Let’s talk about Ryan Reynolds.

Actor? Yes. Charming? Sure. Canadian? Absolutely. But marketing genius? Pump the brakes, ADWEEK .

Once again, the advertising world is tripping over itself to praise the man like he’s the second coming of David Ogilvy, all because of a shiny little PR diversion masquerading as a brand campaign. If you missed it, Ryan Reynolds' agency (Maximum Effort — ironic name for what amounts to TikTok-level commitment) recently dropped an ad for a tech company featuring Coldplay’s “X&Y” era emotions and, get this, the Coldplay singer's ex-wife Gwyneth Paltrow is in the creative. That’s right, they used a connected celebrity as a smokescreen to rewrite the headlines and change the public narrative on the CEO cheating scandal.

And everyone’s clapping like trained seals at SeaWorld.

I have been getting slack from people over at Instagram for posting about being Jewish (I was born like this, get over it), so here I will share the other side of me... creativity. If you know me, you know I don’t shy away from speaking my mind. So fine, let’s pivot from cultural commentary to something a bit less controversial but just as personal: my love-hate relationship with constraints in creative work. Yeah, you heard that right. Today I’m going to drop some truth bombs about how having less, smaller budgets, tighter deadlines, fewer resources, you name it, can actually make you more creative...and yes this is a theme in my book, so please, go buy it!

Here’s the thing: I absolutely, 100%, without hesitation, hate everything about what’s happening with AI clones of creatives. This isn’t innovation. It’s creative extinction dressed up as "progress."

Creativity is being devalued, and it’s not just a problem—it’s a crisis. If we don’t wake up to what’s happening, we’re heading for a future where getting paid to be creative could disappear entirely. Let me explain.

Over the past few months, we’ve seen a troubling trend in industries like advertising and marketing. Agencies are laying off some of the best creatives out there, replacing them with AI-driven tools that are unproven, uninspired, and—let’s be honest—incapable of matching human insight and nuance. Yet these agencies are still charging clients top dollar, pretending the magic is still there. Spoiler alert: it’s not.

If you have ever seen me speak at a conference or listened to any of my podcast interviews, you will know I am a little bit of a broken record when it comes to my belief that brands need to stand out and be different. There are a lot of ways to be different, but no matter what anyone tells you, meaningful difference is the cornerstone of brand value.

Many years ago, working with a data research client, we conducted an experiment where we created 3 new brands. These brands were over the top "offensive" and were supposed to turn people off and insight rage. The three bands (pictured) were a beer brand for older men who love barely legal women, a soda for women who were victimized by #MeToo, and my favorite, Thong Diapers.

I get asked all the time if I have kids, and I always answer the same way. "I have been traveling 100 thousand miles a year for work for a decade and often relied on the kindness of strangers to save me from boredom, so I am sure I have at least a few" (if you are an HR professional, please note that this is just a joke) but the truth is I do have babies all over North America and even a few in scattered around the UK, Brazil, and Australia.

The babies I am talking about are my ideas and my work.