As technology continues to redraw the boundaries of creativity, the relationship between art and algorithm has become one of the defining tensions in modern advertising. The rise of AI has not only accelerated content creation and personalisation but also challenged the industry to rethink what emotion, originality, and human creativity truly mean.

Few creative leaders navigate this space as seamlessly as Anadi Sah, the National Creative Director, Chief Innovation Officer, and Founding Partner at tgthr, a full-funnel agency driving the future of creative innovation. With nearly two decades of experience across digital, media, and advertising, he has been at the forefront of India’s digital transformation—building the country’s first branded YouTube channel and leading the first rich media ad campaigns for international markets in 2007. Over the years, he has led award-winning work that fuses technology with storytelling, shaping how brands engage with audiences in a connected world.

In this conversation, Sah reflects on how art, science, and technology are converging, what AI means for the creative process, and why human emotion and authenticity will always remain at the heart of great ideas.

What inspired your journey from the craft of copywriting to leading creative innovation?

My journey into leading creative innovation was fundamentally inspired by being fortunate enough to transition into digital marketing during its nascent stage in India. This afforded me a privileged vantage point to witness and participate in the seismic shift from traditional communications to a tech-led consumer landscape. Even before the formal establishment of AdTech and MarTech verticals, I was captivated by the sheer potential of technology to revolutionise how brands connected with people. My core inspiration became the desire to move beyond mere copywriting and messaging to design a brand experience that could emotionally resonate, evoke desire, and solve a genuine customer pain point. This led me to ask: can my brand become its customers’ preferred choice by addressing an unmet need through an auxiliary product or service? Answering this question became my venture into creative innovation. This ambition was powerfully unlocked by the simultaneous and rapid evolution in mobile technology and internet accessibility. Suddenly, it was possible to design and deliver highly personalised, immersive experiences directly to the device of virtually every individual, scaling imagination in a way that was previously impossible. This convergence of technological potential, consumer shift, and personal drive is what propelled me from the craft of copywriting to the strategic leadership of creative innovation.

You’re a strong believer in blending art, science, and technology. Where do you think this mix has worked brilliantly in advertising, and where do you see its limitations?

Over the years, numerous campaigns have successfully blended art, science, and technology, earning both audience acclaim and industry accolades for their innovative approaches. The key ingredient for success, in my view, is achieving the right balance; without it, the work risks losing its authenticity and emotional connection. One notable historical example is The Artois Probability, which combined classical art motifs, modern design, and data analytics to tell a sophisticated brand story that effectively drove engagement and recall. The most recent example that impressed me was the Hidden Eye Test by 1001 Optometry, where the brand transformed public health awareness with AI-powered optical illusions, delivering a self-diagnosing outdoor ad.

The limitations I see with this approach begin when integrating technology overshadows authenticity, often making campaigns feel intimidating and impersonal, particularly to older demographics who may be a core target group. There’s also the significant hurdle of access to technology and expertise. These projects often require extensive R&D and investment that many brands are simply not ready to risk. Finally, intense competition is pressuring marketers to enter the tech and AI race, often leading to campaigns that, in their haste, lack the authenticity, nuance, and empathy needed to truly resonate with their audience.

Digital has made creativity faster and measurable but more fragmented. What’s the biggest gain, and what’s the cost?

Digital has completely transformed creativity, making it both highly adaptable and inherently fragmented. The greatest gain is the ability to achieve personalisation at scale, supported by unmatched agility and measurability. Digital offers a faster feedback loop, allowing creatives to be optimised instantly for superior efficiency and effectiveness. Creatives can now be tailored to diverse cohorts based on their stage in the customer journey, making communication far more relevant.

This constant, granular measurability shifts creative success from subjective art to objective performance, providing clear, attributable return on investment (ROI). It essentially turns every campaign into a live lab.

Conversely, the biggest cost is the fragmentation of execution across numerous formats, channels, and teams, which can make the brand message inconsistent. The sheer volume of assets required often strains creative teams, shifting focus from developing a singular, powerful big idea to simply meeting relentless content demand. This diminishes the overall impact and memorability of the brand narrative. Furthermore, the race to adopt the latest tech tools sometimes leads to executions that are visually dazzling but stray from the brand’s core message.

Some say younger creatives lean on tools, older ones on tradition. How do you see different generations driving innovation?

The notion that younger creatives favour digital tools while their older counterparts cling to tradition is a paradigm that’s rapidly dissolving. The massive disruption brought by AI has fundamentally changed the conversation, it’s no longer about resistance but about accelerated adoption. Having worked closely with both cohorts, I’ve observed that senior peers show remarkable effort and enthusiasm in mastering new technologies. They’re genuinely delighted when a tool completes in seconds what once took hours.

In the process of learning, they reciprocate by sharing their deep expertise in brand building, craftsmanship, and strategic problem-solving knowledge the younger generation might not yet have encountered. As the saying goes, one must know the rules to break them. True innovation doesn’t come from either generation working in silos but from their collaboration where one brings novelty and speed, and the other brings strategic context and wisdom.

 

From Incredible India to global digital campaigns, what will the next decade demand of agencies, and can AI ever truly replace human creativity?

The next decade will demand a fundamental restructuring of agencies, driven by a new generation of consumers with significantly evolved expectations for brand interaction and engagement. Brands will expect agencies to be not just responsive to this shift, but to deliver integrated solutions that leverage the technological acceleration already underway. The confluence of AI-led hyper-personalisation, immersive experiences, IoT, smart devices, and enhanced connectivity is unlocking innumerable opportunities for real-time engagement and commerce. This acceleration demands a total revamp of agency models. Agencies must move away from vertical, siloed models (catering to a single offering) toward horizontally structured organisations. These new structures must be capable of crafting a seamless brand experience across every consumer journey and touchpoint, all built upon complex data structures, AI, and automation. This means the agency becomes a single, fluid entity for brand strategy and execution. While AI and automation will perform most of the “heavy lifting” from data analysis and content scaling to campaign optimisation, they will not replace human creativity. This is because true creativity is a uniquely human function, combining emotional stimulus and consciousness, cultural nuances and intuition and personalised experience design. So, while AI will be a powerful accelerant and augmenter of efficiency, the soul, risk-taking, and cultural relevance that drive breakthrough creative work remain firmly in the human domain.

With trends, tools, and data constantly changing, is there a creative principle you’ve had to defend against industry pressures, and why?

In an industry defined by relentless change—where trends, data, and tools are in constant flux—the true creative mandate is to defend the heart of creativity itself. The fundamentals of human emotion and storytelling haven’t changed, no matter how advanced technology becomes.

What I’ve always aimed to protect is the commitment to human truth over algorithmic insight, authenticity over fleeting virality, and emotional resonance over mechanical execution. The best ideas still emerge not from decoding algorithms but from stepping out into the world, meeting people, and understanding what truly moves them.

Great advertising isn’t about chasing the next trend; it’s about nurturing what endures: ideas born of honesty, simplicity, and empathy that make people pause, smile, remember, or act. As machines grow smarter and tools more powerful, our greatest duty as creatives is to remind the world of the power of human connection. I choose to defend the soul of the craft because while formats and platforms will keep evolving, the fundamentals that move people never will.