The Karate Kid - mastering your craft the hard way

Does AI really give us all the tools we need to create kick-ass advertising, or do we still need to put the hours in to master our craft?

Everything I know about advertising I learnt from the movies #15

If I had a dollar for every LinkedIn post telling me how to create great advertising with AI in my lunchbreak: I’d be a lot better off than trying to make a living by actually creating great advertising.

I’m not anti AI, as such. It is giving us a mind-blowing set of tools, that allow pretty much anybody to create amazing-looking graphics and video. What I am anti is, all the people who – just because they’ve learnt how to use the shiny new tools – are now all of a sudden advertising experts. Just like getting your hands on a Swiss Army Knife doesn’t make you an elite member of the Swiss Army Special Forces. That’s if they’ve even got an Army. Or Special Forces.

But – apart from fighting – what’s any of this got to do with the Karate Kid? Or advertising for that matter. Everything.

The eponymous Karate Kid, Daniel, is being bullied by Johnny and his karate thugs, and Daniel doesn’t yet have the skills to defend himself. So, he needs to develop them, but they didn’t have AI karate trainers back in 1984.

In steps old karate master Mr Miyagi, who agrees to teach him the way of the 'empty hand:' but not in a way that Daniel really understands. At first, at least.

Mr Miyagi makes him perform a series of boring, repetitive and seemingly unrelated tasks – like painting the fence, and waxing the floor.

It is through endlessly repeating these movements that Daniel is, unwittingly, mastering his craft. And mastery takes time: maybe even, like Malcolm Gladwell says, 10,000 hours. And it’s often slow, boring, and sometimes painful.

Whether it’s 10,000 hours or 10,000 days, mastery of your craft is not just about learning the moves, it is also a spiritual journey: a journey along which you come to understand the deeper meaning of what you are doing and its place in the world.

I know, I know, I'm talking about advertising here, not spiritual enlightenment, but this is kind of important in the creative industries. Even advertising. AI is replacing body, and in some case the mind too, but it cannot (yet) replace the soul.

But, as within other industries, what we are seeing in advertising is the hollowing out of agencies. Experienced professionals who have spent years honing their craft are being jettisoned, to make way for Johnny-come-lately’s who can build a video in their bedrooms. And the quality of what we do is suffering because of it. Not so much in the way it looks, but in the way it feels. It has no soul.

I’m all for fresh young talent injecting their youthful energy and tech skills to shake up the business, and challenge dinosaurs like me. AI might be a shortcut to help them do it, and produce endless content, fast. But it isn’t a shortcut to producing great ideas, that don’t just look pretty, but also stir the soul. To do that, you still need to learn to fight with empty hands. The hard way. Then you can really kick ass.