Alistair Robertson - Creative AI Director

Artificial intelligence is changing the marketing and creative industries at speed. But for Alistair Robertson, Creative AI Director, its real significance is not that it replaces creativity. It is that it could help brands get back to what has always driven growth: genuine distinctiveness, stronger ideas, and more effective brand building.

With experience across FMCG, finance, healthcare and technology, Robertson has seen multiple waves of change in advertising. His perspective, however, remains grounded in fundamentals. Strong brands are built on something meaningful at their core, supported by creativity that is emotionally resonant but commercially focused. In his view, AI is exciting precisely because it has the potential to strengthen those fundamentals rather than distract from them.

Brand Growth Starts With Real Distinctiveness

For Robertson, brand growth begins far earlier than the marketing campaign. It starts with the product or service itself. The brands that grow most successfully tend to be the ones that have done something genuinely different at their core. “If you’ve got a service that people generally enjoy using or a product they see value in, then it gives you distinctiveness. That distinctiveness is then something you can take into marketing.”

He points to Dyson as a clear example. By reinventing an everyday household product and making it feel desirable, Dyson created the conditions for truly distinctive, product-led marketing. When the product itself stands apart, marketing becomes easier because the difference is already there. Communication and storytelling can then amplify something real, rather than trying to manufacture interest around something interchangeable.

In categories where true product differentiation is harder to achieve, brands have to create distinction in other ways. That might come through tone of voice, narrative, identity or a sharper understanding of audience needs. Robertson points to the early success of Innocent Drinks as a good example of how voice and personality can reshape a category. He sees similar patterns in financial brands such as Monzo and Revolut, which brought a more human and distinctive character into traditionally conservative spaces.

But even then, creativity has to stay grounded in commercial reality. In Robertson’s view, the role of advertising is not self-expression for its own sake. It is commercial creativity: creativity in service of selling something people value. Distinctiveness matters because it gives marketing something more powerful to work with.

“If you’ve got a service that people generally enjoy using or a product they see value in, then it gives you distinctiveness. That distinctiveness is then something you can take into marketing.”

What gets in the way: Short-termism and Risk Aversion

If distinctiveness is the foundation of growth, Robertson believes many businesses make it harder than necessary to build. One of the biggest reasons is short-term thinking. Despite the importance of long-term brand platforms, many organisations still plan tactically from one year to the next, even in sectors where future business pressures are highly predictable.

“When you can plot out where roughly your business is going to be, why aren’t we projecting what we’re going to do in two or three years, not just what tactics we are doing for the following 12 months?” he asks.

He sees this clearly in healthcare, where companies can often anticipate events such as patent expiry and competitive entry years in advance. In those circumstances, the lack of longer-term strategic planning is difficult to justify. Frequent leadership change can make the problem worse, as new leaders often want to put their own stamp on the business, sometimes at the expense of consistency.

Alongside short-termism, Robertson sees risk aversion as another major barrier. This is especially true in regulated sectors such as finance and healthcare, where businesses can become more cautious than regulation itself requires. The result is work designed to satisfy every internal stakeholder, rather than work designed to move people.

That kind of caution tends to produce messaging that feels safe but indistinct. When brands try to land on one broad idea that offends no one and reassures everyone, they often strip out the very things that make communication memorable. The result is blandness, not effectiveness.

“When you can plot out where roughly your business is going to be, why aren’t we projecting what we’re going to do in two or three years, not just what tactics we are doing for the following 12 months?”

The Result is Parity Advertising

For Robertson, one of the clearest symptoms of this broader problem is what he calls parity advertising: communications built around category-level claims such as being the most trusted or most recommended. Those messages can play a role, particularly in defending an existing position, but they rarely create real ownership or meaningful competitive advantage.

That is because parity claims tend to signal equivalence rather than difference. They may reassure, but they do not usually make a brand more desirable or memorable. For Robertson, lasting growth comes less from saying you are slightly better than the next option and more from creating emotional connection and a stronger sense of identity in the market.

Why AI is the Most Interesting Shift in Years

This is why Robertson is so optimistic about AI. While many people in the creative industries frame it as a threat, he sees it as the most exciting shift the industry has experienced in many years. Not because it changes the fundamentals of good marketing, but because it could remove some of the friction that has stopped stronger ideas from getting made and sold.

One of AI’s most immediate benefits, in his view, is its ability to make ideas visible much earlier. For decades, agencies have often had to sell creative concepts that clients could only imagine. AI changes that dynamic. It allows teams to bring ideas to life earlier in the development process, making abstract thinking more tangible and giving clients greater confidence in bolder routes.

That matters because people are far more likely to buy into something they can see. When an idea becomes visible early, the conversation changes. Stronger creative work has a better chance of surviving the process because stakeholders are no longer being asked to make a leap of faith.

In that sense, AI is not just a production tool. It is also a persuasion tool. It helps creatives sell braver thinking internally and gives clients a clearer way to engage with ideas before they are fully produced. That, Robertson believes, could have a meaningful effect on the quality of work that reaches the market.

“One of the most powerful things AI enables is making ideas visible early. When clients can actually see the idea, they’re much more likely to buy into something bold.”

AI is Powerful, but often Misunderstood

At the same time, Robertson is clear-eyed about how AI actually works in practice. One of the biggest misconceptions is that AI-generated advertising is simply the result of entering a prompt and receiving a finished piece of work. In reality, the process is far more involved. It often requires multiple tools, deliberate iteration and a carefully constructed workflow.

He compares it less to traditional film production and more to animation, where the final output is built step by step rather than captured and refined from large volumes of footage. “Using AI is more like an animation production technique than a film production technique,” he states. As with any creative discipline, the quality of the output still depends on the quality of the thinking, the briefing and the craft applied throughout the process. AI does not remove the need for judgment. If anything, it makes good judgment more important.

“Using AI is more like an animation production technique than a film production technique.”

New Technology, Old Truths

For all the transformation AI brings, Robertson does not believe the fundamentals of marketing have changed. His concern is that brands may become overly focused on short-term performance and forget the long-term work of building memory, meaning and preference.

What interests him is the combination of old principles and new capabilities: “I want the opportunity to use the latest technologies to prove the tenets of great brand marketing.” AI can help teams refine brand voice, explore alternative approaches and test different scenarios with greater speed. It can make brand systems more dynamic and help strategic and creative thinking become more tangible earlier. But none of that changes the underlying objective. The goal is still to build brands that people remember, value and choose.

For Robertson, that is the real promise of this moment. AI is not most valuable as a shortcut to more content. It is most valuable as a tool that can help brands return to more distinctive, persuasive and commercially effective creativity. In other words, the future may look new, but the standard for great marketing remains the same.

“I want the opportunity to use the latest technologies to prove the tenets of great brand marketing.”