Tiffany Rolfe of R/GA
What is it?
"FEARLESS CREATIVE LEADERSHIP" PODCAST - TRANSCRIPT
Episode 260: Tiffany Rolfe
Here's a question. What is it?
I'm Charles Day. I'm passionate about the opportunity that leadership provides to make a difference, and so I'm asked to help leaders discover what they're capable of, and then to maximize their impact. Helping them to unlock their own creativity, as well as the creativity of the people around them.
Welcome to the intersection of strategy and humanity.
This episode is the seventh in a series of conversations that I'm having in partnership with the Cannes Lion Festival of Creativity. For the weeks leading up to Cannes, we're focusing our study of leadership through a single lens. The impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Creative Industries.
Are we moving fast enough? Are we going far enough? Is this an opportunity to fundamentally redesign the creative industries? Or do we adjust and iterate, slowly and carefully? Do we follow the puck, or skate to where it's going? There are opportunities and risks around every corner. Before we jump into this conversation, a couple of programming notes.
I had originally intended to finish this series of conversations with this episode, and then to do a wrap up episode on my takeaways from the series. But I've got a chance to interview an industry legend at Cannes, and so I'm going to extend the series by one more. You'll hear that conversation at the end of Cannes next week. And then, the week after, we'll wrap up the series.
This episode is a conversation with Tiffany Rolfe. Tiff is a mother, as well as the Global Chair and Global Chief Creative Officer at R/GA. I asked Tiffany to come back on the show because she is, as you'll hear, a self described tech optimist. She's also one of the most original thinkers that I know.
Her professional journey has taken her from Executive Creative Director at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, to Chief Content Officer and Partner at one of the first agency consultancy hybrids, Co:Collective, to her role at R/GA. If you haven't heard our earlier episode in which she talks about the challenges of combining a demanding career with being a mother, it's a really powerful listen.
In this conversation, one of the first questions that came up was, how should we think about AI?
“I mean, a lot of people call it a tool. I think that isn't giving it as much credit as something that can really transform and power experiences in ways I think we haven't seen yet. Really, I think, changing everything and how we interact with technology now. I think it has a lot more potential, and I think it's probably more than a tool. I think it will generate and create a lot of different types of tools.”
Stay tuned next week for our final conversation in the series. And in the meantime, thanks for joining us. Here's Tiffany Rolfe.
[00:03:00] Charles:
Tiffany, welcome back to Fearless, thank you so much for coming back on the show.
[00:03:03] Tiffany Rolfe:
Always a pleasure.
[00:03:06] Charles:
You've lived at the intersection of creativity and technology for most of your career. How do you describe your relationship with AI?
[00:03:14] Tiffany Rolfe:
Whoa, you're jumping right in there. I think it's similar to my overall relationship with technology. I always call myself a tech optimist. I think I'm probably a little bit more cautiously optimistic now.
We've had some learnings over the last five years or so to surround all the different paths that technology can take, and in the wrong hands, but I'm really excited about it. I actually think even though there's a lot of fear around ending humanity or taking our jobs, I actually think it might help. the internet and our relationship with technology, in a way, even become maybe more human.
I think what sometimes can happen is there's constraints to a technology platform and how you interact with it, navigate it. And so that unlock of just asking for things I need in the way I want and how I want them, I think there's something inherently more human to that. And so I'm optimistic that it can lead to more human engaging experiences, if handled correctly.
[00:04:20] Charles:
Is it fair to call it a partner? Is it as much as that?
[00:04:24] Tiffany Rolfe:
I think that's like a safe, easy word for humans to embrace AI. I think it's probably much more powerful than a partner. But I think we can think about it that way, in that it can enable, and we can use it to create and do amazing new things. And it, I think it's being modeled in service of us right now, which I think is good.
So it, I think a partner is, yes, it can be, but I also think it has the power to be a lot more, hopefully more good than bad, but probably a little bit more potential than a partner. Let's, we all hope it just, maybe stays at that level.
[00:05:02] Charles:
But more than a tool.
[00:05:03] Tiffany Rolfe:
Yeah. I mean, a lot of people call it a tool. I think that isn't giving it as much credit as something that can really transform and power experiences in ways I think we haven't seen yet. Really, I think, changing everything and how we interact with technology now. I think it has a lot more potential and I think it's probably more than a tool. I think it will generate and create a lot of different types of tools.
[00:05:28] Charles:
PJ Pereira described it as a tiger that was for now standing at a distance, where it was safe for now, but he was worried about what was going to happen next.
How do you think it's going to impact human creativity? Where will we draw the line between what it does, and what we do?
[00:05:44] Tiffany Rolfe:
I think there's even more of a need for human creativity. I just recently was looking at some images for, I think it was a social campaign, just like a simple social campaign, shot pretty quickly, put out on social. And saw how just with some experimentation, it was easily, if we had wanted, transformed into one type of campaign into another with a couple of prompts, and same quality. And that, we look at that and go, "Oh my gosh, it can just generate a lot of what we're all already doing." But I think what's exciting about it is what it can do that we don't know yet. How is it going to create all new things?
And I think where we've seen interesting things happen is when we start to really push it, and keep pushing and keep experimenting, keep prompting, and get to places that maybe you wouldn't have ever gotten to. We're working with NotCo right now, which is an AI brand that generates food that is vegan and animal free.
And it's really interesting. Fernando was the CMO there, and he came and talked to one of our creative summits, and now we're working with him, and we're building and rebranding Giuseppe, which is their AI branded tool. And we're building a website for them and he explained it, and as I've learned more about them is, the way that they use AI is, it creates combinations that wouldn't have been humanly thought of. So they're building, let's say a chicken finger. And you would never, I think, as a human think that a replacement of a meat product needed, like, strawberry in it to get to a chicken finger. And I thought that was a really good analogy, just in terms of the way that you can use AI to get to these other types of solutions that you might have not logically gotten to. And that, I think, is an interesting way to think about, like, how do we push and use the tools in ways that really even unlock our limits in terms of how we start to assemble and put things together? But I think it takes human interaction to do that, and it generates a lot of stuff and a lot of it's bad stuff.
And the human comes in at these different points to taste it. Does it taste like a chicken finger? And I think that as a parallel to the creativity, and that human taste, that human curation, I think is really still really key, the human storytelling that's part of it. People can generate similar images, but I think knowing what the story is behind it, the why, how he talked through that story, I think that is what really gives a lot of value to creative expression, not just the fact that you can generate or make something.
It's like modern art. You could, you could use that as a way, and like, it wasn't just that it was the most beautifully rendered image. It had another kind of abstract meaning and story behind it. The artists who did it and why they did it and what compelled them to do it. So I think creativity has always been more than just the object, the artifact, and so much about the why and who and what it represents and the meaning behind, it's how you sell the work. And so that, I think, it can't and hasn't and won't go away, and probably it will be even more important as we see that, what's great is, everybody can express themselves in ways that maybe they didn't before. I see strategists now, the starter ideas are far beyond what a starter idea looks like, and people creating books and designing books that they weren't able to because they can generate images in a different way, or a designer that can program something instead of waiting for someone to program it for him.
So there's a lot of these unlocks that are great, but I do think it will just create a lot of goodness in the middle, but everything starts to just look and feel the same. If everything looks a certain way and all kind of the same good, we're going to need that storytelling, that why, that other thing that's going to stand out and compel us as humans, get the emotion, emotional connection that we need. So while it's enabling so many to do amazing things, I think we're going to still need creativity to really connect with people, to stand out from all of that.
[00:09:52] Charles:
One of the things that I've been conscious of in putting this series together is how fast this thing is developing.
I think it was February that I read an article in The Spectator which talked about how that week in February had been the biggest moment in AI's history. Sora was announced, I think ChatGPT4 came online in a real way. And suddenly I think most of us went from not really thinking about it to suddenly it was here. And almost every day since then, it feels like another revelation has come up.
There was a new video technology I saw yesterday on LinkedIn where they showed six pieces of video, and they said we can make these up to three minutes long, and you can't tell the difference between that and human created stuff. I mean, it's extraordinary. And I keep being reminded that whatever technology you're using today, this is as bad as it will ever be. It's only going to go on getting better and better and better. So the speed of change and the speed of progress is hard to comprehend even while we're living through it, but I think even harder to recognize what might be possible a year from now. Are we stretching our imaginations enough to consider, where could we be a year from now with all of this stuff, if the rate of change keeps continuing like this?
[00:11:01] Tiffany Rolfe:
I think we could be in a lot of places, but I think in many ways, maybe it's good that we're doing it. I mean, there's a lot of limitations to where we can go because we're dealing with right now, ethically, what's right, legally, what's right. On one hand, there's, yes, maybe there's all these things possible, but should we, will we, all of the questions that we just need to ask in terms of the ability of it, like, how much are we going to want it to do? And should we do? And can we do? I think those are the bigger questions. It's not that it can't. I think it could do way more than we could even imagine. But I think we're all now realizing really quickly we need to all collectively as humanity get our sh*t together, and figure out what should it not do, and what do we want to try to limit? And what's ethically right or not? Or how do we embrace that and say, "Hey, this is the new way, but what's the new model around that?" Just like when music became digitized, and there was, like, "What do we do when everyone can copy and share music and have access to it all?"
Well, we created a whole new model for streaming and how you own and share music, and so everything innovates around it. Sometimes it's just that fear and assuming that means the end of something-- we'll never do this again-- and maybe that's true, but there's going to be a new way to embrace that. I know there's a lot around the recent Scarlett Johansson and Voice, but I think there's a really interesting opportunity in there for celebrities, talent, to partner with brands and new ways to scale that trust and their voice and the brand expertise in a way that's really interesting and new, that they're part of, where you can limit it because it's within a certain world rather than just open access or whatever. So I think there's going to be ways that the things that we're afraid of right now are going to be figured out on how to do in a way that everyone buys into.
I think right now it's just feels a little bit like a free for all, just, like, early days. It's always a little bit Wild West as we navigate and push its potential, but also maybe too far. And then we'll reset and go, "Okay, here's the way we want to use it right now." And I think that's the job of us as creative people, as a creative industry, as brand shepherds, and the ability to do this at scale in ways that other people can't. How are we building it in the right way and in ways that others can model after, rather than just waiting to see what happens?
[00:13:23] Charles:
Do you think this is a moment where the industry as a whole, I'm talking about brands, agencies, advertisers, marketers, communication companies, the entire spectrum, the entire ecosystem. Do we need to get together formally and say, we need to take responsibility for how we engage with this technology and what the parameters are?
I mean, there are so many different channels of conversation, but I have yet to see something that really aggregates to the center, that says, we need to take a proactive stance and position on this. We need to put down some regulations. Individual companies are doing it. I talked to Yasu Sasaki at Dentsu, and he talked about the fact that they are very conscious.
I talked to Asmita Dubey at L'Oreal and she said the same thing, that they're very conscious of putting real constraints and rules, parameters around it. Do you think we need to do that as an industry?
[00:14:11] Tiffany Rolfe:
I mean, I think obviously it's a good idea. I don't think we have a good track record to coming together as an industry around challenges in the industry, whether it be how we get paid on our business models. So I think a lot of times it's now more as a position of competition. How are you using it versus how are you using it? What's your differentiator on how you use it? So maybe unfortunately we aren't doing that as much as we probably should, but I think would be a good idea.
I think it has to though, we're a reflection of the culture. We're a reflection of our brands. We're a reflection of what else is happening out there. So we also can't limit the advertising or marketing industry while every other industry is moving in a different direction. So I think it's hard to do it without it being a little bit of a broader thing.
I think we're collectively starting to see how culture feels about certain things, and how people get credit for the sourcing that's happening out there. We see different models popping up. We had a panel recently with Scott Belsky from Adobe, because IPG did a partnership with Adobe and Firefly and the AI suite, and they're able to indemnify brands working with them because they, we use all kind of sourced material that they have the rights to, or they've negotiated, and where there's some limitations to it.
And I think that's where the ones that have decidedly put limitations to it, and built a language model around ethically sourced materials, will be one business model that potentially is a route. Where it's, okay, I might not be able to build something with Spider Man because that's an IP, but I know everything I'm building is sourced ethically, and therefore I can do more right now because I'm indemnified, whereas these other things I'm not sure that I can even use and should I use. And so I think there'll be a lot of different versions of the models and how they work and how they're used and the legality around it, and we'll all start to kind of go in certain directions around that. And I'm sure some are going to push more than others, and that might be a differentiator for what people are willing to do or not.
And I've seen some of our work even start to get replicated through AI on different platforms, and it's a weird, it's a weird, crazy feeling. Where and how will that reference to the original be in or not? It's hard though, because part of what we've always done is reference culture and co-opted culture and different art styles.
So there's always been a bit of influence. I guess it's just influence that it's in a brain maybe than in a machine, and that feels a little bit more human. So it's a complicated one, I think. Because everything's a mixture of references to a certain degree, and this is just seeing that come to life in a way that we didn't literally ever imagine.
[00:16:57] Charles:
Some companies, to pick up on that point, some companies are requiring that work that has no AI influence be labeled that way, that this is purely human, essentially. And the thesis, I think, behind that is the assumption that human beings will always be more connected, ultimately, at some deep almost cellular level to work that other humans have created.
Can you imagine a day, though, where we don't care about the difference, we don't discern the difference? Where AI is such a powerful, present part of our lives, that in fact, whether something is created by AI, whether it's created by human beings, doesn't matter, it's simply the emotional impact that the piece has on us?
Could you imagine getting to that point? Or do you think there will always be a line, consciously or otherwise,, that we understand when we are looking at something that a human being created?
[00:17:46] Tiffany Rolfe:
Yeah, I think it might get a little blurry. I mean, I think we're already seeing people connect with digital avatars and have human friendships that feel like human friendships in their mind.
There's no difference. Like, they're connecting. I see my kids connect. In ways that I didn't ever imagine, and I think that it's definitely blurring. Something we've been exploring with social media and just how content's being created and what's premium versus not. And I think people just are connecting with different kinds of things, too.
Some people connect with content that's really raw and documentary style. Some people connect with really beautifully shot, artful things. I think there's a lot of range of what people connect with, what makes people feel related to it in some way. So I think it's really hard to say there's this, like, one human condition.
I think there's going to be some people that have a hard time in the world of humanity and they find comfort in technology versus humanity, sadly. But it's, I think it's true. So I think it's hard to say, "Hey, there's going to be this one way," but do I think it's going to get blurred and be much harder?
Already is. I mean, we already are getting confused as to what's real, what's not, what's a real person. I already probably am. We all are, parents far even more so. So I do think it is a blur. And I also think this all gets meta and really... because it's like, what is truth? And who knows? There's different truths for different people.
We've learned that. History isn't history. It's all a little bit of a blend. And so I think, yes, we have always been a complicated society, and I think we're just getting even more complicated. And I think we're just going to want to relate to things that we like and we think are good. And sometimes there's bad stuff made by humans and there's going to be bad stuff made by computers.
I think ultimately, having humanity, story, something in it that's more than just what I'm seeing, is always going to win. But again, that could be a story generated in creative AI, I guess, too. So I don't know that I, I don't know, I think it's all just going to get a little blurry, for sure. But I don't know that necessarily is that much different than what path we've always been on, and if it's necessarily a bad thing, either.
[00:20:06] Charles:
Last time you were on the podcast, we talked about the impact of the job you have, the career you have on your personal life, and how it was almost impossible to separate them, impossible to separate them, actually. I think at one point, one of your kids stepped in and joined us for a couple of minutes.
What's the impact of AI on your personal life? Do you see it giving you time back ultimately? I mean, everyone talks about its speed, its efficiency. Do you see it having a significant impact on the way that you do your job or the way that you manage your life? Or does it just change the nature of what you're working on?
[00:20:38] Tiffany Rolfe:
Well, I think right now, personally, like, obviously it's being used in my work and that is a thing that is changing, but you know, personally, I've been using it and starting to experiment with it and think about the ways that it can help me. Like, even as more of a experiment, I planned my daughter's birthday using different AI tools.
And sometimes it's good to just give yourself, I think, these personal experiments versus just doing it in, like, this work environment. I'm dealing with planning my camps this summer, and there's a lot of stuff that I'm like, my life is a mess with because of how busy with work and all that. And I was like, wow, this is pretty interesting.
Like, I generated some themes and some visuals for a birthday card, and some ideas for some goodie bags. And there was some weird stuff that I went down a path. It forced me to kind of also learn the tools. Because I think we all, even as leaders, sometimes we can be a little bit distant from the day to day and using them.
And I think that's why you kind of have to use things in your own life. And it was a really interesting journey. And I was able to kind of navigate and create things without opening, like, a gazillion different apps and a gazillion different things. And that's where I think this, the relationship between how brands enter our lives and how we navigate with them, where they're more kind of part of our world versus we're part of theirs, because it just showed me a new way to interact and engage.
I had it plan some schedules for camp, which I didn't have time to figure it out, what was near and how, what could all combine together between the two kids, and it worked pretty well and I planned a trip, vacation and had it send out some itineraries and look at the hours of operation and plan, like, themes for each day and... did I use all of it? No, but I was like, wow, this would have taken me a lot longer to figure out.
And I'm still navigating the tools. So it took me longer than probably what it would had I been, like, I know this, downloading. I'm starting to think about my own types of little assistants that I need on the side, and what if I build some of those?
And so, I actually can see where it can help me navigate some of these things. Does it make being a mom and a working mom any less hard, emotionally and all of the things that come with that? Probably not. But there's definitely some shortcuts right now that I can see it happening, I can see it doing. I also, though, have the side that we're, I'm both a tech optimist, but also fearful around technology and my kids.
So I will listen to a daily podcast on real teenagers and fake nudes and how that is becoming a thing and how easy it is for... it always happened. Someone would draw a picture of you that way, or they did it in Photoshop, but it took a little while. Now it's one kid can do it in 10 minutes, and 40 different fake nudes of teenage girls.
Like, this is literally what's happening. And that scares the sh*t out of me because that doesn't impact someone emotionally any less. And also for those kids that just don't even understand what they're doing, they're entering a world of technology, too, where they're like, "Well, I'm just playing with this thing. I'm just a dumb kid right now, figuring out my emotions and navigating my hormones, and this is interesting." And what do we do when they don't understand the impact of that and the scale of that, and those things that exist now forever.
And those are the things that I think, as a parent, while I'm excited about technology, also, how best do I equip a kid for a world where all this is changing and we don't even know-- and I don't know, and they don't know-- but we don't even know how to tell them to navigate it, and what the rules are around it, and how to even enforce that? So that's the stuff that I think I'm both optimistic about and, oh, this is helpful, but also the things that, again, that bad side creeps in and just, like, how do we make sure we do the things right that don't let more of that sort of stuff happen?
[00:24:35] Charles:
Do your kids use ChatGPT, for instance?
[00:24:38] Tiffany Rolfe:
They don't. They're young. I've definitely shown them, and I actually worked on the birthday with my daughter. So she became a curator, like, she was a director. She all of a sudden became, she was able to be my creative director in this moment, which was kind of fun to watch now, where she's, "No, I don't like that, or that was weird, or this is the right texture, feeling, but no I want it to be fluffier, I wanted bubbles," and you could just, like, magically add fluff and bubbles and so, in a matter of seconds... she wouldn't have had the patience to watch me try to generate a bubble with Photoshop eye lines, you know what I mean?
So I think there was something really, I think, fun and interesting. But also just, they don't even almost get how magic it is. Because they also have just a set of expectations that are so different than we all have had. Like, what they've grown up with. I mean, I still to this day, my kids try to press my screen on my laptop and they think it's broken, because they're only working within phones and iPads and there's just a, why can't you touch your screen and move things around? What's wrong with it?
And so there's the set of expectations and behaviors that are beyond ours. And so is it that magic that this thing can just generate something? It's not, it's, like, expected, I guess, based on how they've grown up. And so that's kind of an interesting view as you look at it through your kid's eyes.
[00:25:58] Charles:
It does make me realize how far ahead of its time Minority Report was, because I think we all crave those sliding touch screens. And that movie is probably 20 years old at this point.
[00:26:07] Tiffany Rolfe:
Yeah.
[00:26:07] Charles:
Also, just as a quick aside, it makes me wonder whether at some point, that, I mean, because kids at a very young age are going to get into things like ChatGPT4, and at some point, someone's going to have to figure out that ChatGPT4 is going to have to ask you to prove that you are old enough to access certain information, I think, because it's going to be too easy, even five, six, seven year olds to suddenly say, "Oh, I can speak to this thing and it will create all kinds of stuff that I had no idea about," and there's, there's a real danger about that.
[00:26:35] Tiffany Rolfe:
Yeah, it doesn't, you know, we've now have certain versions of search world, Google, et cetera, that have those limitations, at schools, even, what they can search for or not. And it's interesting, I was just talking with my friend and her friend is, like, on the school board and she gets the list of all the search terms that the kids search for in Google that are blocked and limited.
And so it's fascinating what just curiosity and hearing things and what everyone, these kids are curious about it and now they can potentially look and try and ask. They're just exploring the world. They're just, the world has become much bigger than their neighborhood. And we are in a way, we sometimes feel safer letting them explore neighborhoods, or online neighborhoods if you will, than real ones.
And I think with these new tools, that is something we have to ensure we're... it's a raw technology right now. We don't even know what it can be. We're seeing what happens when you kind of push it to its limit, and thinking of it a little bit more as an organic. And it's something that learns in a way that's more organic, and changes, and it becomes things we didn't know it did.
And I think, yeah, we have to be really, I think, cautious about putting things in our children's hands, just like we do with any other thing that is a potential danger, because we just don't know enough about it yet. And how do we, one, teach them how to use it in the ways that are the good ways and ways that can enhance their creativity and help them explore their imaginations and all the good stuff.
But a lot of those types of frameworks and tools that the technology can enable haven't really been built and created yet. And so it's up to us, I think, to ensure we're setting our own limits for what we think our children should do and can do, just like we're trying to do in our work.
[00:28:24] Charles:
I want to expand on your personal assistant reference point in planning your daughter's birthday.
I read somebody suggesting that the ideal application of artificial intelligence would be the day that you and I are chatting on a Zoom. I say to you, "Okay, great. See you in New York next Thursday." And everything from that moment is taken care of. I don't even have to ask it. It's listening to me. And so suddenly my flights are booked. My hotels are booked. My car service is booked. The things I would need to add to my Amazon order to take with me, all of that is taken care of. And all I have to do is confirm by pushing a button or saying, "Yes," five minutes later, here's what I've done for you, is that okay? That's all it would require.
And the point they made was not simply the efficiency of that process, which would be in many ways, great, but that it changes our relationship with brands entirely, because suddenly we don't have a relationship with American Airlines or JetBlue or whoever. They know our preferred airline. They know our preferred hotel brand, but we don't have... we're not influenced by advertising or marketing in the same way, and those brands don't have the ability to reinforce our relationship with them through marketing. They do through the experience of providing a service, but not through any others. How do you see that developing? What does it mean to the development of brands?
[00:29:39] Tiffany Rolfe:
Yeah, I happen to be talking about this at Cannes next week. But yeah, I think it fundamentally shifts the relationship with brands into being much more two way. The point of listening, brands that listen, that anticipate, I think you have to make sure you're giving control and enabling that, it's not doing it in kind of an intrusive or creepy way.
But I think it's really designing an experience around me. It's like my version of Nike. It used to be, maybe, you customized a shoe. I think now we're going to be customizing a brand, right? What is my version of that? And how is it adapting to me? And even being open to bringing in outside things, that we already start to see, like, co labs happening and things like that.
And part of that is in service of what people want. People want to see these things coming together. And I think, how can we move brands out of this mode of control, entering their worlds on their terms with their pull down menus and their categories, to a brand being more omnimodal in terms of all the ways that I want to engage and interact, and when I need to, the mode I'm in this moment, versus making this assumption that I follow their pathway to purchase.
And I think the real value of brands in this world will be bringing that point of view, that expertise, that expertise of them, of their brands, of their businesses, but also the expertise of me, not just what I bought, which is a lot of what happens now, but, and then they try to show me the same thing, like, a minute later, but why I bought it. You know, why I like this shirt a little baggier and what this color has, what it means to me, and having a more of that understanding, so that way I'm navigating my world and the brands are entering into it in the right moments in the right ways, versus me needing to go click to find them.
And I think that, in this AI enabled world, is where we definitely see brands doing, and the role of a brand, versus also, I think you could say, why even a brand anymore, you can just click and plan your birthday party? But I think there's still to the point of curation and taste, and there's a certain level of expertise.
Like, you don't want just the thing that everyone else accesses. Part of what brands have always been is about self expression. We all have, there's different reasons and why, like, the values align, the style, whatever it is, there's different reasons we choose that, and it creates a filter in a way of our tastes, and I think we'll look to having those brands in our lives because it helps us express something or access a deeper thing that we want to access and we trust. Because I know that Nike's going to understand sports in a way that maybe a general tool won't, and they'll have access to different kinds of product and partners and athletes in a way that maybe others, so how do they lean into, I think those, the assets that they have. The expertise they have, not give that up, and build the worlds that really are more our individual worlds are woven in and out, but provide a real point of view and expertise that maybe others, broader tools and things can't. And that, I think, can still be a way to help to navigate, too, this more... I think we're going to see even more brands popping up, more brands looking the same, great, but the same, and I think brands even more connected and really making that a two way relationship, is going to be even more important.
[00:33:06] Charles:
I want to switch gears and talk about how the leadership of creative talent is going to change. Part of the process that you and I grew up with was an industry in which it was physically challenging to create ideas, right? You had to actually go through really physical processes. I mean, we're long past the days of people illustrating storyboards, but nevertheless, there's still labor, effort, time, to some extent, money, in putting together an idea at the conceptual stage.
And that allowed us to both think about the idea, but it also meant that we were discerning about whether this was the right idea to present because it required time and effort and money. Now with instant production available to us, I mean, MidJourney, right? Just remarkable. Sora coming online. I found a music app, music AI app a couple of days ago, which creates music within moments.
How is that changing how you're leading creative talents, and how is it changing how receptive they are to your feedback?
[00:34:03] Tiffany Rolfe:
Well, it's so interesting. I was thinking about this the other day, and I think especially the more senior you become as a creative leader, you aren't as much as a doer anymore. And it's always about asking questions and asking why and how and....
I see tons of ideas all the time, and ideas that look beautiful, and it's never been really about that. Yes, the craft, we have to make sure the craft is great, but what craft is right? Is this an idea that needs this kind of craft? Because some ideas need a different aesthetic. It's not just the fact that it can look great. That's not what makes an idea great. It's never been what makes an idea great.
Craft can be removing things too, and limiting, and taking things apart, and deconstructing. Craft is about, I think, matching the form to the idea behind it, the story behind it. And so, I think it's the same sort of questions.
It's, why is this? What's the strategy behind this? What are you trying to convey? And why is this the right idea? And why is this the right expression of it? And so I think that, even, is more important because I think we can get fooled into believing, because it looks a certain way, that it's done or it's right or good, but it's never been about just that.
It's always been more. And what are we trying to solve, and who are we trying to connect with, and what is the best version of how this should be made to make that come through the clearest? And so, just like when I think Photoshop happened, it's like everything had a drop shadow because you could add a drop shadow, but it's, like, everything can be shiny now, but maybe it needs to be ugly or maybe it needs to be torn apart, like, whatever it is, those are the questions we're asking, is the why and the how, and is this strategy we're going after the thing we want people to feel. And to me that those are the questions you have to ask no matter what form, and I think we'll just have maybe even more of a push on ensuring that we're asking the right questions at the work and doing the, in making it for the right reasons.
[00:36:01] Charles:
And how are people that work for you responding to you giving them feedback? I mean, it used to be, if you put a deck together and you had images that you didn't think were right, and you give them that direction, it would be a massive amount of work for people to go back. And so, even emotionally, you would find people resisting to that level.
Do you find that they are now more open to feedback because they know it's not a big deal to go back and completely change the visual aesthetic of a deck?
[00:36:26] Tiffany Rolfe:
Probably the speed or the sheer volume of different ranges, and maybe getting to things we would have taken a lot longer to get to, I think, is happening, but you still have the same client feedback where, I want this to feel a little bit more like that, or me going, "Eh, I don't know if that's right or not. I think we feel a little bit more organic," or whatever the feedback is.
And, but I do think I'm working on my Cannes presentation right now for real time and, I mean, it's due in a few days, and I'm trying to do something that's highly ambitious. I'm not just finding a metaphor of someone holding an apple in a sea of apples.
You know what I mean? That's maybe where we would have been if I were to tell them we need something in the next few days. We're generating really amazing imagery in that moment. And so, they're a little less stressed, I guess, at doing it.
Or I say, you know what? Let's change the bottle on this altogether, and we're able to be more ambitious, I guess. Still they're getting my feedback and it's still going to be some late nights, but the ambition level of what we're pumping out in that short timeframe is a whole different level.
[00:37:32] Charles:
So I was going to ask you, do you think there is any point in the future where AI will give us more time to be more contemplative and thoughtful, but it sounds like we're just going to become more creatively ambitious.
[00:37:43] Tiffany Rolfe:
Well, I mean that, and also the expectation shorter, faster. I'm hopeful that. We can do things that we maybe didn't do before, and that I guess I can imagine a time when I was having to stop what I was doing earlier and know that if I were going to try to comp that up, I needed to spend the next three days to then get to that, and then see it and then realize, no, it's not right.
So are we able to get to better stuff? I just, I think that there's also going to match with that, the expectation that things can happen faster, too. And that will be, I think, the balance always, is once you can do it faster, why not then just do it? Why do you need two weeks when I know you can do it in one week?
And so, I think the hope is that, yes, but I do think we'll have to keep balancing it with that. And I think that we need to get out of value being associated with hours and more how someone that knows how to use these tools and has great taste and can bring together ideas on how to ask of something prompt in a way that gets you to something that someone else wouldn't have gotten to.
There's value in that experience, but that's always been the case. We are more experienced, ideally, that's more value and you get more from that, even though it takes shorter amount of time, but it's about the outcome being the value versus how long it took, that is a challenge, I think, in the creative industry still, that we need to and have to try to overcome, because I think this might make it even potentially worse if we don't course correct that now.
[00:39:15] Charles:
I mean, do you think that we have the opportunity to restructure the industry fundamentally? I mean, to your point, economic model of this business is terrible. It's awful. Do you think this is a moment where we could, should engage in rebuilding the industry from sort of the ground up?
[00:39:30] Tiffany Rolfe:
I mean, I think probably we'll have to.
And I think it's time to blow some sh*t up, for sure. And if we don't, it's going to, without us meaning, without our guidance. And so yes, I do think we need to really fundamentally look at how we're working, how we're building teams, how we're getting paid, how those partnerships work, and the real value that we bring for brands. Which is really that taste, that perspective, that curation, that strategic thinking on how to bring the right types of expressions, and not just that we can make things and we know how to use tools, it's that we bring a point of view that we know can connect with people in a certain way, and if we can't just judge on, does it look like it's well produced, it's, is it right?
Is it going to move people and connect with people? And I think that's always been kind of our value.
[00:40:22] Charles:
Is there any advantage anymore to having companies at scale? I mean, we've democratized, or this technology has democratized creativity. Are we going to need movie studios? Are we going to need large ad agencies? Are we going to need music companies? Where do you think this goes in terms of company size?
[00:40:38] Tiffany Rolfe:
It's an interesting one. I don't know. I mean, I think we're already seeing changes to how people work, how they can work. We don't need thousands of people in one building all working together. So does that mean though, that there aren't big companies or scale?
I'm not sure. I think even just as we talk about it as distributed creativity and connecting people, I think you'll still want to connect around value sets and approaches and scaled levels of taste that are trusted, just as brands, I think, build that, as well. There's something in scale that brings trust.
And so maybe we even need that more so because with the potential of so many little things, are the big things going to potentially signal trust in some way and comfort in some way. So does it look exactly the way it does now, in terms of, what that scale is and how they work together? I don't, I think that's going to change and be different, but I don't know that it means there can't be large groups of people aligned around a mission, working to bring a point of view into the world that a lot of people like.
[00:41:50] Charles:
And if you were talking to somebody who wants to get into the creative industries, what advice would you give them in terms of what skills they should develop and what opportunities they should seek? What's going to be valuable and viable over the next two to three years?
[00:42:03] Tiffany Rolfe:
I mean thinking, not letting go of thinking, and being curious about where and how those things came from.
I hope that while you can generate a lookalike of some amazing piece of art and style, that you are curious enough to know where that came from. What was it? What created that? How do you unpack it? I mean, I'm imagining there's AI historians in a way that take a rendered piece and try to, like, just figure out what thousand different references informed the black box of data that sits behind it, and maybe potentially even associating some value or credit to it, who knows. But I think how do we get people to still care about why and how it was made and where that reference came from, and that reference actually came from another reference, and sourcing, I guess the material in some way so that we can understand it and learn from it and know why things were made, because I think it's important.
The most interesting piece around design and styles, there's something there that you don't know why you connect with it, but it's because it relates to something that happened in culture and community and a person's life, world. And there's, it's conveying some meaning that you didn't, you don't really know, but you feel it.
And so, how do we try to unpack that? And hopefully it'll still lead to people being highly curious of where all of that came from. And also the only way things keep getting better and more interesting is to continually try to create new things from it. And I think it will get really tricky to understand, because once you use AI tools to create something new, like, what is the new and where is the original?
Because you can get to an original, probably, through leveraging all the tools that are sourced from the past, but that's kind of humanity, too, I guess, a little bit. And so we're going to get into a really, I think, hard time to go, this was, wasn't made with AI in some way, even if it's totally seemingly looking like it's original.
[00:44:01] Charles:
Yeah, it feels like our judgment about what matters to us is going to have to become more discerning in some fashion. We're going to have to put some constructs around that.
[00:44:11] Tiffany Rolfe:
And there'll be rebellion, there'll be people going against it, and people are going to be cave painting soon. It's not a, from this to that, it's like an and.
Everything is an and, right? There, it's not like we're moving away from one thing into another. And I think that's the same with how brands are going to be made and how we're... I think we're just going to start to see more and more versions of things, and subcommunities, and experimenting over here, and some going against it.
And that might be complicated. That's going to fracture things maybe a bit, but it also means there's just a lot of different ways that you can kind of navigate the world in your world.
[00:44:47] Charles:
Last two questions for you. As you look at the future with AI, what are you afraid of?
[00:44:55] Tiffany Rolfe:
I'm afraid of fear, and I'm afraid of just us going against each other, maybe , as I see that happening now, and isolating, creating isolation, like, it creates opportunity and diversity and all these great things, but will it overly potentially isolate, I guess? I guess there was some comfort and feeling like there was a shared truth of some sort.
Shared reality, but there are so many realities, literally virtual and not. And so that creates a lot of spaces for everybody when the past, maybe certain people felt isolated or separate from what that shared truth was, that was the most common. So there's, there was bad to that too, but I think there's something really still good about coming together as people and having some shared truths and all seeing the same thing at the same time and human creation.
And what our own limitations aren't a bad thing. Briefs are about limitations. You get to get creative stuff by having some limitation. So I guess I miss a little bit of having some limitations that lead to human creativity.
[00:46:07] Charles:
And what are you optimistic about?
[00:46:09] Tiffany Rolfe:
I'm optimistic because I've been in various versions.
We've all been in versions of this where it felt like the end of the world. And I think we've always heard versions of that. I remember seeing some article or some really ancient article from a story where, like, when bicycles were first given to women, they thought that it was like the end of relationships. And women were going to lose their minds because they could leave and they could ride bikes around wherever they wanted. This technology was going to ruin humanity because women could be on a bicycle. So I think I also am optimistic that there's a lot of good and there's a lot of new amazing things that happen, and often it's hopefully not as scary as we think.
There's usually a balance and we come through with some really interesting, exciting stuff. That didn't happen before. And so, I still believe that there's going to be more good than bad. And sometimes we can, I think, feel like there's more bad, because sometimes it gets, it's louder out there. But in the end, there's a lot of, there's a lot of love and there's a lot of creativity, and there's a lot of hope, and I think that's the stuff that, I think, if we lean into that, we'll use all these things in the right way and for a lot of exciting things
[00:47:26] Charles:
Tiff, as always, thought provoking, eye opening, original, and a tech optimist as you said, at your heart. It's so great to have you back on the show.
Thank you so much.
[00:47:36] Tiffany Rolfe:
Thanks Charles. You got to go inside the rambling, rambling mind, a little bit Matrix style, right? Where we were moving things around.
[00:47:44] Charles:
Always the best way. Thank you.
[00:47:46] Tiffany Rolfe:
Thanks, Charles.
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