humans and hyperspeed
WHERE HUMAN-SCALE STORES MEET MACHINE-SCALE TOOLS
Ninety-five sticky Manhattan degrees outside; inside the Times Center, the only thing melting was the border between instinct and algorithm. I wore three hats—opening keynoter, then slipped into the moderator’s chair for a fireside with three directors who brilliant use AI, and Jury President for the Social & Real-Time Engagement category at the AICP Next Awards.
Plenty walked in wary of “soulless automation.” By the last fade-out, those same skeptics were suddenly the evangelists. That whiplash is the signature move of 2025: code now moves so fast it can rewrite a creative belief system in the span of a single screening.
And yet the moral of the week was stubbornly analog: If nothing changes, nothing changes—but when everything changes, a human heartbeat still waits at the far end of every screen.
Three Wins, One Lesson
AICP NEXT Award Winners
Social: International Paralympic Committee — “The Game-Changing Announcement”
A chorus of athletes publicly “withdrew” from Paris 2024, then revealed they weren’t participating—they were competing. One swapped verb detonated decades of pity-flavored framing. Crowd voice as copywriter; clarity as cudgel.
https://aicpawards.com/commercial/the-game-changing-announcement
Real Time Engagement: Meta / Facebook — “Haunted Marketplace”
For five pre-Halloween nights, bona-fide cursed curios surfaced on Marketplace—séance-scarred mirrors priced at $666 666. A utilitarian feed morphed into a midnight radio show. Minimal spend, maximal goose-bumps. Presence beat polish because the idea was alive in real time.
https://aicpawards.com/commercial/haunted-marketplace
Most Best: IKEA Canada — “SHT (Second-Hand Tax)”
IKEA Canada’s cheeky yet policy-changing “SHT (Second-Hand Tax).” A reminder that big tech isn’t the only lever; a sharp idea can rewrite taxation—and public opinion—overnight.
https://aicpawards.com/commercial/sht
Common denominator? Radical simplicity, meticulous craft, and the most combustible element in advertising: surprise.
Craft in the Age of Infinite Drafts
OpenAI’s Sora now renders up-to-a-minute, near-cinematic footage from one sentence. Runway’s Gen-3 Alpha hands you motion brushes and crane moves at the speed of scroll. We’ve crossed the threshold where speed is cheap; the only precious thing left is the question worth accelerating.
· Slow the model, sharpen the ask.
A sublime prompt is the new anamorphic lens—rare, expensive in thought, unmistakable on-screen.
· Curate inputs like couture.
Feed the machine founder doodles, customer voicemails, the hiss of your warehouse at 3 a.m. Unique data is the last velvet rope.
· Direct, don’t delegate.
Let AI over-generate, then cut with film-school ruthlessness: linger on the inhale, trim on the blink, leave space for silence.
· Preserve the fingerprint.
A handheld tremor, a mic pop, the wobble of an iPhone pan—imperfections land straight in the limbic system. Algorithms scale fidelity; only people plant doubt, texture, soul.
· Taste is non-fungible.
When every cloud farm can spit out identical 8K beauty, judgment becomes the market-maker. Guard it, refine it, hire for it—and learn to say no to one more render pass.
Why the Winners Matter to You
Marketers, brand managers, founders, makers—trace the arc: Paralympians ignore pity and claim power; a haunted garage sale hijacks culture; a furniture giant moon-walks through tax law. None of these relied on proprietary tech. They leaned on crystalline intent, tonal precision, and craft that lets the surprise punch clean through the screen. AI accelerated the journey; it did not author the jolt.
Closing Frame: The Gospel of Surprise
The week hammered home a simple gospel: technology doesn’t win awards—ideas do. AI can shrink the distance from spark to screen, but resonance still demands the holy trinity of clarity, care, and surprise.
Surprise is the last hard currency in a feed-stuffed economy. It’s the left turn no algorithm can pre-bake, the goose-bumps metric no dashboard can graph. Use silicon to clear the underbrush, absolutely. Then take off your shoes and walk the final mile barefoot; audiences feel the difference even when they can’t name it.
See you in the feed next week. Bring your skepticism—leave with something stranger, more intimate, and unmistakably human.
—Shingy
June 10, 2025
© 2025 The Continuum
