Why We Will Need New CTAs in the AI Era

This post builds on some of the thinking from previous posts as we begin to discover the implications of the AI Era. One of those implications is that we might need new CTAs (calls to action) for our content. This is an interesting idea, and it begins with vampires.

The Vampire Effect

Have you ever enjoyed an advertisement — and even talked about it with friends — but could not remember who the sponsor of the ad was? This happens all the time when we are overwhelmed by the special effects and star power of the ad.

In the ad industry, this is called The Vampire Effect. It’s when the glitz and glamour of an ad sucks the life out of its purpose. Star power overshadows the message. Dazzle eclipses action. Who did that ad?

We recently had a case of this in the RISE community. We were discussing a particularly gripping ad campaign shown during The Olympics.

The campaign tells the real stories of six Ukrainian athletes, each of whom had to put their Olympic dreams on hold to fight in their country’s ongoing war with Russia. But in a startling turn, each athlete was killed in the war and will never compete again. The “narrator” was an AI-generated deep fake of a real person.