The Value of Creativity in a Robotic World

With computers, robots, and Artificial Intelligence taking over human’s jobs, the value of creativity and innovation will be left as key selling points for hiring future employees in the creative industries.

Media is even becoming more difficult with the blossoming digital age of online news, Buzzfeed, podcasts, new apps, blogs, Instagram accounts, influencer marketing, minute-to-minute news and satirical fake news sites. Publishing houses are shedding their hard copy publications and in-house staff writer redundancies are being made. With the need for faster online content, writers are now working remotely. Combined with the fact that GDPR and privacy rules are becoming overly hyped up after the Cambridge Analytica case, people are now becoming vexed for simply being contacted: even for simple invitations.

One editor told me that a PR was now sending her DM’s on Instagram and she was getting annoyed. But, why not? With an influx of press stories being sent to an email address that may not be constantly monitored and a lot of editors not wanting to be contacted on their personal mobiles even though their office numbers are almost now non-existent, how else would one get in touch?

Especially with demanding clients that want results as quick as an Amazon package delivery. I have meetings with clients from the beginning of contracts telling them that press take time and we need a press release and images first before even reaching out to journalists. Almost all of them get itchy after a few weeks wondering where their articles are.

One client fired me after we got them articles in GQ and Glamour amongst the 20 articles, we obtained within 3 months because “we didn’t get enough press” and because one of the writers we invited complained that the client’s service was bad.

Being the owner of a top PR agency JPR Media Group and having worked across some fun fields over the last 22 years from a luxury fashion brand, a beauty business, a few magazine groups and a hotel, my job has always been creative.

Coming up with buzzworthy promotional video concepts, hiring entertainers for events, organising amazing private jet press weekends abroad, building the look and feel of brands, promoting individual personalities, to actioning brand partnerships. What I enjoy about my jobs have always been the creative aspects.

Thinking with compassion, emotion, experience, the ability to think with the past, present and future in mind, sense of self, and sense of style: these human traits will be hard to replicate with machines in the immediate future (I’m not ruling it out).

Figuring out who will be trending, what colour may be cool, which celebrity may be written about, what will look beautiful, what will be considered stylish, what headline will catch someone’s attention, what causes nostalgia, what current art piece/film/cultural reference could be used to inspire a brand concept: these things could probably be figured out with computer statistics but putting it all together as a single concept needs a human touch (at the moment).

Now, I am getting to the point of managing my time best with money. That means limiting meetings and outsourcing work.

A book that I love that can help you transition your work life so you can work less and work more efficiently whilst welcoming the rapid changes in this digital world is the 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. “Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined. Otherwise, you waste someone else’s time instead of your own, which now wastes your hard-earned cash. How’s that for incentive to be effective and efficient?”

If you are a creative, own a business, work for a small company, are a peg in a huge corporation, or are already remoting making money doing something you love, this book is for you. It helps streamline your creativity, ambitions and career dreams in a technological world.