MBD130: The Role AI Isn't Coming For

10 August 2026 | Issue #130

In this issue:

If you're outsourcing to AI, you can't cut this role
Avoid creating bad AI graphics
How to Prevent Good Ideas from Getting Killed Internally
Time Tracking and Product Management – Now on the Web and Chrome
Design Quote of the Week

The Creative Director Isn't the Role AI Is Coming For

Somewhere in a budget review this quarter, someone is looking at what AI tools can generate and asking a version of the same question: do we still need a creative director for this?

Most organizations are already leaning hard into that logic. Adoption has crossed the point where nearly nine in ten businesses use AI somewhere in marketing or sales. When everyone has the same tools, it's tempting to assume the people directing those tools matter less too. That assumption is backward, and marketing teams making budget calls on it are about to find out the expensive way.

Why the old job disappearing doesn't mean the role did

Here's what's actually changed: the pace of production. AI can generate fifty versions before lunch, more than any team could put in front of a CD to review one at a time even if they wanted to. Reviewing was always just one part of the job, but it was one way a CD enforced a point of view they'd already set, the brand, the tone, the direction, one execution at a time. Once volume exploded past what any person could review, that enforcement mechanism broke. The point of view behind it didn't.

So where did that point of view go? It moved upstream, and it stayed there. A CD's job was always keeping everyone who touched the brand, photographers, junior designers, agency partners, aligned to a point of view they'd already set.

AI is just the newest name on that list: keeping it trained on the brand's actual voice and history, not a generic prompt, and continually resetting the guardrails as the brand, the market, and the tools shift. That's still direction. It just happens before generation instead of after, over and over, not once.

What happens when nobody's directing the system

I read something recently that named the actual risk plainly. When AI takes over execution, brands start looking the same, because they're all optimized by the same algorithms. That's not a hypothetical. It's already showing up. A handful of brands got called out this year for anti-AI ad campaigns that were, quietly, made partly with AI. The irony wasn't lost on anyone watching. That's what happens when a brand's creative decisions get made by committee, or by nobody, instead of by someone with a clear point of view holding the line.

Another piece I came across made a similar point from the production side. AI can generate the volume, but someone still has to set the quality filter and the brand guardrails, or the volume just becomes noise with a logo on it. That's the job. That's what gets cut when a team decides creative direction is a nice-to-have.

The role got more expensive to lose, not less

Think about what actually happens without a strong creative director in an AI-assisted workflow. Hand a model a vague brief and walk away, and it drifts. It invents brand details that were never there. Nobody catches it until it's already live.

That's not an argument for keeping headcount out of nostalgia. It's an argument about risk. A team without real creative direction isn't saving money. They're outsourcing brand judgment to a system that has none, and hoping nobody notices until it's a problem.

What this means for how you staff and structure

If you're building or reviewing a marketing org this year, don't treat the creative director as the role AI shrinks. Treat it as the role that decides whether AI helps your brand or quietly erodes it. That's a strategic function, not overhead.

The teams that get this right aren't the ones using AI the most. They're the ones who kept someone in the room whose whole job is having a point of view the machine doesn't have.

So before that role gets trimmed from next year's budget, ask the harder question: if we cut this, who's actually directing the system we just spent all that money on?

RECENT PODCAST APPEARANCE

I was recently a guest on CM Live where I talked about how to avoid making bad AI visuals.

HOW TO PRESERVE GOOD IDEAS

We've all had good ideas get killed. We know what we have to do to help customers, but at some point, the project gets whittled down and what is released doesn't really solve the problems you were trying to solve.

Matt Wilkinson, PhD MBA, knows that many marketing teams understand buyer personas, but they aren't used. He wrote The Buyer in the Loop for teams that can create synthetic buyers to better understand how real buyers will react.

The book is a quick read and outlines why organizational gravity kills great ideas.

I also designed the cover and book, and drew the illustrations for each chapter. If you're writing a book and need help, let me know. The writing is the easy part.

The Buyer in the Loop book and interior spread

STOP LOSING BILLABLE HOURS

You finish a task, move on, and forget to bill for it. Then invoicing day means digging back through your project board or emails (or Slack messages, or direct messages) trying to remember what you actually did. Aeto fixes that: project management, time tracking, and invoicing in one place, so if it's on the board, it's on the invoice.

Aeto.app. If you want to be a beta tester, let me know!