Whole-brained is one of the seven building blocks of real growth, and this session works on what it means in practice: unlocking data with human insights, and unleashing human creativity with technology. The second half is given to a guest presentation on creativity at scale.
Key findings
- The ability to attract whole-brain talent separates the performance groups at 65 percent against 25 percent.
- Putting data and analytics at the core of strategic decision making shows a similar gap, at 66 percent against 36 percent.
- Diversity in strategic decision making splits the groups at 70 percent against 45 percent.
- Capability is treated as a matter of scheduled time. The training comparison sorts overperformers and underperformers by whether they do no formal training, under two days, two to three days, or more than three days a year.
What the marketing leader is asked to do
The role starts with self-knowledge, understanding your own whole-brain balance, and extends to ensuring diversity in strategic decision-making and representing diverse consumers.
The threat named is digital sameness, and the counter is to course correct on creativity, expose yourself to diverse experiences, encourage differing perspectives, and listen differently with an open mind.
The organizational duties are to enable others to work at their best, to make the subject important, and to build capability.
What machines can already make
The guest presentation opens with the Next Rembrandt, made for a Dutch bank using AI techniques and 3D printed paint to predict and create a new Rembrandt painting centuries after the artist’s death.
The process is described as a chain from imagining to creating to experiencing: features analyzed from a dataset of paintings, a new work generated, depth added in printed paint, and the result exhibited.
Semantic mapping is shown as a second technique. A human colors each region to create a semantic map, a new map is given to an AI, and a new image is produced with styles mapped to the correct regions.
Speed is the point of the third example. Trained on 20,000 images of scarlet macaws, the system generates a unique bird in five seconds.
The argument the room was asked to have
The deck sets out the case for and against synthetic media side by side. In favor: cheaper, more effective, innovative, and better than using a single ethnicity. Against: frightening, untrustworthy, and failing to address representation.
Participants then role play the argument in pairs, taking the cynic and the believer on the future of AI and switching roles after three minutes.
The constructive case is made through inclusivity. Brand leaders commit to it and consumers expect it, but it gets lost in mass production, which is why the presentation frames inclusivity as a scale challenge and then as a scale opportunity.
Three uses follow from that: making assets accessible, checking that they are accessible, and making them representative.
The session does not leave the risks aside. Alongside the benefits it names fraud and waste, and the need for an ethics council.
What participants do next
In threes, participants brainstorm their own role: the actions they can and should take now, and the future actions to prepare for.
The session sits ahead of the Cannes finale, where participants finalize their humanized growth ambition, develop a growth plan covering new value propositions and corporate initiatives, and elect a humanized growth champion.
Scope and limitations
The AI examples come from a single guest presentation by a practitioner at one agency group, and are shown as demonstrations rather than as evaluated results.
Source
This page summarises Whole-Brained, by Institute for Real Growth, April 2021.