Mind over Machine: The Future of Advertising Isn’t Promptable

Ms. Notz, you stand for creative leadership with a clear point of view. In your opinion, what will remain of the agency business once AI takes over large parts of creation and production?

Wenn KI-Tools künftig Kreation, Targeting und Ausspielung automatisiert, trifft das vor allem die große, graue Masse: austauschbare Botschaften, generische Assets, uninspirierte Kampagnen. Das Mittelmaß wird effizienter produziert – na und?

Für Agenturen ist das eine historische Chance, sich wieder auf das zu besinnen, was ihnen niemand nehmen kann: radikale Ideen, überraschende Perspektiven, kulturelle Relevanz. Kreativität als Differenzierungsleistung – nicht als Dekoration von Datenmodellen.

Denn: Marken entstehen nicht in der Blackbox. Sie brauchen Haltung, Kontext, Intuition. Sie leben von Widersprüchen, Spannung, Timing – nicht von Output-Optimierung. Die Zukunft der Werbung ist nicht promptbar. Wer echten Markenwert schaffen will, braucht mehr als Modelle: nämlich Menschen, die verstehen, was Menschen bewegt.

Gerade darin liegt der entscheidende Unterschied: KI kann nur remixen, was schon da war. Sie erzeugt Neues aus Gelerntem – aber keine echten Brüche, keine Reibung. Wirkliche Originalität ist nicht wiederholbar. Sie entsteht aus Irritation, Mut und kulturellem Feingefühl.

KNSK has undergone a major transformation in recent years—in terms of content, personnel, and culture. What role does technology play in this shift, and where do you deliberately put the focus on people?

For us, technology is never an end in itself it’s a smart sparring partner. We use AI to think faster, not to think less. It helps us streamline processes, generate options, and automate routines but it doesn’t replace intuition, conviction, or experience.
In the end, it’s people who decide what truly matters. Trust has to be earned, not engineered. And that doesn’t happen in a tool, but in conversation. Not through efficiency, but through empathy. Not through data points, but through the feeling of being understood. Our agency isn’t run by machines it’s led by people with a clear point of view.

In your work, you link brand management with sustainability and social relevance. Can AI communicate such issues credibly or does it inevitably require a human perspective?

Whether it’s about sustainability, diversity, equality, or political positioning anyone who communicates on these issues takes on responsibility. And responsibility doesn’t begin with a prompt; it begins with a stance toward the world. With backbone, tolerance for ambiguity, and the willingness to embrace friction.
AI has no opinion. It delivers variations, not convictions. It can help us gather perspectives, reveal contradictions, and frame debates. But it cannot take a stand. And it doesn’t sense when language shifts—when words wound or when they connect. Especially in sensitive social and political contexts, nuance is everything: shades of meaning, connotations, cultural contexts. To communicate credibly here, you need people—people who understand.

What, in your view, defines a strong creative culture in the age of AI? Which skills will become more important for young talent and which will lose relevance?

A strong creative culture in the AI era is one that deliberately frees itself from the logic of pure efficiency. AI can help speed up processes but creativity thrives on the opposite: freedom, friction, play. It feeds on doubt, on the unplanned, on the courage to exaggerate. And it needs people who don’t just function, but think. Out loud. Differently. Imperfectly.
Good leadership in this new era doesn’t mean adding more layers of structure it means protecting the unfinished. Allowing chaos, not out of disorganization, but out of the knowledge that ideas need space. And trust.
In the future, judgment, curiosity, tolerance for ambiguity—and the ability not only to imagine the unusual but also to push it through will matter more than any tool. Those who fail to provide that space won’t lose in terms of output, but in terms of relevance.

Complete this sentence: “Mind over Machine means to me …”

… if you don’t have your own idea, AI won’t give you one either. The machine can assist, but it doesn’t lead. Creativity doesn’t begin with a prompt, it begins with a perspective. We have to be careful not to fall into the trap of outsourcing our thinking.