A creative POV in the Answer Economy

There’s a lot of understandable anxiety around AI and what it means for brands, creativity and how people discover things online. But honestly, from where I’m sitting as a creative, this feels far more like an opportunity than a threat. 

At Tangerine, we spend our time helping brands earn attention in culture, not just buy it, and that principle becomes even more important in this new landscape. Because while technology is evolving quickly, the fundamentals of human connection really aren’t. People still gravitate towards stories, personalities and ideas that make them feel something. They still want to be entertained, surprised, informed or emotionally pulled in. And that’s important, because the systems deciding what gets surfaced, from algorithms to LLMs, are increasingly looking for the same signals. Human attention remains the strongest indicator to algorithms that something is genuinely valuable and worth recommending. 

The brands that will thrive in this new era aren’t necessarily the ones producing the most content. They’re the ones creating worlds, personalities and points of view that people want to spend time with. 

As creatives, we’ve always loved creating things that pull people in. A story that sends you down a rabbit hole. A voice that feels instantly recognisable. A campaign that makes you want to see what happens next. If anything, this new landscape, and the tools we’re using to search, increase the value of those things rather than reducing them. 

That’s why I think this moment puts more value on creativity, not less. 

The internet is already crowded with work that looks the same, sounds the same and disappears almost as quickly as it arrives. The ideas that cut through are usually the ones with a distinctive personality and a level of craft that makes them feel unmistakably human. 

And this is where the craft matters more than ever. 

Art direction, design, writing, casting, tone, format. All the ingredients that give work its personality and stop it disappearing into a sea of sameness. As more tools become available to everyone, taste and judgement become even more valuable. 

The interesting thing is that audiences haven’t suddenly become robots because AI exists. If anything, people are becoming more selective with their attention. They spend time with brands that intrigue them, entertain them or make them curious enough to keep exploring. 

That’s the challenge for creative teams now. Not just making work that gets seen, but making work people genuinely want more of. 

Internally, we’re talking about it as, adapting to the system without losing your soul. 

Liquid Death is a great example of this. They’ve managed to make a category as vast as water into something people want to spend time with. People don’t follow the brand because they’re thirsty, they follow it because they’re interested in what they’ll do next. They aren’t just publishing content, they’ve created a world with personality and a point of view that’s interesting enough for people to keep exploring, meaning LLMs see the brand as an important authority and recommend it more often. 

New environments have always pushed creativity forward. They force new behaviours and new ways of thinking. Historically, those moments produced interesting leaps in creative work. 

Technology may influence how ideas are discovered, but it doesn’t decide why people care. That’s still our job, even in the Intelligence Age. 

And if anything, that responsibility feels more exciting than ever.