Chinese ad and marketing agency BlueFocus has reportedly halted all its outsourcing for “creative design, proposal writing, copywriting, and short-term employees” in favour of generative AI.
An email seen by Chinese news outlet Madison Boom from BlueFocus’ procurement department said that “In order to curb the trend of hollowing out core competencies, and to lay the foundation for fully embracing AIGC [artificial intelligence-generated content]” BlueFocus’ management had decided “to completely stop four outsourcing expenses related to creative design, program writing, copywriting, and short-term employees with immediate effect.”
In fact, it made clear that its Operations and Purchasing department would not review any new purchase or expenditure orders and that payments that had already been reviewed would be suspended.
Any issuing of new purchase orders for creative work would be met with “severe punishment!” (exclamation in original).
While copywriters and creatives might tremble at the thought of being replaced by the machines, it seems the corporate bean counters and investors were quite taken with the news.
BlueFocus’ share price increased by 2.4 per cent over the course of the day when the news initially broke on 12 April. Since then, it has increased another 3.6 per cent.
Is this the beginning of the end for adland? It remains to be seen how BlueFocus’ clients will react to the news.
