Business
Branding and Creative Vision in the Age of AI
Renato Abdo discusses the limits of pure performance marketing, the erosion of design, and using AI critically in agencies.
On Marketing - The Podcast, Renato Abdo discusses the rise of quick fixes in digital marketing and the decline of purely performance-driven models. The advertising executive advocates for returning to foundational design concepts and explains why artificial intelligence requires human vision to avoid generic results.
The rise of digital tools and the constant demand for immediate ROI have reshaped daily agency workflows, but they have also cleared the way for superficial fixes and cookie-cutter formulas. Speaking with Bruno Gimenes on Marketing - The Podcast, Renato Abdo, founder of Dialeto and creator of agia, broke down how short-term thinking compromises technical execution, making the case for balancing brand building, visual fundamentals, and technology.
The full episode, available in the video above, also explores the evolving media landscape and what lies ahead for advertising agencies.
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Quick Promises and the Locust Agency Model
Abdo points out that the flood of silver-bullet methods and templated scripts has fueled widespread skepticism among midsize businesses, which often invest in services without seeing steady returns. In his view, many agencies operate without any commitment to client retention or sustainable, long-term growth.
Describing this predatory approach to client management, Abdo is candid about the lack of long-term vision: "Digital marketing agencies nowadays act like locusts. A locust swarm lands on a crop, eats everything in sight, and moves on to the next field. They onboard a client, extract whatever cash they can, and leave. There's no LTV; they don't care about keeping clients in their portfolio long-term." In practice, friction inevitably follows once brands begin asking for foundational metrics and genuine performance indicators.
The Erosion of Design and the Loss of Conceptual Grounding
Another symptom of this shift is the devaluation of structural design across creative teams. Abdo, who started his career in graphic production before transitioning to art direction, notes that the discipline of solving functional and visual problems has largely been replaced by automated, uncritical asset assembly.
For Abdo, studying historical movements such as Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism equipped creatives to tackle complex challenges: "At their core, designers are problem solvers. That's the simple truth. If that designer ever wants to pivot into tech, they'll thrive. If they want to move into strategic planning, they'll thrive, because they learned how to build solutions and solve problems." Without that foundational background, typographic and color choices turn arbitrary, weakening brand identity across the board.
The Performance Plateau and the Case for Branding
An exclusive focus on paid traffic and direct-response media has also revealed its limits. While Abdo acknowledges the importance of immediate conversion tracking, he stresses that relying solely on performance marketing commoditizes businesses into price wars, squeezing operational margins.
Continuous ad spending eventually hits a natural ceiling without deliberate brand building: "Performance marketing has a plateau. If you rely solely on performance, you will inevitably hit a wall. You keep scaling, and your campaign reaches a point where no matter how much budget you pour into it, your sales remain flat." Abdo notes that Dialeto adopted a brand performance positioning back in 2011, recognizing that both disciplines are complementary and essential for sustained growth.
Artificial Intelligence as a Creative Amplifier
As generative artificial intelligence advances, Abdo emphasizes that technology should serve as a support tool to broaden creative horizons, not as a substitute for critical thinking. Firing off prompts without foundational knowledge simply floods the market with uniform, mass-produced content.
The quality of machine-generated output ultimately reflects the caliber of the person running it. As Abdo puts it: "It amplifies your strengths, but it also magnifies your weaknesses. If your work is mediocre, you'll produce very mediocre work with AI. If you're skilled, you'll produce great work." Human creativity—grounded in rigorous source verification and real-world cultural experience away from screens—remains the key differentiator for brands and professionals alike.
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