I genuinely love AI. It’s changed the way I work and gives me magical abilities that satiate my curiosity. I love seeing friends find new ways to use it that make their lives significantly better. At the individual level, it’s inspiring.
But at the macro level, AI has a reputation problem. The dominant narratives are job loss, surveillance, environmental strain, and creative theft. Anytime I talk about AI to someone outside of tech, they give me the stink eye.
There’s a massive gap between what AI is doing for people and how people feel about AI.
And the companies building it are doing almost nothing to close that gap. They’re investing billions in the best researchers on the planet while investing very little in understanding the culture they’re shaping.
They’re winning the capabilities race and losing the public.
Reggie James recently wrote a piece arguing that AI labs need creative directors. It’s a great read, and he nailed something important: creative direction, at its core, is meaning-making.
Creative Direction is meaning making. I find that this is the most critical thing for technology companies to understand. Our enduring institutions endure because they come to represent something larger than themselves. Something that they simply get to contribute to, not own. And in that context, they invite the audience in to participate.
I particularly appreciate his reframing the role from “moving pretty shapes around” to someone who summarizes a broader culture and produces artifacts that are designed to pull people in.
I agree with him and think the conversation needs a) more attn and b) to go one layer deeper.
The biggest unforced error I’m observing right now in our industry: companies investing in design and marketing before developing a culturally relevant worldview. They’re finally putting real money behind great talent, which is good. But they’re moving at full speed without first understanding where they fit in culture.
Cultural relevancy starts with a point of view.
The overwhelming trend of 2026: companies assembling a super team of brand designers, video teams, PR agencies, all working in parallel, producing solid work in isolation.
The launch videos look incredible from a production standpoint, but don’t give you a reason to care. The websites look beautiful, explaining what the product does without explaining why it matters to you. None of it ladders up because there’s no overarching philosophy. It’s like spending six months on a menu when you haven’t figured out what kind of restaurant you are.
The companies building real cultural relevancy work in a different sequence.
They start with a POV, a genuine belief rooted in culture, in how consumer behavior is shifting, in something they understand about their category that other people miss. That POV dictates the expression, the messaging, the design, the identity. And that narrative drives how they communicate, how they build product, how they show up in the world. POV, followed by expression, then execution.
Patagonia figured this out early. “We’re in business to save our planet” organized the entire company. Product decisions, supply chain, their provocative advertising, suing the government over national monuments. The creative direction was legendary because it laddered up to a POV.
Same with Apple in the Jobs era. “Think Different” ran through everything they did. Product design, retail, packaging. The tagline was the smallest expression of a belief that organized the entire company. The creative direction at both was a byproduct of their worldview.
As tech continues to commoditize, brand marketing anchored in a culturally-relevant POV is how you win. A POV gives people a reason to care, and more importantly, a reason to (actually) root for you.
If AI companies spent half as much understanding where they fit into people’s lives as they do on the technology itself, AI might have a very different reputation.
"If AI companies spent half as much understanding where they fit into people’s lives as they do on the technology itself, AI might have a very different reputation." -> loved this line.
It feels like a industry-wide "hitting the pause button" is needed. Whether it's at the top with OpenAI vs. Anthropic or your niche startups, everyone is so focused on releasing things as fast as possible (because AI gives them that velocity) to outwork competitors that it only compounds the adverse effects you pointed out.
when creative direction is a byproduct of a brand's worldview >
ai companies NEEED your branding TLC