Super interesting read, thank you. It brought to mind Maggie Appleton's essay on the value of proving you're a real human on the internet, basically the same move you're describing but for individuals instead of brands: https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest.
I love this analysis so much, and how brands like Hermes and Crown Affair are using illustration in their content as a tool to convey craft and creativity, or how Chamberlain Coffee used claymation that was clearly very painstaking to create. Beyond the fact that humans were responsible for creating it, this type of content stands out in the feed and begs the viewer to want to know more about how it was created. This leads to deeper layers of storytelling - I loved this BTS video the Chamberlain Coffee crew put together for the claymation content and then tied it back to the tagline/caption: "Handcrafted, just like our coffee." So brilliant.
You touch on something I have noticed in advertising for a while now, the rise of analogue signifiers in digital productions. Images using film 'frames' (particularly obvious when they are colour on a b&w stock) or video snippets apeing Super 8 aesthetics.
I feel like I need to start collecting examples, of both 'real' and 'fake', as it's a trend I see growing in the coming years.
Thanks for including me, Rachel! Such a great topic—will be interesting to see how this idea of film edges might show up across industries... excited to find out together ; )
Not sure I am so aligned with either your thinking or concerns. But do appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Not to get meta physical, but what is "proof of reality" - feels like a 2008 argument about shooting on RED vs Film. Or a Japanese woodworker chastising me for using my power drill. Anyone remember the Danish Film movement Dogma95 and how that got everyone talking?
Goodspeed's line about - "Viewers care about how things are made, even if they don’t always know how to articulate it." This is true if you are buying clothes or a car not when your consuming an ad for SweetGreen. I think it is a leap to think people will connect "how you make your ads, to how you make your salads"
People want to feel something. They want to emote.
People are so precious about this, I often wonder why. Maybe I have seen too much change and realize we are just in for more. For me, the question is not "proof of reality" but rather, If we are limitless in our artistic endeavors, what new stories will we tell?
This is a great piece Rachel. Of course, there is consumerism, marketing, and art. The latter has never existed in a vacuum. It has always evolved in tandem with the tools available to its creators. From spoken language to the written word, from cave drawings to oil painting, from quills to word processors—each technological leap has expanded humanity’s ability to tell stories and express emotion. Each technological breakthrough was met with resistance. Each time, the critics proclaimed the death of "true" art. I believe they continue to be wrong.
Artists often define themselves by their chosen medium—whether with words, paint, performance, or code—but these are merely instruments, extensions of human intelligence. At its core, creativity remains the driving force, transcending the tools used to manifest it. The advent of AI is no different.
Technologies that have made art easier to produce have never stifled creativity. Instead, they have broadened artistic possibilities. As we (consumer, creators, and artists) help design the new scaffolding for tomorrow’s artistic architecture, we must remember that every great work is built on a foundation of human imagination. Artificial intelligence continues to evolve the visual grammar of storytelling, yes, but ART has always been artificial. The very word shares its roots with ars or artis, meaning skill, craftsmanship, or technique—art, by definition, is an act of deliberate creation.
Again and again, technologies once dismissed as unnatural have instead liberated artistic expression. We are but a new curve in the perpetual cycle of technology expanding the creative landscape and giving artists new ways to evoke meaning and emotion.
I don't know. I personally find it hard to argue that every great work is built on a foundation of human imagination, when AI generated images are built on datasets of stolen images.
“Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.” ~Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Before John Goffe Rand created the metal paint tube in 1841, paints were limited in their portability and freshness. Prior to that moment, a great portion of painters’ work was in the preparation and mixing their own paints. The emerging movement of Impressionism was characterized by capturing light and color outdoors and this style was facilitated entirely by Rand’s new packaging technology. By securing individual colors of paint in tubes, artists were now allowed to work in “plein air,” using a wide range of vibrant, newly available pigments — chrome yellow and cobalt blue — crucial for the Impressionist style. A new style was born, a new technique flourished.
Where paint in tubes democratized painting and spawned Impressionism in the 19th century, paint in cans saw the rise of street art in the 1970s, leading to new generations of artists from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring to Banksy. New canvasses, new audience, new meaning through new visual expression.
“I have captured light and arrested its flight. The sun itself shall draw my pictures.” ~Louis Daguerre
In the late 1830’s Louis Daguerre wrote to a friend about a profound breakthrough he’d made. By layering silver-plated copper sheets with iodine, exposing them in a camera and using mercury vapors with salt water, Daguerre had been able to preserve the likeness of a static scene as it appeared in nature. Some would say he created mirror with memory.
For much of the world, this was blasphemy. But to Daguerre, who identified as an artist as much as an entrepreneur, his early iteration of photography had advanced the visual language that creatives could articulate the human experience.
The effects were profound both artistically and in factual documentation. French painter Paul Delaroche, supposedly exclaimed, "From today, painting is dead!" after seeing a daguerreotype around 1840. Thankfully, he couldn’t have been more wrong - photography didn’t kill painting, and its digitization didn’t obviate the need for professional photographers.
It never ceases to amaze me that before the invention of the camera, the only way to capture one’s likeness was through the hands of an artist—each portrait or sculpture shaped by another’s creative interpretation. It is this human filter that makes art inherently subjective, infusing it with creative honesty. Technology may enhance artistic expression, but it is human intelligence that provides its depth, its context, and ultimately, its soul.
“I have just an ordinary voice. Anyone who can carry a tune thinks he can sing just as good as I do.” ~Bing Crosby
For centuries, actors and singers mastered the art of projection, learning to project their voices to the farthest corners of theaters and concert halls. The louder one could sing, the greater their reach—fame itself was often measured in decibels. Opera, with its booming arias, remains a lasting testament to this era of vocal performance.
The 1920s, however, brought a seismic shift. Advances in microphones and amplification reshaped not just the volume of music, but its very style. Bing Crosby, more than just a talented vocalist, recognized the microphone as more than a tool for loudness—it was an instrument for nuance. While others still belted to be heard, he embraced a softer, more intimate approach, shaping his phrasing with subtlety and ease. His smooth, conversational delivery—what became known as “crooning”—revolutionized the music industry, setting the stage for a new era of vocal performance. The ripple effects of this innovation are still felt today. One could draw a direct line from Bing Crosby’s Mary to Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy—what once seemed like technological artifice has become an integral creative tool.
As live performance venues and formats continue to evolve, new technologies do not erase the artistry of the past; they expand its possibilities. Electronic synthesizers didn’t render instrumentalists obsolete, just as Auto-Tune didn’t eliminate the need for vocal precision. Instead, these tools have broadened the spectrum of artistic expression, offering new ways to shape sound and style.
“It was almost a year from the time we started that we got a piece of film 100 feet long. A piece of film you could see on the screen in a minute.” ~Max Fleischer
Animation revolutionized early cinema, but its characters initially moved with a stiffness that betrayed their artificial origins. In 1915, Max Fleischer introduced rotoscoping, a painstaking technique that allowed artists to manually refine film footage frame by frame. Yet it wasn’t until the 1930s that Disney animators fully harnessed its potential, discovering that when combined with live performance, it could breathe unprecedented realism into animated storytelling.
Rather than sketching characters from imagination alone, animators filmed live-action sequences and projected them onto glass panels, meticulously tracing each movement to preserve the natural flow of motion. This breakthrough gave animated figures a newfound weight and fluidity, transforming them from exaggerated cartoons into living, expressive characters. Classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland captivated audiences worldwide—not just because of technological innovation, but because of the human performances at their core. Rotoscoping didn’t replace artistry; it enhanced it, bridging the gap between imagination and believability.
So Rachel, when I think about how are we to grasp the moment on hand, I can’t help but think we’ve been here before. Many times, in fact. As the above examples in painting, photography, singing and motion-capture demonstrate, we will always use the latest tools on hand to express oneself, one’s point of view, one’s experience in life. This is the calling of any artist. The impulse to articulate life in the first person is central to the human experience. We revere those artists who do so with resonance.
LOVE this analysis. Thank you for putting into words what I’ve been trying to articulate with other creative friends!
Thank you Rachel! So awesome to be included in this extremely thoughtful analysis. Humans creating rad shit>
Yessss. Thanks for chatting with me for it!
Your comment on Succession reminded me of this interview with the woman who directed the Gemma episode (on film) in season 2 of Severance: https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a63936833/severance-episode-7-director-interview/
yes!!!
Super interesting read, thank you. It brought to mind Maggie Appleton's essay on the value of proving you're a real human on the internet, basically the same move you're describing but for individuals instead of brands: https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest.
This is the best article I have seen about brands and their use of AI yet, and it's a really useful thought-provoking conversation starter for us.
would love to know other famous and best examples of brands using AI on social media
Thank you for thoughtfully articulating all this. Blech @ the AI toast.
I love this analysis so much, and how brands like Hermes and Crown Affair are using illustration in their content as a tool to convey craft and creativity, or how Chamberlain Coffee used claymation that was clearly very painstaking to create. Beyond the fact that humans were responsible for creating it, this type of content stands out in the feed and begs the viewer to want to know more about how it was created. This leads to deeper layers of storytelling - I loved this BTS video the Chamberlain Coffee crew put together for the claymation content and then tied it back to the tagline/caption: "Handcrafted, just like our coffee." So brilliant.
Yesssss!
fantastic piece. “Effort has a halo.” ✨
This was so refreshingly needed! Thank you!
You touch on something I have noticed in advertising for a while now, the rise of analogue signifiers in digital productions. Images using film 'frames' (particularly obvious when they are colour on a b&w stock) or video snippets apeing Super 8 aesthetics.
I feel like I need to start collecting examples, of both 'real' and 'fake', as it's a trend I see growing in the coming years.
Thanks for including me, Rachel! Such a great topic—will be interesting to see how this idea of film edges might show up across industries... excited to find out together ; )
Thank you for reaching out to me and my team! this is such an interesting and top of mind discussion for us :)
Thanks for chatting with me for it!!
Soooo interesting!! I live for your content and analysis.
desperately needing more "proof of reality" marketing from brands!!!!
same
Not sure I am so aligned with either your thinking or concerns. But do appreciate your thoughtfulness.
Not to get meta physical, but what is "proof of reality" - feels like a 2008 argument about shooting on RED vs Film. Or a Japanese woodworker chastising me for using my power drill. Anyone remember the Danish Film movement Dogma95 and how that got everyone talking?
Goodspeed's line about - "Viewers care about how things are made, even if they don’t always know how to articulate it." This is true if you are buying clothes or a car not when your consuming an ad for SweetGreen. I think it is a leap to think people will connect "how you make your ads, to how you make your salads"
People want to feel something. They want to emote.
People are so precious about this, I often wonder why. Maybe I have seen too much change and realize we are just in for more. For me, the question is not "proof of reality" but rather, If we are limitless in our artistic endeavors, what new stories will we tell?
This is a great piece Rachel. Of course, there is consumerism, marketing, and art. The latter has never existed in a vacuum. It has always evolved in tandem with the tools available to its creators. From spoken language to the written word, from cave drawings to oil painting, from quills to word processors—each technological leap has expanded humanity’s ability to tell stories and express emotion. Each technological breakthrough was met with resistance. Each time, the critics proclaimed the death of "true" art. I believe they continue to be wrong.
Artists often define themselves by their chosen medium—whether with words, paint, performance, or code—but these are merely instruments, extensions of human intelligence. At its core, creativity remains the driving force, transcending the tools used to manifest it. The advent of AI is no different.
Technologies that have made art easier to produce have never stifled creativity. Instead, they have broadened artistic possibilities. As we (consumer, creators, and artists) help design the new scaffolding for tomorrow’s artistic architecture, we must remember that every great work is built on a foundation of human imagination. Artificial intelligence continues to evolve the visual grammar of storytelling, yes, but ART has always been artificial. The very word shares its roots with ars or artis, meaning skill, craftsmanship, or technique—art, by definition, is an act of deliberate creation.
Again and again, technologies once dismissed as unnatural have instead liberated artistic expression. We are but a new curve in the perpetual cycle of technology expanding the creative landscape and giving artists new ways to evoke meaning and emotion.
I don't know. I personally find it hard to argue that every great work is built on a foundation of human imagination, when AI generated images are built on datasets of stolen images.
“Without colors in tubes, there would be no Cézanne, no Monet, no Pissarro, and no Impressionism.” ~Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Before John Goffe Rand created the metal paint tube in 1841, paints were limited in their portability and freshness. Prior to that moment, a great portion of painters’ work was in the preparation and mixing their own paints. The emerging movement of Impressionism was characterized by capturing light and color outdoors and this style was facilitated entirely by Rand’s new packaging technology. By securing individual colors of paint in tubes, artists were now allowed to work in “plein air,” using a wide range of vibrant, newly available pigments — chrome yellow and cobalt blue — crucial for the Impressionist style. A new style was born, a new technique flourished.
Where paint in tubes democratized painting and spawned Impressionism in the 19th century, paint in cans saw the rise of street art in the 1970s, leading to new generations of artists from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Keith Haring to Banksy. New canvasses, new audience, new meaning through new visual expression.
“I have captured light and arrested its flight. The sun itself shall draw my pictures.” ~Louis Daguerre
In the late 1830’s Louis Daguerre wrote to a friend about a profound breakthrough he’d made. By layering silver-plated copper sheets with iodine, exposing them in a camera and using mercury vapors with salt water, Daguerre had been able to preserve the likeness of a static scene as it appeared in nature. Some would say he created mirror with memory.
For much of the world, this was blasphemy. But to Daguerre, who identified as an artist as much as an entrepreneur, his early iteration of photography had advanced the visual language that creatives could articulate the human experience.
The effects were profound both artistically and in factual documentation. French painter Paul Delaroche, supposedly exclaimed, "From today, painting is dead!" after seeing a daguerreotype around 1840. Thankfully, he couldn’t have been more wrong - photography didn’t kill painting, and its digitization didn’t obviate the need for professional photographers.
It never ceases to amaze me that before the invention of the camera, the only way to capture one’s likeness was through the hands of an artist—each portrait or sculpture shaped by another’s creative interpretation. It is this human filter that makes art inherently subjective, infusing it with creative honesty. Technology may enhance artistic expression, but it is human intelligence that provides its depth, its context, and ultimately, its soul.
“I have just an ordinary voice. Anyone who can carry a tune thinks he can sing just as good as I do.” ~Bing Crosby
For centuries, actors and singers mastered the art of projection, learning to project their voices to the farthest corners of theaters and concert halls. The louder one could sing, the greater their reach—fame itself was often measured in decibels. Opera, with its booming arias, remains a lasting testament to this era of vocal performance.
The 1920s, however, brought a seismic shift. Advances in microphones and amplification reshaped not just the volume of music, but its very style. Bing Crosby, more than just a talented vocalist, recognized the microphone as more than a tool for loudness—it was an instrument for nuance. While others still belted to be heard, he embraced a softer, more intimate approach, shaping his phrasing with subtlety and ease. His smooth, conversational delivery—what became known as “crooning”—revolutionized the music industry, setting the stage for a new era of vocal performance. The ripple effects of this innovation are still felt today. One could draw a direct line from Bing Crosby’s Mary to Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy—what once seemed like technological artifice has become an integral creative tool.
As live performance venues and formats continue to evolve, new technologies do not erase the artistry of the past; they expand its possibilities. Electronic synthesizers didn’t render instrumentalists obsolete, just as Auto-Tune didn’t eliminate the need for vocal precision. Instead, these tools have broadened the spectrum of artistic expression, offering new ways to shape sound and style.
“It was almost a year from the time we started that we got a piece of film 100 feet long. A piece of film you could see on the screen in a minute.” ~Max Fleischer
Animation revolutionized early cinema, but its characters initially moved with a stiffness that betrayed their artificial origins. In 1915, Max Fleischer introduced rotoscoping, a painstaking technique that allowed artists to manually refine film footage frame by frame. Yet it wasn’t until the 1930s that Disney animators fully harnessed its potential, discovering that when combined with live performance, it could breathe unprecedented realism into animated storytelling.
Rather than sketching characters from imagination alone, animators filmed live-action sequences and projected them onto glass panels, meticulously tracing each movement to preserve the natural flow of motion. This breakthrough gave animated figures a newfound weight and fluidity, transforming them from exaggerated cartoons into living, expressive characters. Classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland captivated audiences worldwide—not just because of technological innovation, but because of the human performances at their core. Rotoscoping didn’t replace artistry; it enhanced it, bridging the gap between imagination and believability.
So Rachel, when I think about how are we to grasp the moment on hand, I can’t help but think we’ve been here before. Many times, in fact. As the above examples in painting, photography, singing and motion-capture demonstrate, we will always use the latest tools on hand to express oneself, one’s point of view, one’s experience in life. This is the calling of any artist. The impulse to articulate life in the first person is central to the human experience. We revere those artists who do so with resonance.
What’s your opinion of rap music?