in the most inexperienced students.
AI doesn’t need to understand why a luxury perfume ad uses serif fonts and aspirational models–it just needs to recognize the pattern and replicate it. And frankly? It’s really fucking good at pattern replication.
High-Status Categories: Prisoners of Their Own Success
The irony is delicious. The categories with the highest marketing budgets–luxury, automotive, premium technology–are often the most vulnerable to AI replacement because they’re trapped by their own success formulas.
Take luxury fashion advertising. Strip away the brand names, and most campaigns are virtually interchangeable. Same dramatic lighting. Same aspirational lifestyle positioning. Same “timeless” messaging wrapped in predictable visual codes. Same negative space. It’s the corporate equivalent of your favourite band whose encore is always, inevitably, that one song from decades ago, which, as a U2 fan, that’s invariably Beautiful Day.
These brands didn’t set out to become formulaic. They discovered winning formulas and, like any rational business, stuck to them. But here’s where it gets interesting: AI thrives on datasets with clear, repeated structures. The more “coded” your communication becomes, the more algorithmic it appears to machine learning systems.
Low-Engagement Categories: The Efficiency Trap
If high-status categories are trapped by aspiration, low-engagement categories are trapped by efficiency. Banking, insurance, food staples–these industries have optimized their advertising for risk aversion rather than creative distinction.
The result? Advertising so predictable it feels like it was already generated by algorithm. Banking ads featuring diverse families discussing “financial security.” Insurance commercials with umbrella metaphors and “protection” messaging. Food advertising with steam rising from perfect product shots, which, I can tell you, are as difficult to get right as they are boring.
These categories have essentially pre-automated their creative processes. They’ve created template-based advertising that prioritizes consistency over creativity, safety over surprise. Which is exactly what current AI systems are designed to excel at.
It’s like asking a deeply hungover person to take up parkour–technically possible, but why would you when there’s a comfortable path that requires minimal thinking?
The Pattern Recognition Advantage
Here’s what makes AI particularly dangerous to conventional advertising: it doesn’t need to understand semiotics to replicate them. It just needs to identify patterns and generate variations.
Current AI systems can analyze thousands of advertisements, identify visual and textual patterns, map them to outcomes, and generate new combinations faster and cheaper than traditional production methods. They’re not trying to be creative–they’re trying to be correct. And in categories dominated by convention, correctness is often more valuable than creativity.
The speed differential is staggering. What takes a traditional agency weeks to concept, produce, and refine, AI can generate in hours. For brands producing high-volume, convention-based advertising–think seasonal retail campaigns or product launches following established formulas–this represents a fundamental cost-benefit shift.
What Remains Human-Resistant
But here’s where it gets interesting. Not all advertising is equally susceptible to AI replacement. The campaigns that break conventions, challenge categories, and inject genuine cultural insight remain stubbornly human.
Consider Patagonia’s “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign–anti-consumption messaging in outdoor gear. Or Oatly’s deliberately weird, anti-advertising approach to plant-based milk. These campaigns work precisely because they reject category conventions in favor of authentic brand voices.
AI can replicate patterns, but it struggles with genuine subversion. It can generate variations on established themes, but it can’t yet identify when breaking those themes entirely might be more effective. Cultural commentary, timing-specific insights, and genuinely counter-conventional approaches still require the kind of contextual understanding and creative risk-taking that humans excel at.
The Bifurcated Future
This suggests we’re heading toward a bifurcated advertising industry. On one side: AI-generated conventional advertising for efficiency and scale. On the other: premium human creativity for differentiation and cultural relevance.
Brands will face a choice. Embrace AI efficiency for conventional messaging–saving costs while accepting commoditization. Or invest in genuine creativity to remain distinctly human–paying premiums for differentiation that actually differentiates.
The middle ground–expensive conventional advertising created by humans–becomes increasingly hard to justify. Why pay agency rates for formula-based creativity when algorithms can generate equivalent results at fraction of the cost?
The Creative Imperative
This creates a fascinating pressure point for the industry. As AI gets better at replicating conventions, the value of breaking them increases exponentially. Creativity becomes the last human advantage in advertising.
The brands that thrive will be those brave enough to reject category conventions in favor of authentic voices. The agencies that survive will be those that can deliver genuine cultural insight rather than polished variations on predictable themes.
It’s not about rejecting AI – it’s about understanding where human creativity adds irreplaceable value. Pattern replication is becoming algorithmic. Pattern disruption remains beautifully, chaotically human.
The question isn’t whether AI will replace conventional advertising. It’s whether your advertising is conventional enough to be replaced.
So. My advice is to get uncomfortable with comfort.
//A 🎯