The standoff between the massive promise of AI and its perils continues to be a massive theme in 2026. At The Up&Up Group, we’re seeing that the best brands don’t use AI to replace intuition, creativity, or cultural relevance - they use it to amplify them.
Johannes (Jojo) Keiper strategy director at M&C Saatchi Abel and the Up&Up Group argues why taste, participation and human judgment will matter more than ever in 2026 (Image supplied)
AI can find patterns, surface signals, and crunch data at insane speeds. But it’s still human imagination, empathy, and instinct that turn that noise into something magical.
3 Trends
Here are three key trends that I think will shape the conversations around creativity in 2026.
- The year of unreasonable thinking
To rephrase a quote by Sam Shephard at Uncommon, if my recent sports predictions on SuperSportBet are anything to go by, I should not be trusted with predictions.
But trust me when I say that 2026 will be the death of mediocrity – especially in the creative sector.
(Image supplied)
See the full study here
The gut-punching truth is, we need to wake up. Take a broad step back and you’ll find multiple articles highlighting that 2026 is predicted to be the year when AI-generated content surpasses human-made content online.
Can you imagine the mess this creates for attention? Add the fact that no actual sane person is actively seeking your advertising, and you’ll quickly come to the same conclusion.
Brands are in trouble and new laws of attraction are at play. The human touch will become something premium and desired.
Ideas will become sharper, and will refuse to fall into a “messy middle” – the same middle that AI lovingly falls into. And work will over-index with a sense of soul not seen in years. In this context, it’s the end of creativity being “reasonable”.
Ironically, I’d argue that the most reasonable thing to do creatively will be to be “unreasonable”. To be weird, maximalist, rough, analogue, all-in, and textured. To ooze with personality and drip with charm.
Sorry, Helvetica, you had a good run.
- Build something worth paying attention to
Everyone warns about the “sea of sameness”. I don’t buy it anymore. We’re in “an overload of options” – memes, YouTube, TikTok, games, politics, streaming, music, apps, group chats and maybe an occasional ad or two.
And yet we continue to beg people to pay attention our “cool ad”, instead of giving them something worth paying attention to.
I recently shared the Marty Supreme A24 “leaked” Zoom call (see above) and we all watched the entire 18 minutes of the video.
When last have you willingly watched an 18-minute ad? Trick question – the answer is never.
The same goes for Fabiola Torres’s overhaul of GAP - I willingly watched their latest denim ad featuring Katseye end to end. Voluntarily, and multiple times.
The Marty Supreme and GAP work land for the same reason: they earn time. They don’t ask for attention; they’re chosen, and AI can either amplify this or detract from this.
The good stuff – creativity, insight, judgement – are still the real differentiators.
To quote strategist Will Lion – “Good work has always existed, bad work has always existed. Now it’s just easier to do both”.
So, choose wisely.
- New forms of creativity
AI is the tool and not a medium – the best teams will inherently know this, using AI in novel ways to strengthen a good idea. From being able to have the ability to react and respond to audiences in real-time, to being able to collaborate with the audience in co-creating a campaign.
- Focus on using AI as a tool to super-power ideas: AI allows us to create ideas with far deeper depth – from being able to crunch multiple data sources at pace, being able rapidly combine multiple, disparate insights and getting to rich and layered ideas as a result.
- Co-creating your content with the audience: AI is significantly lowering the barrier to co-creation – allowing us to create extremely custom 1:1 communication at scale.
- New creative disciplines: Expect new roles and skill sets centred around managing AI’s creative potential in new and novel ways.
At the end of the day, I’m reminded of the unbearable embarrassment of accidentally sending an AI slop video.
AI for the sake of AI won’t change much – it’s how we use and interact within an AI world that will make all the difference.
So, stay unreasonable out there.
