Before AI:

Ideation was an entirely human task.

In advertising agencies, for example, a creative director might ask their copywriters for twenty campaign ideas. Then the onus would be on the CD to narrow down those ideas, to isolate and develop the strongest concepts, together with their writers.

This second step — recognizing good ideas and turning them into viable ads — is, of course, the true creative **work.

And nothing I’ve found illustrates this better than one particular storyline in the show, Mad Men:

In the show, Don Draper is the creative director at an ad agency:

Don’s a fictional character but his behavior, his thinking, his overall ethos is based on real people, real copywriters and advertisers.

One of Don’s best ads promotes Glo-Coat, a popular floor wax in the 1960s (when the show takes place). The ad, a commercial, wins a Clio — a prestigious advertising award — because it’s so different:

In the beginning, the screen is black…

We hear spaghetti Western music, whistling and jingling, then a young voice:

“Let me outta here!” The voice is begging. “Let me out of here!”

The blackness begins to fade. The screen becomes softer, lighter. We make out a pair of hands, fingers wrapped around bars…

“Let me outta here!”

A cowboy hat comes into focus. We see a face, very young…

“Let me outta here!”

We can see clearly now. It’s a boy, sitting cross-legged under a table. The chairs have been turned upside down and placed atop the table. The boy is clutching the spindles on the back of a chair, peering through the slats. He’s pretending to be jailed while mom waxes the kitchen floor with Glo-Coat.

He begs to be let go again — and this time, mom obliges. The screen turns bright as she looks in the camera: “Thanks to quick-drying Glo Coat,” she smiles, “little Timmy doesn’t have to wait anymore.”

Don accepts the Clio on behalf of his agency.

He brings the statue back to the office and slams it on the desk, happy, triumphant. Everybody celebrates.

Everybody but Peggy Olson.

Peggy is Don’s copywriter.

She worked with him on the Glo-Coat campaign. In fact, it was her idea. She claims this to Don in private:

“You know what—” says Peggy, angry over her lack of recognition “—here’s a blank piece of paper—” she says, “—why don’t you turn that into Glo-Coat?”

Don looks at her. “Are you out of your mind?” he says. “You gave me twenty ideas and I picked out one of them that was the kernel that became that commercial.”

“So you remember?” says Peggy.

“It was something about a cowboy,” says Don. “Congratulations.”

“No!” Peggy’s yelling now. “It was something about a kid locked in a closet because his mother was making him wait for the floor to dry, which is basically the whole commercial.”

“It’s a kernel…” says Don.

“—which you changed just enough so that it was yours.”

“I changed it into a commercial,” says Don. “What are we gonna shoot him in the dark, in the closet? That’s the way it works.”

Indeed, an idea is not an ad.

Don took a raw concept and thoughtfully, skillfully, gave it concrete structure, form, narrative, humanity.

Ideas are important but they’re also cheap, a dime a dozen. Always have been. Except now, compared to sixty years ago, AI tools can help copywriters generate more ideas, faster.

How convenient. How nice.

Don’s right:

Without the benefit of a skilled human, an idea is a kernel, this hard, tasteless, inedible thing.

It needs heat to become something useful.
It needs a warm body.
It needs you.