Production is losing value. Taste and strategy need to prove theirs.

For a long time, producing a video ad, a high-quality visual or a creative campaign required time, technical expertise and a substantial budget. Let us start from the assumption that these barriers are falling rapidly. Without data here to measure the extent of that change, one question is already worth asking: what should a business buy when making things becomes easier?

Our position is clear: it should buy less undifferentiated execution capacity and more relevance. That does not mean production is worthless. It means difficulty of execution can no longer be the sole proof of value.

Taste is not personal preference

Taste can sound like a convenient fallback: as tools become accessible, all you need to do is claim to have a better eye. But a business cannot organise its decisions around the personal preferences of whoever signs off the work.

In a professional setting, taste must translate into reasoned judgements. Does the layout make the message easy to understand? Does the tone fit the relationship the brand wants to build? Does the creative approach make this brand recognisable rather than interchangeable with another? An attractive piece of work can fail on every one of these counts.

Useful taste is not some mysterious gift. It is the ability to recognise what serves an intention, then explain why. It must be open to discussion without turning into a vote on personal preferences.

Strategy needs to rule things out

If producing several creative routes becomes easier, the risk is that we multiply options without improving decisions. A vague brief can then create more comparison, revision and approval work. Savings in execution can be swallowed by indecision.

A useful strategy must close doors. It defines who we are addressing, what we want them to understand or do, and what we are unwilling to compromise. It allows us to reject a visually accomplished proposal because it does not serve the right objective.

Part of strategy’s value lies in the options it helps eliminate. Without that discipline, more accessible production risks doing little more than shifting the workload into approval meetings.

Change the brief before changing the tools

For a business, the first decision is therefore not necessarily to add another tool. We recommend agreeing on the rules for choosing before production begins:

• Define one primary objective and a specific audience.
• Set criteria that distinguish relevant creative work from work that is merely appealing.
• Name the person who makes the final decision and the grounds for that decision.
• Plan how to assess the proposal in its intended use, rather than judging only a presentation.

These rules replace neither craft nor production standards. A good idea executed badly still delivers a poor experience. What they prevent is asking execution to resolve a strategic disagreement that nobody has articulated.

Do not turn every saving into more output

If production efficiencies materialise, businesses need to decide where those gains go. Reinvesting everything in additional variations is not an obvious choice. Some of that capacity could support a better understanding of the audience, more demanding creative development or a more rigorous assessment of proposals.

For agencies, this means making the reasoning behind decisions visible, not just the deliverables. For businesses, it means paying for decision-making work that cannot be measured solely in files. The right question is not “how much can we produce?” but “which decisions does this production help us make better?”