OK Cool Gave Me a Headache and Lot of Positive Thoughts About AI for Marketing

Maybe creativity can't survive the world we've built WITHOUT AI

This fun—if visually chaotic—report on Gen Z consumption from OK Cool (Gatekeeping is So Boomer Coded, lord even the title makes me feel old) made me exceptionally hopeful about the future of marketing. Obviously, there’s panic about AI replacing creative work, but reading this makes clear to me that our world actually REQUIRES brands to utilize AI to stay relevant. That the many platforms, memes, trends and voices a brand would have to meet/copy/revive/ignore/scale are impossible for a human or team of humans to do alone. The best brand moves will involve embedding marketers, social-media managers, content creators, brand owners—whoever—directly into ongoing conversations and supercharging them with the best tech has to offer. That’s the only way to maintain brand guidelines while scaling how you meet consumers, speak their language, and share a genuine visual narrative.

AI + brand guidelines + human whimsy = success

AI is non-negotiable. The sheer volume of UGC platforms and lightning-fast virality cycles demand tools that let teams iterate at warp speed—auto-generating short video edits, cranking out templated TikTok cuts, testing color grades in seconds. Without that, you’re already behind the moment a new meme or hashtag erupts. And for brands, you have to not only move at warp speed, but also keep your codes in check. A brand is worth nothing if it’s “viral” content is interchangeable with every other brand.

AI doesn’t invent tomato bags.

Yet Gen Z, bred in a post-gatekeeping world, accepts nothing less than full-blown authenticity, uniqueness, and excitement. Case in point: that “tomato bag.” Jonathan Anderson—Creative Director at Loewe before moving to Dior—understood that fusing a bizarre silhouette with luxury craftsmanship would upend the internet. No AI in the world would’ve dreamed up a tomato-shaped tote. Once it dropped, fashion obsessives devoured every UGC remix.

This report was a top level look at what constitutes culture today. It’s messy, that’s for sure. Brands can’t broadcast polished ads and expect buy-in—they must be present where Gen Z already lives: in TikTok duets, Discord threads, niche Instagram circles. That doesn’t require launching a formal “community campaign” with KPIs; it means simply paying attention and being ready to respond—sometimes within hours.

Creativity requires breathing room. AI can give us that.

So we shouldn’t worry about AI replacing creative spark - we should worry about being able to tell the best brand stories all over the internet and IRL. Because it’s damn hard. AI is like the goody two shoes intern handling grunt work—resizing assets, generating base cuts, even drafting caption options, occasionally dropping in moments of genius, but mostly letting his/her human superiors do what they do best - injecting humor, irony, and context. AI tools letting teams push multiple concept versions in minutes highlights not a new platform to master, but the breathing room to notice sudden trends: a random TikTok sound, a Discord rant, or a fruit-inspired aesthetic bubbling up in subculture memes.