Is Jony Ive Correct or Can Creativity Thrive In Corporate Corridors?

With the swift rise of artificial intelligence (AI), questions are being asked about the future and value of human creativity in the face of automated, and fast-to-order output. But if there's one man who understands how to embody and sell the art of thinking differently, then it is former chief design officer at Apple, Jony Ive.

His latest move is a design partnership with Chat GPT developer Open AI, created following the £4.7bn sale of his start-up business to Sam Altman.

But when he departed the world's largest tech business to start his own, he questioned the ability of major businesses to fully embrace creativity, claiming the creative process is too often stifled by the machinations of large organisations.

"Any process that is unpredictable does not sit comfortably or naturally in a large group," he told McKinsey's The Quarterly Interview: Provocations to Ponder less than two years ago.

He added that leaders should accept that "the creative process is fabulously unpredictable".

This view is backed by the most recent findings in Cannes Lions' recent State of Creativity report - only 13 per cent of respondents say their companies take a risk-friendly approach to marketing communications.

Almost a third (29 per cent) of brands admit to being highly risk-averse. And 57 per cent of brands rate their cultural moments as "poor" or "very poor".

And when they embrace new growth in areas like the creator economy, some organisations can be hesitant to lift their internal constraints according to VML's EMEA chief social officer Christina Miller.

She advises businesses to define areas where they have fixed guidelines, and embrace flexibility elsewhere.

As AI's power grows exponentially there is an appreciation for the efficiencies it helps deliver - WPP Open is one example of how the industry is putting it into play - but there is an awareness in agencies that growth will only come if creativity at its best is deployed in tandem with new technology.

But how are adland's leaders living, breathing and most of all selling creativity to help organisations overcome what appears to be a concerning, un-entrepreneurial, severance between human creativity and business?

Franki Goodwin, Chief Creative Officer, Saatchi & Saatchi

Creativity is by definition unpredictable. It’s wonderfully, fabulously and joyfully unpredictable. That’s how it feels to us anyway, in fact I think it’s the unpredictable nature of it that, as the budgets and the timelines squeeze, we still get up every day and do what we do… we’re hooked on that unpredictability.

But when it's your money or your job on the line, unpredictability is hard. The last thing a client wants to hear is… “Thanks for that million quid, we’re not sure what we’re going to do with it, but it’s going to be really creative!”. (We’ve all had an unpredictable hairdresser or architect we didn’t go back to.) So we rightly, and responsibly, wrap lots of things around this commercial creativity – this client-funded creativity – to reassure them there’s a plan; Pre-vis, Pre-testing, Pre-Pre-Pre PPMs = Pre-dictable.

Preparedness is great, but we need to be more open about making space for the mess. Because inspiration doesn't happen within a designated time frame and without room for someone coming and ripping up all our plans and seeing something else in the idea. That’s not creativity (it’s that crochet by numbers pattern of a horse your Nanna gave you when you were 11 and you never did 'cause fuck that!). And we need to get our clients hooked on that bit too - to the point that clients come to us and say… this is all feeling a bit predictable… where’s the mess? Where’s the scary bit that makes it good? Give me some of that sweet, sweet unpredictability.”

Alex Grieve, global chief creative officer, BBH

John Cleese famously said, "the easiest thing in the world is talking about creativity; the hardest thing in the world is actually doing it."  

That's why Jony Ive's comments about getting businesses to understand and embrace the process, the nuts and bolts of creativity, are so necessary.  Forgive the self-promotion, but BBH's success over the years has been built on turning talk into action. Talk is cheap; action pays the bills.  

It's no coincidence that Point No.5 of our 10 founding beliefs is: 'Processes that liberate creativity'.  Process isn't sexy or cool but it is the foundation upon which great ideas and work are built. It's about taking everything we know about the complex, wildly unpredictable, and sometimes terrifying nature of creativity and creating systems that allow for uncertainty, U-turns, dead ends, blind alleys, and the random connecting of dots.  

We're all searching for the thing we don't know we're looking for.  There is no road map.  But a rigorous yet, paradoxically, flexible process, rooted in empathy, the understanding that fear is the mind-killer and that doubt is good, can be the compass that invisibly guides us to the destination we're seeking.

Sophie Cullinane, global executive creative director, Gravity Road

Everyone’s clinging to “good taste” like it’s a life raft in the AI apocalypse. But good taste is often just groupthink in Cos trousers.

Jony Ive called creativity “fabulously unpredictable.” Amen. The best ideas often start as bad ones - tacky, weird, too risky, too much. But when you pair bad taste with high craft, that’s where the magic happens. Think Martin Parr. Think early TikTok. Think Crocs at fashion week.

At Gravity Road, we ask our creatives to embrace their low-brow obsessions as proudly as their high-brow references. Reality TV, trashy memes, cursed fonts, if it’s human, it’s useful.

Don’t bring me the polished idea you think I want. Bring me the one you might even be slightly embarrassed by - the one that makes you laugh or cringe or feel something. Then we execute it to the highest standard and make low culture highly impactful. That’s where there’s fun to be had. 

Creativity dies when everyone tries to sound smart in the meeting. It thrives when you give people permission to be chaotic, curious, and wrong.

Protect your polish, your process, your pitch decks if you must. But protect your freaks, too.

Oliver Egan, Chief Strategy Officer, Global Clients, T&P

Creativity flourishes when diverse teams come together, bringing a rich mix of expertise, experiences, and perspectives. This diversity fuels innovation by challenging assumptions, uncovering blind spots, and sparking fresh ideas that homogeneous groups might overlook. At T&P, by bringing together strategists and creatives from across disciplines, with varied cultural backgrounds and life experiences into joined-up teams; we seek to approach problems from different angles, fostering more robust and imaginative solutions. 

The introduction of AI into the creative process adds an additional layer of diversity to these collaborations. Its vast computational power identifies patterns and connections invisible to the human eye – even occasional hallucinations can take us to interesting places! Marrying this with human judgment, emotional intelligence, and contextual understanding offers the potential to unlock unprecedented creative potential. 

A case in point, our recent ‘Mourinho’s Own Goal No-No’s’ for Snickers. The campaign reimagined the brand’s iconic “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” platform using AI to create thousands of bespoke videos, each one uniquely tailored to the user. A collaborative effort between human and artificial intelligence, AI provided the framework for personalization, but humans ensured the humour resonated culturally. This symbiosis mirrors Jony Ive’s emphasis on understanding creativity's nuances—AI tools enhance creative processes but require human oversight to maintain relevance and authenticity.