Casey Bird joins Ben and Eléonore on this new episode of The Impossible Brief. Casey is a creative director and the founder of Studio Ru. After years in traditional ad agencies and Channel 4's partnerships team, she used AI to build a business around family life, something she says wouldn't have been possible without it. This lively conversation explores the creative freedom AI can give, how it's changing who gets to run a business, why starting with something silly beats starting with a deadline, and the three questions leaders should be asking their teams about AI.
Subscribe to The Impossible Brief on Substack
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:12:19
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Now I can take a script that I've got in my head a stupid, weird idea and have it visualised within 24 hours. And I think that's incredible.
00:00:12:21 - 00:00:22:21
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Hello and welcome to The Impossible Brief. This is a podcast about leading when technology moves faster than organisations can change. My name is Ben Taylor and I'm joined by my co-host, Eleanor.
00:00:22:21 - 00:00:23:00
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Hi, Ben.
00:00:23:00 - 00:00:43:15
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And today we're joined by Casey Bird, who's the creative director and founder of Studio Ru. Casey spent years in traditional ad agencies and later inside channel four partnership team, working on brand partnerships with the likes of Google and Giffgaff, bringing brands into cultural moments like the Paralympics.
00:00:43:15 - 00:00:53:15
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
During her time there, she also pioneered a service for smaller brands that used AI for lower cost ad creation. Welcome, Casey.
00:00:53:15 - 00:00:55:15
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Hi. I'm excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
00:00:55:15 - 00:00:57:15
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Hi, Casey. Can you tell us how did you start Studio Ru?
00:00:57:15 - 00:01:17:06
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Studio Ru started during my maternity leave, which was in 2024. I became completely obsessed with how I could change creativity for clients and brand experiences, but also how it could open up my own opportunities as a creative director and a mother and a woman.
00:01:17:06 - 00:01:45:21
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
So a light bulb went off in my head, and it really made me think, you know, if I could design a career around my life, what would that look like? So Studio Ru was born October-November 2025, and from then it's just grown as a creative studio, work with brilliant clients and brilliant brands in all different ways, really blending creativity, production and technology all together.
00:01:46:00 - 00:01:56:00
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
I think that's amazing. Casey, that AI as a technology has allowed you to launch your own business, and that is something that you wouldn't have been able to do previously.
00:01:56:00 - 00:02:17:01
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yeah, exactly that. I've always been obsessed with wanting to start my own thing and create a business that works around me, and previously, I wasn't really ever able to do that because to work in the industry and work in the creative industry, traditionally you need to be working in, you know, big companies who have access to brilliant big brands and budgets.
00:02:17:03 - 00:02:39:20
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
So now I'm able to kind of combine all those skills and my experience, plus AI, which is opening up the world of kind of how we can produce creative for businesses and brands and then getting them to work with these awesome founders and brands that I probably wouldn't have ever been able to work with before. And I can do that all in my own way.
00:02:39:22 - 00:02:45:01
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
How do you find the clients are welcoming that set of skills?
00:02:45:01 - 00:03:06:01
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I think it's a real mixture. I think we're so at the early, early stages of this hybrid production; which is what I call it. I'm definitely not an all AI production service. That's just not what I want to do as Studio Ru. For me, my approach is very much let's look at the assets you already have and how can we expand those assets?
00:03:06:03 - 00:03:32:12
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
A term that I'm using a lot when I'm talking to clients is creative asset ROI. Meaning how can we take the assets that you've already got and expand them so that you're not churning out and less amounts of production budget? I think it's a really inefficient way that we've been working for so long. Like, you've got to do a shoot, you know, get a great product shot going, and then they sit in your folder collecting dust for the next five years.
00:03:32:18 - 00:04:04:02
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Actually, let's re-access those brilliant assets and files that photographer has photograph that creative directors already looked at. And how can we bring them into your new future campaigns, whether it's changing the background, merging two images together, expanding them. So very much, that is my approach with clients. And I think a lot of clients are very protective of their brand world and their brand assets and nervous around, you know, everything that's going on with AI.
00:04:04:04 - 00:04:30:20
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
But equally, I think particularly for mid-sized brands and fast growth brands, they can't afford to not utilise AI in a way. And for me, what I love doing is working with clients to find what feels comfortable for them and for their brand authenticity. And how can we bring technology in a way that feels right. So it might be we only use AI to enhance existing images.
00:04:30:20 - 00:04:48:23
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It might be that we are using AI to take an image and turn it into a video. So there's so many different ways we might not be touching gen AI at all, when we might just be working with the strategy team to create systems where, you know, we're able to speed up, and so the strategists can focus on the bits they love.
00:04:49:00 - 00:05:16:02
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
So I like to bring the client on the journey, and we talk about production and how that looks. And I like to very much keep production in the same way that I would have done if I was working in a traditional way. So, you know, concepting, storyboarding, getting all that signed off, we might do a casting brief. So I'm doing that for a client in Paris this week, actually, where they have five different sort of characters that they want to create to tell their brand story.
00:05:16:07 - 00:05:30:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And we've done a bit of a casting brief, and then we've kind of essentially got a casting line up of different characters we used, bought some from stock imagery, etc..
00:05:30:00 - 00:05:40:00
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
How comfortable are the clients with these tools at the moment? Are they ready to dive in or is it a cautious approach?
00:05:40:00 - 00:05:55:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It's so varied. Those mid-sized brands are so up for experimenting. They're like "let's just try it, let's break it. Let's see." So they are up for trying, but I am also very much there to guide them.
00:05:55:00 - 00:06:03:02
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Do you have key questions that you ask leaders to guide your way into their work?
00:06:03:03 - 00:06:24:05
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yeah, absolutely. So every single project is so different, but it's about starting with the problem. Definitely not starting with the tool. And I think that's where a lot of people get really overwhelmed with AI in general. We're so obsessed with the tool because I think it's like drummed into our head, but actually it's a problem that is driving me mad at the minute in the business. How can we use this new technology to help make life easier in whatever way that can be?
00:06:24:05 - 00:06:35:13
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
So I would do exactly the same. Just a lot of listening, because you don't want to be automating those bits, because that's a bit that makes the founder buzz, the creative director buzz, the team be who they are, the human parts. So it's about how can we make the bits that they don't like.
00:06:35:13 - 00:06:45:13
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
That really correlates with that idea of AI enhancement that the industry and people are talking about.
00:06:45:14 - 00:07:04:22
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And I really like that idea that you would focus on what does the human like and what can we help them be better at without taking away that, that part that they like? It's really interesting. I think play seems to be playing a big role in the way you approach a brief, can you tell us more?
00:07:05:00 - 00:07:28:06
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yeah, absolutely. So I think for me, the first thing I'd always say, if people were wanting to learn more about AI or upscale or explore the tools would be to absolutely take it away from your job, take it away from the client brief. Take it away from what your boss is stressing you out and telling you to do, and take it into a fun space.
00:07:28:08 - 00:07:53:21
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And workshops. A workshop I do with creative teams who obviously are there such creative minds, but a lot of the time they're working on client projects and deadlines. Is a workshop called "Start with Silly", and it's all about taking the tools out of, you know, if you if you make people use these tools to answer a client deadline, it's so stressful; so how do we use how to explore these tools in a really fun way.
00:07:53:23 - 00:08:17:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And so that's kind of what I did. First of all, I was trying to get my head out of, you know, corporate world and commercial world and just go back into creativity. I really would say that these tools have enabled me to reignite my creativity instead of reducing it, because I had a bit of time when I was on maternity and stuff, I was like thinking, okay, what could I do to test this?
00:08:17:00 - 00:08:36:19
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And I just let my mind wander and just be stupid. And, you know, a lot of creative people have weird thoughts. And something I love talking about is like embracing the weird, and AI enables you to do that. And so one of the questions I had was, "Would Santa take Manjuro if it was sent to the North Pole?"
00:08:36:20 - 00:08:54:12
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Like, is that a possibility for him? So I started just writing this stupid script, did not touch any tools, just started writing this stupid script that was just like, yeah, okay, this is like an interview style, Vogue style, and he's like looking really slick. So I did lots of different versions of like how Santa looked and what that looked like.
00:08:54:12 - 00:09:14:16
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I kind of drew things down. I'd found Pinterest images, and then I sort of took that into the tools, and it was a good way of practicing, and I was making it, breaking it, doing it wrong, starting again and finding these little hacks that just kind of worked. So yeah, I created this, you know, from script to mood board to video.
00:09:14:17 - 00:09:33:06
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I ended up with this video of Santa talking to camera about his like, new glow up. And, you know, I was like, what would happen if Santa was fit? Like, does it go to his head? Is he doing a fashion? Who's he doing a fashion collab with? And I was like, obviously Balenciaga - he is doing this one off Red bomber.
00:09:33:08 - 00:09:53:03
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Then he's like in a photo shoot. So I was using all my experience of working in editorial, being on fashion shoots, what happens in the makeup room and then like doing cutaways to Mrs. Claus, just cringing at him and saying, like, her and the elves kind of laugh about it in the background. And it ends on, "to be honest with you, I preferred him fat."
00:09:53:05 - 00:10:11:15
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And then there's drink. And I was like, oh, this is a cool way of experimenting with steam and how that looks on with AI, and I didn't really care if anyone else found it funny or liked it. I was just chuckling away to myself in my living room, just finding this hilarious. And then, you know, all these different ideas were happening.
00:10:11:15 - 00:10:35:17
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It's like, okay, what about 90s? You know, I was born in 87, so I was a 90s kid. What if all these 90s cartoon characters are now, you know, in their 30s and doing this exposé type podcast where they're like, tell all because I've been listening to a lot of like, Call Her Daddy. And, you know, it's like exposé podcast
00:10:35:17 - 00:10:59:18
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
when I was on maternity, just walking the streets and be like, what? So I started thinking, okay, right, Funshine bear, toxic positivity, just playing into, like, cultural tropes and things that were going on in culture, society right now. But just take it into like stupidity. So I did this like mock-up fake podcast trailer and it was like super dramatic and it was like less rainbows, more receipts.
00:10:59:20 - 00:11:24:09
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And it was so fun. Again, just playing with the tools, breaking them, figuring it out. And then from there I took silly into more of a business mindset like, okay, cool, I can do this in a fun way. But now how could I bring this into solving a problem for clients? Still, using all the skills and experience that I have of working on brand projects and then sort of adapting it back?
00:11:24:15 - 00:11:34:15
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And that's so what I would tell anyone who is doesn't know, you know, where to start. I think just start with silly.
00:11:34:15 - 00:11:47:10
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
I love that idea because silly is fun. And then it means, you know, if you're trying it out in your evenings, it doesn't feel like you're going back to work, going back to your desk, you're actually mucking around, having fun, having a chuckle, and you can learn it at the same time.
00:11:47:10 - 00:11:59:10
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
It just feels different too. Oh, I've got to go back and I've got to go and learn this for for my job. Yes, it's a completely different mindset.
00:11:59:10 - 00:12:19:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Also as a creative person, getting a script off of the page and into visualisation is so cool. You know, previously you'd write a script and you would probably just die for client didn't like it or whatever, or you know, you can't do much with it, or you need to have a team of filmmakers to actually bring your script to life.
00:12:19:05 - 00:12:48:18
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Whereas now I can take a script that I've got in my head, a stupid, weird idea, and have it visualised within 24 hours. And I think that's also incredible for young people, young filmmakers who don't have access to resources, the colleges that, you know, the funds for that. So I'm so curious about all these young filmmakers who are using AI as a starting point before they want to move into the movie world, or whatever it might be, to use AI to express their creativity.
00:12:48:19 - 00:12:58:19
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And people who wouldn't necessarily have access to that. You know, in a normal world.
00:12:58:19 - 00:12:59:19
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah.
00:12:59:19 - 00:13:15:14
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
I was interested how excited you are about the use of AI specifically for creativity and how it helps you to be more creative. We do see some negativity, and there's absolutely there's a place for that, around it can take away some creativity because you're sort of outsourcing it, but it feels like any other tool.
00:13:15:16 - 00:13:27:07
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
It's only as good as the person that's using it, which is what I'm getting from you. I'm interested to hear the excitement that you have for the creative options that you have now at your disposal.
00:13:27:07 - 00:13:37:07
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Having use AI in many different ways over the last 2 or 3 years, I would most definitely be the first person to say that LLMs are not creative.
00:13:37:09 - 00:13:57:16
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I think it's a really great tool, is a great critical thinking partner to challenge us as creative because often we come with an idea and you're like, especially when I work at home and like, "is this a good idea? Is this the worst idea that you ever heard?" asking it to challenge you to find the holes, to already pretest what the client might say?
00:13:57:18 - 00:14:21:01
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
That is really, really useful. Reading audience insights, grabbing information, the temperature of the room based on, say, you know, Reddit threads or whatever it might be. But, you know, it's important to remember that LLMs, AI, etc. do not have original thought. Yeah, they are, you know, they're just aggregated a load of information from the internet, which yes, it's usually very biased and I see that a lot.
00:14:21:06 - 00:14:39:22
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I put in a man and a woman who, who I've designed to whatever, and I'm like, okay, the doctor is doing x, y, z, and always the man will become the doctor and the woman, etc.. You know, this tech company and the woman was working for the tech company, but straight away put the lanyard around the man. So I'm really aware of the biases there.
00:14:40:00 - 00:15:15:12
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It doesn't have any original thought and that is where the human brain comes in, and that has the advantage over anything else. AI cannot recreate our original thought, the weird things we think, the weird ideas we have, the how we're connecting dots together. That probably wouldn't make sense normally, but they just kind of work. It's that, it's that gut instinct, you know, and I, I talk a lot about the fear of us losing our gut instinct in the age of AI, because I think a lot of us use Claude or whatever.
00:15:15:14 - 00:15:38:16
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It gives us the answer, and we just take it as gospel even if we don't think it's right. So reminding ourselves as creative or just anyone, any kind of business people, to still be using our gut instinct when we know or when we think an idea, there's like a nugget of that that's like making sense, even though I, you know, is like, logically, this doesn't really work.
00:15:38:18 - 00:15:55:19
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
You are touching on something that's really big, which is the LLMs, they have the knowledge, you know, before you would have a dictionary, you would go to the library. Now you have that at your fingertips. And it's it reminds me of Wikipedia when I was in business school and we were asked, you know, it was like the rise of Wikipedia.
00:15:55:19 - 00:16:28:00
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And everybody was like, be very careful when you use it. You need to triple check your sources. Definitely. And it's very similar in the way that you need to have that you couldn't gut instinct. And I think it also connects to the critical thinking, that ability to doubt what you're being given back. What I hear from what you're saying is essentially AI, give me creative freedom because I can put on the page something that's in my head within hours, and then I can test it instead of having to wait, instead of having something that actually will never see the light of day.
00:16:28:00 - 00:16:40:07
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And I really like that because it's essentially it's just a way of being more creative and not less. And that's it's really nice. It puts it into a into a different light from all the negativity that we're hearing.
00:16:40:00 - 00:16:45:07
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
What's your opinion, Casey, on the impact of this across the creative industry as a whole?
00:16:45:00 - 00:16:51:07
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
It's a complex one. It's something that I most definitely battle with in my own head.
00:16:51:07 - 00:17:19:14
Casey Bird, Creative Director Studio Ru
Am I becoming part of the problem or whatever? And I think there's two thoughts that I'm observing. The first about the, you know, the impact it's having on the industry. You know, I think the production model and the bloating of the the production budgets has been a problem for so long, you know, before technology came around or whatever the cost of just shooting something in a studio has always been so expensive, which makes it so unacceptable for so many mid-sized brands.
00:17:19:14 - 00:17:42:20
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
So I think AI is actually just highlighting a lot of like the challenges in the creative industries, particularly ad agencies, etc. I can see why that is now impacting jobs and careers. And it is the fastest thing that's a hit are, you know, hit our wild 100 years or whatever it might be, and everyone is having to pivot plot twist really, really quickly.
00:17:42:22 - 00:18:11:05
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And I think the businesses that are doing that and embracing it, but not when I say embracing it. I also don't mean suddenly being like everything's AI because I also think I'm seeing that happen. And then a lot of businesses are like, whoa, actually, this is not working. So the businesses that are adopting it in a way that works for them, and measuring success not by AI adoption, measuring success by OK
00:18:11:06 - 00:18:41:01
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
if we do slot it in here and here around the people, how are we seeing the benefits? Is the work more challenging? Are we able to get more out at speedier time, etc.? So I think I kind of think the industry has been broken for ages and I think AI is like massively accelerated that. But when it comes to opportunities for me, I'm obviously an example of it where I could see there was a big change happening and coming and I jumped.
00:18:41:06 - 00:19:05:09
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Who knows whether that's the right or wrong decision. Obviously for me it is working. But what I love about AI is that from a business point of view, it is completely democratising. Who is able to build a business now, particularly tech businesses. You don't need coding experience, you don't need engineers, you don't need a huge team and expensive team of people to build an app, to build a business, to build a website, whatever it might be.
00:19:05:11 - 00:19:06:11
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah.
00:19:06:11 - 00:19:49:17
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And I think that's so interesting. And I love watching a lot of the women in AI communities and Lovable were really brilliant, as a no code build website. They invest a lot in, you know, the hackathons for women. So it allows people who maybe wouldn't have been able to fit into the mold of our industry, whether that's child caring responsibilities, having to take time out and can't get back in, salaries, etc. it's allowing them the opportunity to build something around their life and people who have had great life experience, but maybe not the traditional career ladder, and they probably got a great app idea or business idea that solves a problem that they've experienced.
00:19:49:19 - 00:20:10:15
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Now they can prototype it, get the MVP out, get people testing it within a week. And that's so cool. Like, I think we're going to see the unusual unicorns who are making a ton of cash and never had, you know, any code experience just from a very basic MVP, which is I think that's so like exciting.
00:20:10:15 - 00:20:17:15
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah. So so the opportunity for the creators, the creatives and the creators.
00:20:17:21 - 00:20:30:11
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah. To do so much more. So maybe the jobs and the bigger businesses are going to shrink in terms of number of jobs. But the opportunities for smaller micro businesses increases.
00:20:30:21 - 00:20:32:21
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Definitely micro business seeing that a lot.
00:20:30:21 - 00:20:31:21
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah.
00:20:32:21 - 00:20:40:11
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Are there a lot more nimble. They're able to you know I'm able to do more with less. I'm able to pull in.
00:20:40:11 - 00:20:59:05
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And one thing I love about what I've always wanted to do at Studio Ru was and make sure the people that I work with and get in on projects are also weird minds. People who don't fit into the mold, people who you know, parents or people who didn't fit into the system before. You know, I'm getting an AI creator.
00:20:59:06 - 00:21:21:05
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
He's a designer as well on a big project, and previously he was a graphic designer. He couldn't really fit into the mold of like where he fit, and now he just started his own thing. He's winning awards in like, creativity using AI, and I just love that. I'm like, right, let's just do some cool stuff.
00:21:21:05 - 00:21:21:09
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Yeah, that is very cool.
00:21:21:09 - 00:21:50:18
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And you like, you know how even ten, 15 years ago, all the big budget, like if we look at enterprise businesses so slightly bigger, like the type of businesses you would have been working on before you started Studio Ru, that was consolidated into the big agencies. And we're seeing that being completely fragmented, like the market is much more fragmented, which means less big budget, but much more like it's absolutely brilliant from an entrepreneur perspective, essentially. Right?
00:21:50:19 - 00:22:51:19
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:51:19 - 00:22:05:07
Eleonore Pratoussy, Head of Marketing Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And would you have advice to enterprise leaders? How do you think they should approach working with AI, and how do you think they should approach creativity, maybe with their agency?
00:22:05:07 - 00:22:22:07
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Leaders and enterprise leaders, who I have worked with quite a lot over the last year, brilliant people who I used to work with at Channel4, have gone on to lead businesses and in-house businesses who now we're like having chats and just, you know, it's so cool to be like "yeah, cool.
00:22:22:07 - 00:22:40:23
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I'd love to come in. And work with your team?." And there are three questions I always get them to think about and answer as leaders of teams, particularly creative marketing strategy teams or, you know, whatever it might be. The first one is we spoke about as previously, is are you asking your team what part of their job they love?
00:22:41:00 - 00:23:04:10
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And, you know, there's such a conflict between pressure from bosses and CEOs to be implementing AI. Like we've said before, Eleonore, and the team on the ground just kind of sabotaging it and not wanting to actually adopt it because there is so much news about redundancies and the fear of that. Yeah. So how are we connecting those two different panics together?
00:23:04:12 - 00:23:37:20
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I think the first question for me is like, are you asking your team what part of the job they love and don't want to offset to AI? We're so focused on efficiency and productivity and these key words like popping up again and again. But actually, let's focus on the parts of the job that fuel your team, that they want to do more of, and give the rest of that to the tools if you need to, you know, so that they can really feel like they have agency and power in this time of huge change.
00:23:37:22 - 00:23:57:05
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
The second is, how are you giving your team time and space to experiment and learn? And this goes back to what we were talking about. There's such panic that you don't want the first time, they're experiencing these tools and AI to be on, like massive client deadlines are so stressful. Like even the thought of it stressing me out.
00:23:57:07 - 00:24:18:04
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
How are we giving them time and space to fail, to learn, to test, and then put that back into practice in the workplace. And that might be that you need to give everyone one day a month. You might be, you know, Canva and a few other businesses, I've seen a sort of shutting down their department for a week and just dedicating the entire week to play and experimentation, and that's incredible.
00:24:18:10 - 00:24:43:16
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yes, it probably will have a short term impact on revenue and whatever it might be, but the longer term impact will be tenfold. It will be so, so good. And then the third one is that we spoke about this already. Again, it's like, how are you measuring success and reframing that if it's how quickly I was adopting AI and using AI in every section of their business, that's just never going to succeed.
00:24:43:18 - 00:25:06:15
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Instead, it's more interesting to look at it through the idea of, "okay, how is the work got better? Are our teams happier? Is there more time available for people? Are we able to improve the output of work?" But then also, you know, the happiness within the teams, people working late, you know, etc.. So I think there are kind of important things for leaders to be thinking about.
00:25:06:19 - 00:25:28:19
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
I really liked that first great reframe about the use of AI based on looking at your job and what you love about your job, and then let's take away the boring stuff so you can do more of what you love, rather than we're bringing in AI to take, you know, to do X, Y, and Z, whether you like it or not.
00:25:28:19 - 00:25:53:09
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
The reframe of what do you love about it? Okay, now we're going to allow you to do to do more of that or to do it better is as a as a mindset, I can see how that would land with people and they would want to embrace this more readily with that as a, as a, as an approach rather than what is traditionally been the, the approach to this of here, here come the tools...
00:25:53:09 - 00:25:55:09
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
...and there goes your job.
00:25:55:12 - 00:26:13:00
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Whether you like it or not. And everyone thinks I'm going to lose my job because of it. And I think what we've learned on the podcast today from you is that these tools can add to your toolset. It's part of your toolset, not a replacement.
00:26:13:00 - 00:26:21:14
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Yeah, I really hope so. And I think that that reframe definitely comes from watching and listening and seeing, you know, on LinkedIn, etc. a different podcast where people are constantly talking about efficiency and productivity.
00:26:21:14 - 00:26:40:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
And it really made me think I was like, this really shouldn't be the focus. But yeah, I'd be so interested if any leaders or, you know, bosses, however, are listening to this podcast. They ask, they use this framework to share what their teams say and learn.
00:26:40:14 - 00:26:50:00
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
So Casey, we call this the impossible brief because it is impossible to keep up to date with the speed that this is all moving.
00:26:50:02 - 00:27:16:21
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
And despite what is said on LinkedIn about how many AI experts there are out there, we don't feel like there are many because it's impossible to be an expert when it's moving that quickly. But what we can do is learn better. And what I'm interested in to hear is, how do you try and stay as close to the front of this as you can in your day to day life when it's moving so quickly?
00:27:16:22 - 00:27:37:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
For me, what I'm seeing a lot with Gen AI tools, for example, everyone's like "there's a new tool that's come out, there's a new platform." For me, they're all kind of the same. After a while, learning the foundation and ground work of kind of how can these tools enhance and add to our critical thinking is the most important part.
00:27:37:04 - 00:27:58:14
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
Which tool you use to do that, I think is kind of irrelevant. But again, going back to what we're saying is, like every time we have a problem or there's something that's niggling away or, you know, where there's a problem in your, your home life, whatever it might be, there's a problem in your community. How could we use a tool to help solve that and sort of working that way?
00:27:58:16 - 00:28:20:00
Casey Bird, Creative Director & Founder Studio Ru
I love following different AI artists who are using it as forms of expression and just then like looking at their workflow. So there's some really cool artist who I'm obsessed with following, like @niceaunties. @floam F-L-O-A-M. There's just interesting people who are taking creativity into new directions.
00:28:20:00 - 00:28:32:14
Ben Taylor, CEO Cassette & Co-host The Impossible Brief podcast
Thanks for listening to The Impossible Brief, a podcast by Cassette.
We help leaders navigate the impossible brief that is the AI transformation. Subscribe for more episodes and find all our articles on Substack.