The Brandtech Group appoints first Gen AI Creative Director

New York, New York, 22 July 2024: The Brandtech Group has created a new role, Gen AI Creative Director, and appointed former Burberry creative James Dow.

Dow, who is promoted from Creative Director of the Group’s brand innovation company, Brandtech Consulting where he has spent seven years, will lead the charge in championing creative excellence across work created with Gen AI, and through Brandtech’s Gen AI marketing platform Pencil.

He will work with global clients across the Group who are piloting and scaling the Pencil platform, as well as informing and helping to upskill creators in the business on the latest Gen AI tools and developments. Dow, who previously spent four years at Burberry as Global Senior Campaign Director, will also play a pivotal role in Brandtech’s new Gen AI Residency program, partnering with some of the world’s leading Gen AI artists and creators to push the creative boundaries of marketing with their unique uses of Gen AI.

Pencil is the world’s #1 Gen AI end-to-end marketing platform for brands, having already created more than 1 million ads for 5,000 brands, with $1bn of media spend through the platform since it launched in 2018. Pencil was also named by Fast Company as one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies 2024, the only Generative AI marketing company to be recognized. (This AI platform has made and modeled a million ads).

The new role was deemed essential for the Group, with Gen AI continuing to deepen across all Brandtech’s companies and clients. “I like to view Gen AI as a great empowerer of creative vision,” said Dow. “Enabling anyone, anywhere to rapidly explore nascent ideas and blow them out into fully realized worlds in the blink of an eye. Humans are storytellers and I can’t wait to see what a diverse new generation of creators are going to make now that they have access to tools that can bring their perspectives to life. Once again, the gatekeepers of what gets made and whose voice gets heard are losing their grip and this excites me.”

David Jones, co-founder and CEO of The Brandtech Group, said: “Rather than undermining creativity, Gen AI will lead to the greatest creative revolution in history. The Gen AI tools we have at our disposal, and are part of the Pencil platform, are mind blowing in what they can do better, faster and cheaper than ever before. And they are only going to get better.

“Appointing James as our inaugural Gen AI Creative Director marks an exciting time for us, and the industry, as there will no doubt be many more roles like this created across creative companies.

“But this is about much more than the confines of the established marketing industry. Can you imagine the power of the creator economy when everyone has these kinds of Gen AI tools in their hands? I believe that the impact Gen AI is going to have on marketing will be greater than the changes we saw with social media and the mobile revolution. If the mobile phone made everyone a creator, then Gen AI will make everyone an ad agency.” added Jones.

Using Pencil, brands can create entire campaigns right from customer insights to creative output to predictive performance to digital media placement. The platform includes all of the best Gen AI models and updates accordingly, so it always offers the very latest and best of the tools on one platform.

Brandtech’s Group companies are already applying Gen AI at scale across their areas of expertise.

Gravity Road created the world’s most effective ad (System 1) in the category for Hotel Chocolat in 2023, and the ongoing IOC campaign for the Refugee Olympic Team. Mofilm has been running creator Gen AI training for its network of 10,000 creators. Brandtech Consulting is working on high-level projects for the Group’s biggest clients. Oliver has numerous live campaigns using Gen AI for clients, including multiple projects for Unilever and Diageo. And Collectively is at the heart of the previously mentioned Residency program with the world’s most interesting Gen AI creators and artists.

Rebecca Sykes, Brandtech Partner and Head of Emerging Technologies, added: “We’ve been working in Gen AI since 2018, so we’re well ahead of the market. There are two things needed to stay in front; one is having the best tech – and we definitely have that in Pencil, and the other is the best talent. Having James step into this new creative leadership role will boost the latter by infusing a coherent culture across the group – one that is positive, curious, and skilled.”

About The Brandtech Group

The Brandtech Group is the world’s #1 digital-only marketing group and the leading global generative AI marketing company. It was founded in June 2015 (as You & Mr Jones) by former Havas Global CEO David Jones, with the simple mission to help brands do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using technology. It was renamed The Brandtech Group in January 2022.

Today it is the largest global digital content partner for many of the world’s biggest brands and companies, often using its unique in-housing model. It works with eight of the world’s top 10 global advertisers and 49 of the world’s top 100. Clients include Google, Microsoft, Unilever, LVMH, Morgan Stanley, Bayer, TikTok, Diageo, Reckitt and Renault-Nissan.

Its most recent acquisition was Pencil, the only generative AI marketing company that is powered by $1BN in media spend across 5,000 brands.Typically, Pencil’s ads are 10x faster, with 2x better performance than a brand’s usual baseline. Working with the Group, Pencil launched a new tool, Pencil Pro, which is specifically designed for major global brands and has an industry-leading approach to brand safety, data ringfencing, IP ownership, copyright protection and other policies.

In addition, the Group invests in cutting-edge marketing technology companies and has been active in the AI, AR and gaming spaces since 2015. The Group was the very first external investor in Niantic (creators of Pokémon Go), alongside other investments such as AI Foundation (2018), Automat (AI chatbots, 2016), Elsy (AI media planning, 2016), Jivox (dynamic automated content, 2016), Crossing Minds (deep learning AI recommendation system, 2017), VidMob (automated content, 2018), CreativeX (AI-driven content optimization, 2022), Zappar (AR, 2017), Provenance (blockchain, 2022) and GGP (the world’s largest gaming fund). The Group is one of the most prominent marketing industry voices on the prediction and movement to AI-driven marketing, including generative AI. It was named one of the World’s Most Innovative Companies 2021 by Fast Company, and by CB Insights as one of the World’s Most Valuable Private Unicorns.