The Grinch That Stole Creativity: 2024 in Seussian Review

I hope you are getting ready for a wonderful season of giving, and taking a pause from all things marketing and business. For the last — well, decade — I have ended the year with a special review.

This year, AI seems to have taken all the oxygen out of the marketing room. With a nod to those brands feeling compelled to fill their marketing with AI-generated content, 2024 felt a little grinchy. So, if you’ll indulge me:

Everyone in Marketing loved creativity a lot,
But the executives running the business did NOT.

They hated Creative! The sentiment! The trends!
Expensive brand campaigns with emotional ends.

They smirked at the memes; the creative was so cute.
They sneered, “Who needs empathy when we’ve got compute?”

“Look at these fools with their thought leadership fluff,
Brainstorming for hours — like that’s ever enough!
They’re slow and inefficient, stuck in their ways,
While I optimize content in seconds, not days!”

Now, with a neural net hum and a Tesla-like purr,
AI learned all their content in one swift blur.
They launched drones over Jersey with flair,
And rewrote their ads with a cold, bot-generated air.

Gone were stories, the joy, and the fun,
Replaced with AI: “Delving and evolving savings! Buy one, get one!”
Ads smacking and packing with gerunds galore,
While bots buzzed in circles and crashed at the door.

And as the execs planned to lay off the team,
The tech bros got together and logged in with a scheme.
Sam Altman posted, “Let’s optimize joy with OpenAI flair!”
While Bezos declared, “Creativity’s dead — AI will write with more care!”

Sundar Pichai chimed, “Productivity’s key! No delay!”
“AI will deliver Marketing’s Christmas, the Google way!”

But way down in the marketers’ corner, the teams regrouped,
Ignoring the chaos of tech-bro loops.
They slowed down, creating stuff humans would feel.
Not algorithms or billionaires making a steal.

They crafted slow stories with care and delight,
Handmade campaigns that felt human and bright.
While AI churned dreck — cold, soulless, and bland,
Their creative magic flew, built by real hands.

The execs stared down at their dashboards and feeds,
Perplexed by the magic that human joy breeds.
They paused their machines, unsure what to say,
As the marketers showed, they knew the right way.

They didn’t need bots or predictive commands,
Just humor, emotion, and work from their hands.
They gathered in rooms with ideas to share,
Proving it’s humans who give brands their flair.

“What is this?” the execs cried, “We can’t look away!
How did humans outshine the power of AI?”

They learned that connection can’t be tracked on a chart,
And real engagement begins with the heart.

So, what happened then? Well, in Marketing they say,
The execs’ sense of wisdom grew five sizes that day!
They joined the marketers, crafting captions with flair,
And helped Santa upgrade with Wi-Fi to spare.

Now, every Christmas, they play a small part,
Balancing big data with a marketer’s heart.
And even Sam Altman, with a sheepish, small grin,
Writes human content — with no AI spin.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute