Fast-Food Creativity vs. Gourmet Craft: The Echo That Moves Markets
One burger satisfies an appetite. The other leaves an echo. There is room for both in my life. And the same is true in our industry.
Author: Benjamin Cox
Agencies can’t live on empty AI calories
My favorite burger in The City right now is the smashburger at Chicago Cut. Not the sliders. Not the USDA Prime Burger from the menu. The smashburger you can only order if you are sitting at the bar. Chicago has no shortage of great restaurants, and plenty of incredible burgers, so let me know if you have more recommendations.
What Chicago Cut delivers at the bar isn’t just a burger. It is an express meal from culinary craftsmen. Hyperbolic maybe, but this burger transports me in a way only emotional protein can. Compare that to another Chicago-born burger, the one in the wrapper with the golden arches. That is also technically a burger. It will fill you up. It will solve hunger. But it does not carry the same caliber of delight.
One burger satisfies an appetite. The other leaves an echo. There is room for both in my life. And the same is true in our industry.
The Rise of Fast Advertising
Meta made headlines when it introduced AI ad-creation inside its Advantage+ platform, promising advertisers they could build campaigns from end to end with little more than a prompt. The message was clear: no creative, no targeting, no measurement needed. Just give us the input and we will spit out the output.
For many, that sounded like shots fired. But panic misses the point. There is room for both burgers here.
AI is already reshaping the business models of agencies, platforms, and clients alike. It is unlocking new ways to create efficiency and scale. But efficiency without effectiveness is empty. Good ideas trigger response. Great ideas have soul. They activate schemas and create resonance. They send an echo through a person’s consciousness that lingers and grows. That echo is what moves people not only to act but to care.
Fast and Slow Cycles
This is the real tension in front of us. Fast creativity delivers efficiency, response, and relevance. Slow creativity delivers effectiveness, resonance, and salience. One without the other is incomplete.
Look at TikTok. The average trend lasts less than a week. Blink and you miss it. That speed demands fast cycles of creative output. A brand has to stay present in order to stay culturally fluent. But a feed full of borrowed dances and trend parodies does not build distinctiveness. If all you do is chase the moment you become disposable. Fast feeds the appetite, but it rarely leaves an echo. The signal here is unmistakable.
Now look at the Kantar Meaningful Brands study. Only 28 percent of brands are seen as meaningful. Yet those brands outperform the stock market by more than 200 percent over ten years. The deeper truth is that resonance pays compounding returns. Salience is not an accessory. It is a growth engine. Great ideas echo in the spirit long after the impression fades.
A Case in Both-And
Ralph Lauren recently launched Ask Ralph, an AI styling tool inside its app. Customers can ask what to wear to a concert or how to pair a blazer and instantly receive styled, shoppable looks. That is fast creativity at work, responsive and scalable.
But here is where it gets interesting. Ask Ralph could also become a platform for slow creativity. Imagine the AI explaining the story behind a garment, connecting a cable knit sweater to its archival inspiration or a blazer to the collection that first defined Ralph Lauren’s American vision. Imagine recommendations filtered and annotated by human stylists so that every look carries the brand’s taste and voice. Imagine a bridge from quick outfit prompts to immersive heritage experiences in flagship stores.
Efficiency layered with storytelling. Response layered with resonance. Calories with soul. That is the future of both-and.
Designing the Journey
Marketers often frame this as a binary. Fast versus slow. AI versus human. But the winners will be those who choreograph both across the customer journey.
In awareness, fast cycles spark attention while slow cycles anchor meaning. In consideration, quick nudges and remarketing live alongside deeper storytelling. In decision, urgency triggers are reinforced by heritage and proof. In onboarding, responsive guides meet immersive brand ethos. In loyalty, community and narrative create salience while trend prompts keep participation alive.
The framework is simple. At any moment ask three questions: Am I solving for response or resonance? What is the cultural tempo? What is the customer’s mindset right now? The answers tell you when to move fast, when to slow down, and when to do both at once.
Calories and Soul
The future of creativity is not efficiency alone. It is not craft alone. It is both. Fast cycles keep us present. Slow craft makes us unforgettable.
Good ideas fill the funnel. Great ideas have soul. They create an echo that stirs the spirit and leave their imprint long after the moment passes. The marketer’s challenge is to design for both response and resonance. Calories and soul. Speed and depth. Fast for response. Slow for resonance. Together they create the echo that moves markets.
