Stop asking AI for answers I Christopher Smith
In Episode 2 of the NCMT podcast hosted by the Nanyang Centre for Marketing Technology at Nanyang Business School, Christopher Smith, founder of RockPaperScissors and former Chief Storyteller at Gojek, discusses the profound impact of AI on creative design, strategic thinking, and the future role of human marketers.
The Bi-Directionality of Modern Tools
Over a 40-year career working with powerhouse brands like Apple, Disney, and Singapore Airlines, Christopher Smith has navigated every major technological shift, from the birth of the internet to the introduction of non-linear video editors. However, he notes that artificial intelligence represents a fundamental departure from past innovations.
Historically, creative tools like Photoshop were static; they executed tasks with no feedback. AI introduces bi-directionality. It possesses a “call and response” mechanism that can challenge our inputs and change the direction of our thinking.
This leads to a critical shift in how professionals should interact with foundational models. Instead of treating AI as the modern Oracle of Delphi, where we blindly accept predicted answers, Chris advocates for a Socratic approach.
Key takeaway: Do not use AI to find certainty; use it to find clarity. The true power of AI lies in its ability to provoke new questions, uncover outliers, and pressure-test human assumptions.
Performance Data vs. Observable Truths
While the marketing industry frequently champions “data-driven creativity”, Chris cautions against relying solely on numbers. He draws a vital distinction between traditional performance metrics and human reality.
| Feature | Performance Data | Observable Truths |
|---|---|---|
| Core Focus | What already happened in the past. Tells you if a campaign was successful or if numbers shifted but not necessarily where we should be thinking. | Why it happened and human motivation. Behaviour gives a better sense of how to tell a better story to influence or acquire a customer, or to create purchase intent. |
| Source | Spreadsheets, analytics dashboards, and campaign reports. | Human behaviour, cultural trends (e.g., the borderless rise of K-pop), and real-world observation (IRL). |
By stepping out of the office and feeding AI observational inputs such as visual trends or community forums, marketers can ground their AI models in human truths rather than sterile datasets.
Advanced AI Frameworks: Stacking and Time-Shifting
AI's unparalleled speed and pattern recognition allow strategists to execute complex frameworks that previously required massive teams or consulting budgets. Chris utilises two powerful methodologies to map corporate strategy:
- Document Stacking: By feeding AI the annual reports of a client and all its competitors over a five-year period, Chris maps the “red thread”. The AI instantly surfaces shifts in corporate language, changing geographic focuses, or quietly abandoned product lines.
- Time-shifting (future scenarios): Pre-mortems imagine what would happen if everything failed, then work backwards to identify what went wrong. Chris also flips this and uses AI to model positive adjacencies. If a campaign succeeds perfectly over six months, the AI simulates the unintended positive consequences. How does Human Resources capitalise on the win? How does the competition react? This reinvests AI's efficiency gains directly into deep strategic effectiveness.
Why Hallucinations Can Be a Feature, Not a Bug
In the pursuit of perfect accuracy, many users find AI hallucinations frustrating. As a storyteller, Chris takes the opposite view and actively values hallucinations.
If an AI makes an irrational leap, such as confidently claiming the moon is made of cheese, walking back that hallucination often uncovers deeply embedded cultural lore, legends, or whispers in the training data. For creative professionals, these “errors” are often breadcrumbs leading directly to compelling, emotional human truths that a strictly rational analysis would have missed.
“I Am the Loop”: Redefining Creative Value
A pervasive anxiety in the creative industry is that AI drastically reduces the friction required to produce work. For decades, the sector equated the value of an asset with the sheer time and manual labour it took to create it. This creates a profound tension today. When a campaign asset that once took weeks can be generated in 40 minutes, agencies built on timesheets and hourly billing face an existential threat.
Chris argues that to survive, the industry must fundamentally decouple value from effort and re-anchor it to strategic impact. Furthermore, professionals must resist the urge to simply use AI to ship work faster and cheaper. If AI provides a 50 percent efficiency gain, that time should be reinvested upstream into human relationship building, deep strategic testing, and observing cultural truths.
Relying on an automated pipeline is highly effective, but the human cannot be a passive observer.
“I am not the human in the loop,” Chris emphasises, referencing advice from an AI filmmaker colleague. “I am the loop.”
When you position yourself as the loop, the AI tools revolve around your judgment, your taste, and your hard-earned life experience. By intentionally placing manual decision-making checkpoints throughout the AI workflow, marketers maintain full agency. Looking forward, as the market floods with AI-generated content, the ultimate differentiator for brands will not be endless digital efficiency, but a return to in-person, real-world experiences that authenticate genuine human connection.