From Hype to Scale: What the Advertising Industry Must Learn from Its Own Past
by PJ Pereira, Co-Founder @ Pereira O'Dell & Silverside AI
The arrival of AI into marketing has generated exactly what you’d expect from any new and transformative force: excitement, fear, overpromises, and, at times, paralysis. Agencies and brands are racing to showcase proof-of-concept projects and AI-powered case studies, while others are frozen in hesitation, waiting for things to “settle.”
This landscape looks familiar — eerily so.
Roughly thirty years ago, I was part of the first generation of advertising professionals stepping into digital. What I see happening now with artificial intelligence reminds me of that moment: a disruptive force so powerful that it reshapes not just the tools we use, but the logic, tempo, and economics of the entire industry.
Back then, we thought we could gradually integrate digital into the old system. Instead, it rewrote the system entirely.
The risk today is that we repeat the same cycle — but this time, at an even faster speed.
Innovation Doesn’t Happen Alone
One of the most underappreciated truths about transformation is that it’s never about a single agency, a single client, or even a single platform. Innovation only works when the whole system evolves together.
Thomas Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb in isolation. He was racing against Joseph Swan in England. And neither would have succeeded if Nikola Tesla hadn’t been working on electricity at the same time. Progress is always collective — an accumulation of talent, timing, and shared effort.
Advertising is no different. You can be the most forward-thinking agency in the world, but if clients don’t understand what you’re building, if platforms don’t support it, or if audiences aren’t ready to absorb it, progress stalls.
That’s the real risk with AI. Brilliant experiments are happening in pockets everywhere, but experiments alone won’t move us forward. Without shared language, mutual education, and collective progress, we’ll get stuck in fragmented breakthroughs that never scale.
The Pattern We Keep Repeating
Looking back, both the digital shift and today’s AI wave reveal the same pattern of evolution. Transformation doesn’t show up all at once — it unfolds in stages.
First comes hype, when everyone rushes in to be seen using the new thing. Then comes craft, when we realize gimmicks aren’t enough and start caring about execution. Next, stories, when the work finally connects with real people. And ultimately, ideas — the point where we figure out what the medium is uniquely good for.
But here’s the catch: those stages only matter if the whole ecosystem is moving forward together. It doesn’t help if one agency is crafting beautifully while clients are still stuck in the hype. It doesn’t help if we’re ready to tell powerful stories but procurement processes can’t support them. The brilliance of any single step collapses without the system around it.
That’s why skipping stages is so dangerous. Sure, a lone project might leap straight to “ideas.” But at scale? The industry can’t jump if the system isn’t ready.
The Cost of Waiting — or Jumping Too Fast
When presented with this curve, people usually make one of two mistakes. Some wait for everything to “settle.” Others try to skip the mess and leap straight to the top.
Both are dead ends. By the time it all settles, the system will have evolved without you. And rushing to the top doesn’t work if the audience, the platforms, or the clients aren’t there yet.
Real progress doesn’t come from waiting or jumping. It comes from moving — together.
What Happens Next
If the digital transformation of marketing taught us anything, it’s this: when an industry hesitates, outsiders leap ahead. Tech platforms redefined entire categories not because agencies weren’t talented enough, but because the ecosystem wasn’t moving in sync.
The difference now is speed. AI isn’t just a disruptive wave — it’s a tidal current. And if we don’t align systems — the creative side, the client side, the business side — we risk letting someone else define the rules again.
We’re already seeing hints of what this alignment might look like. Coca-Cola, for instance, made an early commitment to stay ahead of the curve — investing not just in AI tools, but in exploring new techniques and visual languages. It wasn’t a side experiment; it was a statement about what it means to lead through transformation.
Then there’s BMW’s “Real, For Real” campaign — a great example of AI used in balance rather than excess. The work blended live-action filmmaking with AI-generated elements, including a surreal image of a pigeon doing a skateboard kickflip, to contrast what looks real with what is real. It’s a glimpse into the next big shift: hybrid productions, where human craft and machine intelligence coexist to expand creative possibilities.
And finally, the viral IKEA box prompts that spread across the internet — not official brand work, but an intriguing glimpse into the future of creative authorship. These weren’t traditional ads or visuals; they were tight, replicable prompts, showing how ideas can now travel and scale in entirely new ways.
Each of these examples points to the same truth: when hype fades, when the craft sharpens, when stories begin to resonate, the real ideas will emerge. Not because of the tools, but because we built an industry capable of evolving together.
That’s how we make sure it’s our industry that leads the next chapter — not someone else’s. And that’s why I’m proud of being an early member of SoDA, when we were the so-called barbarians storming castles. We’ve done it once before.
Now it’s time to do it again — this time, from the inside.
PJ Pereira, Pereira O’Dell
