Marty Hungerford is BRX's Chief Innovation Officer and Founding Partner, redefines how creative agencies deliver value through technology, insights and craft.
With over 25 years of experience, he has led digital, creative and strategic teams to top-notch multinational networks and independent agencies, supporting some of Australia's most iconic brands, including Optus, Medibank, AGL, Agralia Post, Hostplus and Youui.
He focuses on transforming both BRX and its clients' businesses through practical applications of AI, embedding generation tools in strategy, copying, images, videos, music and audio. These technologies are used not only to increase creative output, but to promote efficiency, reduce production costs, and accelerate time to market.
LBB> What is the most impactful way AI is helping you in your current role?
Marty> AI is completely shaping our business and affecting every role in the entire organization. Two applications stand out in particular.
The first is improving creative products. AI offers a wide range of target segment campaigns across a wide range of channels and formats, allowing teams to produce highly creative, consistently impactful works. Equally important is to ensure that this quality can be maintained on a large scale across a large number of deployments.
The second is how to enable teams to improve their processes. For example, by building compliance checkers and automating dispatch systems, we reduce errors and accelerate output. Essentially, we are smarter and less difficult.
LBB> We hear a lot about AI driving efficiency and time savings. But is there a way to see technology bringing qualitative improvements to your work?
Marty> Definitely so – and there's data to prove it. The ability to create images and videos that reflect segmentation and personalization, as well as the ability to develop custom GPTSs that match the tone of the brand's voice are both really powerful examples of this.
In the initial client deployment, making data-based decisions is essential. It's especially important for businesses like us, who are built around delivering commercial results to their clients rather than chasing awards. For this purpose, we performed a multivariant test to validate the use of AI.
Spoiler Alerts: Advertising that leverages AI to enhance creative products is consistently more effective. We look at BRX's partnership with Energy Company AGL to bring generation AI capabilities to marketing.
LBB>What are the biggest challenges in working with AI as a creative expert? Also, how did you overcome them?
Marty> Creatives have always embraced new technology, so I'll take some umbreage to this question. Rather than viewing it as a challenge, we accept it and make full use of it effectively. Otherwise, it feels a bit ridiculous.
Creatives are passionate, curious, natural experimenters, and they are truly the qualities needed to make the most of AI. AI is far from being a non-deficiency, and is another tool that amplifies those strengths and expands what is possible.
LBB> How do you balance the use of AI with your own creative instincts and intuition?
Marty> Creative instincts are more important than ever in the age of AI. Take something simple like generating a list of headings from a single-minded proposition. Among the options, some will inevitably be awful, but most of the time it is worth building sparks and clever angles of insight. If not, its absence is often equally useful – it encourages you to reconsider, reconstruct and refine your input for better results.
Therefore, instincts and intuition are not reduced by AI. They are everything. They are things that allow you to find gold, shape the output and ultimately increase the work.
lbb> And how do you ensure that AI-generated works maintain authenticity and a sense of human touch?
Marty> For me, authenticity comes back to the strength of ideas, brands, and strategies. Take the death of a liquid, for example. Their ads are AI-driven on the side, and even better for that. They lean against the quirks and oddities of AI, and in doing so the humor itself becomes a human touch, often amplified by clever editing and delivery.
When I talk about authenticity, I mean keeping it true to the brand – whether it's the brand of the client or the creative voice of the artist himself. The good news is that both still images and video allow for the absolute development of unique styles using generated assets. Videos are usually generated from keyframes, but styles can be refined through reference codes, seed techniques, and token experiments. Over time, this creates a recognizable and consistent creative identity.
Do you think there are misunderstandings or misconceptions about the ways we are currently talking about AI in the LBB>Industry?
Marty> There are two major misconceptions in my view.
The first is the belief that AI cannot think ingeniously or creatively. A strong counter to this came in 2016 when Deep Mind Alphago defeated China's go-grandmaster Kezzy.
After his loss, Ke Zee said:
What stood out was not just the victory, but the way Alphago used the novel “nonhuman” strategy, which surprised even the most important players. It is the purest form of creativity, finding solutions no one has ever considered before.
The second misconception is that AI can magically create ads on its own. The reality is that creating powerful work with AI typically involves combining multiple platforms and then layering traditional editing and post-production techniques. Human expertise and crafts remain essential. AI is a powerful tool, but it is part of the process and not the whole answer.
LBB> What ethical considerations come to mind when generating or supporting creative content using AI?
Marty> There are many ethical considerations worth discussing, but the most pressing aspects of my view are intellectual property and copyright. We took this seriously by educating the entire team and making it clear that the individual is responsible for avoiding mentioning when encouraging a particular artist or a particular work.
In addition to this, there are strict IP checks in place to ensure that you never use someone's portrait without your consent. For us, protecting originality and respecting the rights of creators is not an option. This is the fundamental principle of working with AI.
LBB> Have you seen the attitude towards recent changes in AI? If so, what do you think?
Marty> There is definitely a huge fear surrounding AI, but we have worked so hard to change that perception. For us, this is one of the most powerful and exhilarating creative tools ever developed and I feel really excited to be here to see it actually acted on.
The key to turning fear into opportunities is to reinforce your skill set not diminished. It's been amplified. AI does not replace creativity. It will enlarge.
Broadly speaking, do the current industry conversations about AI feel generally positive or generally worried about the future of creativity?
It is confusing that AI from so-called “creative” people has been rejected so completely. History is full of similar examples – remember (and some still do) the photographers who rejected when social media first appeared.
But do you have such an extraordinary creative tool at your fingertips and don't want to accept it? That's really shocking to me.
LBB> Do you think AI has the potential to create a whole new form of art and media that is impossible previously? If so, what do you think?
Marty> absolutely. Humans are remarkably unable to grasp the true impact of new technologies. So, I can't predict the answer, but that's exactly the point.
For now, AI can invent us is beyond our understanding. That's why it's so exciting. I look forward to discovering what comes next.
LBB>Thinking about your own role/discipline, what impact do you think AI will have on your medium-term future? To what extent will you change how people in your role work?
Marty> AI has already touched on every aspect of our way of working, from visioning ideas to storyboarding and creating assets. In the medium term, its biggest impact will be reducing friction, breaking barriers, and making amazing ideas come back to life easier and faster.
Ultimately, the world needs more creativity, and AI is the gateway to unleash it.
