Creative Advertising Is Dead—and We Killed It

Make no mistake, it was bound to happen.

Not from Google ads. Or from Meta ads. Or from AI-generated content.

It’s from you.
It’s from multiple CMOs focused on KPI’s.
It’s from marketing agencies.
It’s from all of us. All of us who over-consume and yearn for instant gratification.

We didn’t just kill ads; we killed unique art, we killed risk-taking, and we killed the magic that made people stop, feel, and care about what they were viewing.

In the spirit of performance, we traded storytelling for spreadsheets, art for analytics, and gut instincts for A/B testing.

Advertising used to be both crazy and magical. Remember how much anticipation we had for Super Bowl commercials? Now it’s just... meh.

Welcome to the Era of Noise

It started with the algorithm. Then came dashboards. Then the rise of DTC brands began to look—and sound—exactly the same (seriously, just scroll through LinkedIn for five minutes, and most SaaS brands look and feel the same).

Let’s call it how we see it: Noise From The Endless Void.

We’ve refined everything excessively. A guide created not to inspire action, but simply to endure the feed. To survive and keep pace with all those around us.

We once created ads that shaped culture. Now, we produce ads that beg for attention and disappear within 24 hours.

We used to move people emotionally with real situations (and not with fake AI images). Now we move on to tracking clicks and views.

Eventually, we shifted from praying to creative gods to worshipping at the altar of data - all hail the Google Ad machine!

Are we still marketers? Or have we become glorified Excel operators?

Data vs. Daring

Everything today is made to feed the algorithm. Let’s face it, a good chunk of marketers live and die by what the algorithm feeds them. The type of posts that show many likes, shares, and reposts. Also known as “metrics that are appealing to overly data-driven marketers.”

Why did CMOs start choosing data over daring? Performance over poetry? Spreadsheets over soul?

Why?

Because data is safe, creativity is not. You can’t A/B test a gut feeling. You can’t forecast a cultural breakthrough. You can’t measure emotional impressions.

And that’s the problem. Data tells you what was. It can’t show you what could be. It doesn’t account for creative taste, for anomalies that spark a feeling or trend, for stories that shouldn’t have worked—but somehow did.

Remember When Marketing Had Soul?

Remember when misfits, rebels, and artists ran marketing? Just a bunch of creative daydreaming weirdos with nothing to lose. The ones that can look into the clouds and immediately notice something unique to their own mind.

How is it working for many businesses? It’s overrun by data obsessors who picked marketing over finance because it “sounded more fun.”

We’ve confused predictability for power. And the result? Everything looks the same, feels the same, and sounds the same. Mix in the rise of AI-generated content - we’re approaching the ‘rinse, lather, repeat’ era of marketing.

And worst of all—
No one cares anymore.

Cults Over Clicks

We traded the Boondock Saints for a Kool-Aid commercial—blockbusters over cult classics, mass appeal over meaning.

But here’s the thing about cult classics: They last. They linger. They matter, especially from a cultural and artistic standpoint.

So What Now?

How do we build something that lasts?

Stop creating for clicks and appeasing dashboard numbers. Start creating for cult followings and those that appreciate seeing something different in 2025.

Let’s stop asking what will convert and start asking what will be remembered.

Because the best marketing? It was never conventional or what everyone else was doing. Never created from a dashboard and most importantly, never approved by 16 stakeholders.

It was risky, weird, unscalable, and unforgettable.

And that’s exactly what we need again.