AI speeds up the work. Who sets the direction?

Asking for “a creative campaign for my business” leaves too many decisions open. Are we trying to encourage a first visit, explain a complicated service or give someone a reason to return? Each objective calls for a different conversation with the customer.

Before generating assets, it helps to identify what belongs to the business: a particular way of working, an overlooked need or an experience that customers mention without being prompted. That material might come from an interview, a visit to the premises or the questions your sales team receives.

AI can help organize that context, find tensions and explore approaches. Direction takes shape when we choose what belongs at the center and what to leave out.

In a short story experiment, Anil Doshi and Oliver Hauser found that access to AI ideas improved ratings of creativity, writing quality and enjoyment, particularly among participants with lower initial creativity. At the same time, Stories written with AI assistance were more similar to one another. Study published in Science Advances, 2024.

Yun Wan and Yoram M. Kalman explored a modification: providing plot ideas generated through different AI personas. In their March 2026 revision, they found that this diversity of inputs could preserve the diversity of stories compared with a condition without AI. Study and version consulted.

These experiments focus on short fiction. Our interpretation for creative work is a question about how to organize the process: are we broadening our starting points or requesting variations on the same idea?

Imagine a neighborhood bakery that wants to attract more weekday visits.

A broad request might produce appetizing images and lines about tradition, quality and passion. Those are possible options. To choose between them, we need to know the place.

Suppose the bakery makes a second batch at four in the afternoon, when many people are heading home. That detail opens up a specific direction: fresh bread as part of the journey back.

We could compare three approaches: show the craft behind that batch, focus on its timing or tell stories about the small rituals of people who stop by. Changing the color of the same photograph does not create those differences. It changes the presentation of a single approach.

The decision depends on what the bakery can deliver. If the schedule varies, promising hot bread at four every day could cause problems. If the aim is to attract afternoon visits, a beautiful piece about breakfast may be solving a different problem.

AI can develop alternatives within each approach. The business supplies the truth that makes it possible to choose and deliver on them.

1. Write down the change you want. Define what someone should understand or do after seeing the work. “Build brand awareness” needs more detail: recognize the name, understand the offer or find the premises?

2. Gather your own material before asking for ideas. Use conversations, products, common questions and real constraints. Separate verified facts from assumptions and flag any claims that need confirmation.

3. Explore approaches that change the focus. Ask for proposals built around different motivations, moments or arguments. Then describe each approach in a sentence without mentioning its visual style. If they all say the same thing, there is more exploration to do.

4. Agree on how you will choose. Assess whether the proposal communicates the objective, rests on something true, feels recognizable for the brand and can be made with the available resources. Name the person responsible for the decision. Taste has a place, but it needs to explain its reasoning.

5. Make a version and check what matters. Show it to people in the intended audience and ask what they understood. Where the objective allows it, observe a related action: relevant inquiries, bookings or attributable visits. Decide how to collect that signal before publishing. Positive comments from the team answer a different question.

Talking about judgment can become an elegant way to defend personal preferences. An experienced person can hold on to a weak idea or dismiss something because it feels unfamiliar.

Direction needs a named person responsible for the decision, even when several people contribute. The business confirms what it can promise; the creative team proposes how to express it; the project lead resolves disagreements using the agreed criteria. In a small team, one person may fill several of these roles.

That responsibility includes execution and testing. A promising idea can fail through unreadable type, an awkward translation or a website that makes the next step difficult. The result takes shape through those details and needs to be reviewed against what happens afterward.

At Umbral, we connect artificial intelligence, strategy, design and development to carry decisions through to creative work and digital experiences that can be tested. If you are preparing a campaign, tell us what your business needs to achieve. Let us start by choosing a direction worth putting into practice.