Ideas Are Easy: Why You Should Focus on Execution in the Age of AI Video
With AI at everyone’s fingertips, ideas are even more abundant. What’s going to separate your brand is whether you can execute.
Ideas are the easy part. Always have been.
In the days not so far past, they may have started with a team sitting around a room, dry erase markers in hand, messy white board scribbles in front of them.
Some of the best ideas emerged from a few hours of crumpled up pieces of notebook paper, group laughter, or shared life experience that creative agencies thought would translate well on screen.
Nowadays, idea generation tends to be a lot more solitary, thanks to AI.
The easy part has gotten even easier.
I came across the image to the right during a recent LinkedIn scroll session, and I thought to myself, there is no better representation of the way we work right now than this.
In the age of AI, there are so many more ideas available to solve each problem right at your fingertips.
There is nothing wrong with using this tool in itself, but if you’re going to use AI for video, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Ideas are the easy part. Always have been. If you’re going to create effective video in the age of AI, focus on execution.
Everyone is Creative Now
One of the biggest developments to emerge from AI is the abundance of ideas. It’s given internal teams more flexibility to generate content strategies in-house, cutting down on the cost that may have once been allocated to a creative agency, advertising firm, or video production company.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you’re focused on making sure your prompts are generating ideas that are consistent with your brand values. You still have to set up manual, human guardrails for where you can push your creative, where you can take risks, and where you should remain true to what has worked in the past, and what is working in the present.
Ideas ≠ Execution
A good idea is just a place to start. But just because you now have a team of idea generators, doesn’t mean that team is equipped to handle the execution.
If you can’t execute, you have nothing.
This is where creative agencies and video production companies play a significant role in guaranteeing your success. They’ll be able to take a creative brief that you provide with your ideas, give it fresh eyes, poke holes where appropriate, and start mapping out a plan to execute them.
The more AI video has emerged, the less emphasis has been put on quality of execution. That’s a dangerous place for your brand to go. People are the ones who make buying decisions. So if you want to sell something of value, you have to offer something of value.
Vet Your Ideas With Actual Human Audiences
Perhaps the biggest downside to AI ideas is the lack of human touch. The more AI-driven content has hit the marketplace, the less soul has been in the work. And the more everybody’s work is starting to look the same.
Remember, if your work is going to look the same as everyone else’s, you’re not going to create a gap between you and your competition.
So if you’re going to use AI for content generation, make sure you’re vetting it with actual human audiences. Don’t settle on thinking you’ve unlocked a million dollar idea after reading the first output that you get back from a prompt. These AI models are all learning from each other. So if it generates an idea for you, chances are it’s generated the same idea for dozens of others.
Refine, revise, and run these ideas by actual humans to see if they resonate the way you want them to.
The major takeaway here is, AI is going to help you generate more ideas than ever. Don’t drown in opportunity. Ideas are easy. Execution and consistency are not. But that’s where you’ll achieve real success.