Efficiency has no mercy.

AI isn’t coming for creativity.

It’s coming for the bullshit.

The bloated systems. Billable hours. Approval chains. Endless decks. For years, inefficiency was tolerated. AI makes it impossible. Hours collapse into minutes. Clients notice. Anyone hiding behind process gets exposed.

And companies aren’t off the hook. Cut your in-house creative team to “save money” and you’re not saving anything. You’re just cutting instinct. Cohesion disappears. Details vanish. The brand slowly erodes until nobody trusts it.

WeWork showed us how fast that collapse can happen. They axed in-house creative in 2019. Overnight, the brand diluted. Consistency fell apart. The messy identity that followed mirrored their messy decline.

AI is the same stress test, just faster. It won’t replace creativity. It’ll expose lazy systems, bad decisions, and fake efficiencies. Outsourcing and templates don’t fix that. They accelerate it.

Reflections to work through:

What part of your brand would AI expose as fake-efficient?

What instincts disappear when you cut corners to “save costs”?

If you had to prove your value in minutes, not hours, what would you stand on?

Do these gaps look familiar? Let’s talk.

Ian Adams, Founder the little red sofa

Before founding the little red sofa, I led strategy and creative for brands like Jeep, HSBC, and Unilever at top global agencies and in-house teams across 8 countries. Now I work with founders to turn brand clarity into sustainable growth.