Ogilvy Germany: The Best Future Creatives Will Need Non-Creative Skills
Ogilvy Group Germany's Chief People Officer argues that the most effective future creatives will need skills that have 'nothing to do with creativity' — like prompting, curation and systems thinking — to work well with AI, a provocation about how creative roles are being reshaped.
The argument
According to Ogilvy Group Germany's Chief People Officer, the best creatives of the near future will need capabilities that, on the surface, have nothing to do with traditional craft — the skills to direct, curate and orchestrate AI tools rather than only to originate ideas by hand. Horizont reported the view around 15 September. It is a pointed provocation about how creative work is changing, and what agencies should hire for.
The claim is not that creativity stops mattering, but that the surrounding skills required to apply it are shifting fast.
How AI is reshaping creative roles
Generative AI is changing the creative process from making everything by hand to directing systems that generate options at scale. That elevates a different skill set: prompting, editorial judgement, taste, curation and the ability to steer a machine toward a distinctive result. Increasingly, the value lies less in producing the raw material and more in choosing and shaping it.
Taste becomes the scarce asset. When anyone can generate a thousand options, the person who can pick the right one, and knows why, is worth more than the person who can only make one. Judgement, not output, is the differentiator.
The 'non-creative' skills that matter
The capabilities Ogilvy is pointing to — systems thinking, editorial discernment, technical fluency, the ability to brief and direct AI — are not creativity in the classic sense, but they are what make creativity productive in an AI-augmented workflow. They sit alongside craft rather than replacing it.
For agencies, this reframes hiring and training. The question is no longer only 'can they make great work?' but 'can they orchestrate tools and talent to produce great work at speed?' — a broader, more hybrid profile than the traditional creative.
What agencies and creatives should do
If you lead a creative team, invest in the hybrid skills now: fluency with AI tools, editorial judgement and the ability to direct rather than only to make. The teams that master this will out-produce those clinging to a purely manual craft model.
For individual creatives, the message is to lean into taste and direction. The durable advantage is not competing with AI on output, but developing the judgement to steer it toward work that is genuinely distinctive — the part machines cannot yet do.
Quick FAQ
What did Ogilvy Germany's CPO argue?
That the best future creatives will need skills with 'nothing to do with creativity' — such as prompting, curation, editorial judgement and systems thinking — to work effectively with AI, per Horizont around 15 September 2026.
How is AI reshaping creative roles?
It shifts the work from making everything by hand to directing systems that generate options at scale, elevating taste, curation and judgement over raw production.
What should creatives focus on?
Developing taste and direction — the judgement to steer AI toward genuinely distinctive work — rather than competing with machines on output.
The provocation isn't that creativity stops mattering — it's that when a machine can generate a thousand options, the scarce asset becomes the taste to pick the right one and the judgement to know why. The durable creative advantage won't be competing with AI on output; it'll be the direction, curation and discernment that steer it toward work only a human would choose. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
The takeaway: AI shifts creative value from making to directing — invest in hybrid skills like editorial judgement, curation and tool fluency, because when anyone can generate a thousand options, the taste to choose the right one is the scarce asset.
Is your creative team building the taste and direction skills to steer AI — or still competing with it on raw output?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
Sources: HORIZONT.
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
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