AI is changing creative strategy in 2026

Hey guys,

I don't know about you, but I feel like since 2026 began, it has been non-stop with the amount of new potentially industry-disrupting AI tools that are releasing. It feels like every time I log into X, there's something new that I need to test.

Today, as it’s my first episode back in a few weeks, I want to recap on what's happened in the world of advertising and AI recently, and what I think it means for creative strategists in 2026.

So let's get into it…

Here’s my favourite ad that I’ve seen this week:

I saw this ad on my IG feed earlier this week and there are so many things I love about it.

“You see these flakes, this is going in your families’ food”.

BANG what a hook!

• Shows the problem before explaining it

• Creates instant emotional association

• Reframes the problem from optional fix to urgent fix

Then he goes onto educate and offer the solution. It did 29m views on Instagram - and needless to say, sold a TON of product.

January was a wild month in the world of AI…here are the things that stood out to me

AI UGC is getting insane

Kling 3.0 released this week and it is freakishly good. This genuinely feels like a big step up, even from Kling 2.6.

The quality of these AI creators now means that you can pretty much make an ad for any brand in a couple of minutes using a fairly basic prompt.

We have crossed the uncanny valley and there’s no going back.

Here are a few accounts I follow that have useful tips on how to create the best AI UGC:

• @frankyecom

• @mtvmald

• @0xROAS

• @Mho_23

• @maxxmalist

• @val_shah

For what it’s worth, we are still producing the majority of our ads with human creators. I think one of the things that brands get wrong with AI UGC is that they assume it has to be all of their ads.

It's not AI OR humans - it's both. We use human creators for authenticity and AI creators for volume.

Claude Cowork + Clawdbot

You've probably seen a lot on your feeds about Claude Cowork and ClawdBot over the last two weeks, and while a lot of it is more novel than it is practical, I do think it's important to pay attention to these tools because they are showing us the way in which AI is heading.

The next era of AI will not be tools that operate within their own platform; they will take over your computer and do tasks for you.

Picture this - your Claude Cowork automation takes over your screen and runs your entire creative pipeline:

• It crawls competitor websites, ad libraries, and landing pages to pull apart what's working.

• It ingests your brand guidelines so nothing goes off-brand.

• It builds headlines and visuals mapped to your customer avatars - or spots a new persona you haven't tested yet.

• Then it spits out 3 static ads and 2 UGC video scripts through Nano Banana.

In fact, I actually did something similar for one of our clients here 👇

You can find the prompt here. 

Parker

And finally, the tool that we released last week - Parker!

Parker is the AI creative director that we've been developing over the last 12 months.

He basically takes all of your different data sources that you use as a creative strategist and brings them all together inside of one chat.

Customer reviews, ad comments, TikTok, competitor ads, Reddit etc…all in one chat GPT style chat interface.

And he is trained on thousands and thousands of winning ads from the Adcrate team. Think of him as like your Claude projects, but on steroids.

The launch video did 1.4 million views in 24 hours haha which was insane (thank you so much for the support everyone!).

We've already seen customers get great results from Parker and have him help them make more winning ads.

If you're interested in learning more, I’ll be dropping a one-hour YouTube tutorial where I make ads live inside of Parker next week (apologies for the delay on this, it’s been super busy since launch!).

👉 Check out Parker here

Announcements

At Adcrate, we are currently hiring for a Video Editor and a Creative Strategist! If you want to join one of the fastest growing creative teams in the space, click on the titles to find out more and apply.

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See you next week,

Alex