If you work in the marketing world, or any creative field, you’ve heard the debate: Is AI helping creativity, or hollowing it out? The honest answer is that it depends on how it’s used.
At Dave Creek Media, we believe our team brings strategy, taste, storytelling, and relationship-building to the table that AI simply can’t replicate. However, in a market that is accelerating rapidly, we’d be foolish to ignore the efficiency and innovation opportunities that AI tools offer.
That’s exactly why we decided to make our own “Super Bowl” style ad.
Why we made it
This year, our team is producing a creative video project each quarter that tries something new and promotes DCM. In Q1, we set out to create a “Super Bowl” style ad that is centered on storytelling and an emotional payoff.
There was just one catch: we had no budget for actors, animators, or the time it would take to produce a full-length, fully produced Super Bowl commercial. So we had to get creative.
With a $0 budget and a self-imposed deadline of early February, we set out to create a Super Bowl ad.
The story we built
In the first week of January, a few team members sat down to workshop the core concept: A girl named Sunny has a struggling lemonade stand and is growing discouraged.
Then help shows up: Dave the bear and Max the dog.
Dave’s the marketing expert. Max is the delivery partner. Together, they help Sunny spread the word, improve her presentation, and grow her customer base.
It’s a story about a lemonade stand, but it’s also about marketing and about what we believe: Great ideas need the right partner to GROW.
What AI did and didn’t do (and what our team did)
The collaborative creative process is one of the best (and most fun) parts of working in a team. Each member did their part to make this project come to life:
- Tim (graphic designer) both hand-drew and used AI to design our main characters until we had the exact look we wanted.
- Claire (copywriter) wrote the script: adding, deleting, and pitching ideas until the arc landed where it needed to be.
- Paul (videographer) used AI tools to create the scenes and bring the animation to life. It gave us leverage and speed we would not have had otherwise.
- Timothy (video editor) handled the sound design and editing of art cards and graphics. Those last touches made the whole thing come together.
Yes, AI was a huge help in getting this over the finish line. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without the tools. But our team’s creativity, storytelling, passion, and skills are what made the process work.
So… where do we stand on AI?
When it came time to share the finished ad, we ran straight into the question that dominates the internet right now: Do you stand behind AI, or reject it?
We think that framing is too shallow.
In the marketing world of 2026, ignoring AI is a great way to “fall behind” and miss out on new opportunities. But relying on AI completely to spearhead every project would cause us to fail at the very thing we promise our clients: work that is unique, strategic, and aimed directly at their specific audience in their specific brand voice.
Here is our stance:
Dave Creek Media is human-first.
And we will use AI to assist our team, optimize our processes, and create better outcomes for our clients.
AI is not the creative director. It is not the strategist. It is not the voice of your brand. It is not the relationship-builder. It is not the reason a message lands.
AI is a tool that is powerful, imperfect, and worth learning when you have the right team behind the wheel.
The bigger point (and why we’re sharing this)
Our industry is growing and evolving every day. And we are on board to innovate, grow, and change to better serve our clients.
We want to be the partner who helps you grow. And if you’re a business owner sitting on a great product with too little visibility, we will say what Dave would say:
You don’t have to do it alone.
Want to see more projects like this?
We had a lot of fun making this ad, and we are going to keep experimenting, because it helps our clients and our team grow.
If you watched our ad and read our blog, we’d love to hear what you think!
Want to join the conversation? Or want us to create an ad for your business?
Shoot us an email!
