When Culture Moves Fast, Leadership Matters More.

The New Year’s ball has dropped, and we’ve had some time to digest why burnout and misalignment were the real ops in 2025. So, let’s charge ahead with fresh perspectives from some of the coolest creative leaders in the game.

Creative industry pro David Nordlund helped shape the conversation in our last blog. This time, sharing his insights is Trey Veal, Sr. Manager, Design — Brand Innovation at PepsiCo.

Last year (ah!), we explored why humanity remains essential in creative leadership. This week, we’re narrowing the focus: what does human-centered leadership look like when culture moves at breakneck speed? How do creative teams move fast without losing clarity, taste, or direction?

When you think of PepsiCo, right now you're probably thinking Addison Rae (“Summer love (ah, ah), sexy … Sitting on his lap sippin' Diet Pepsi). And well, that’s the point. Cultural movements, social media “viral” moments, and even pop-culture taboos are increasingly influencing branding, creative, and business decisions at major companies.

What does that mean? They have to move fast.

Moving at the Speed of Culture… Without Losing Taste

Veal emphasizes that the challenge is that most large-scale campaigns aren’t built for speed. They’re built for precision, entailing months of strategy, approvals, and execution. And in a culture that moves in days or even hours, that creates tension. 

Sure, you could feed a moment into an AI tool, generate something instantly, and put it out into the world, but audiences can tell when something feels hollow, rushed, or inauthentic. And they don’t like it.

This is where Veal’s perspective becomes especially relevant.

“The [Addison Rae] Diet Pepsi moment succeeded, but it also revealed a hard truth: cultural speed isn’t just about creativity; it’s about having leadership and systems that allow great ideas to move,” he reflected.

That same thinking informs how Veal approaches AI. Rather than positioning it as a replacement for creativity, he views it as an accelerant — one that removes friction and allows ideas to move faster without losing intention. 

Within PepsiCo, Veal detailed how they've implemented AI to support packaging prompts, early-stage ideation, and brand partnership explorations, giving teams the ability to test directions quickly before committing significant time or resources.

This mirrors a broader shift happening across the creative industry. As Matt Silliman, SVP Head of Production at Trade School & Trade School Studios, noted on LinkedIn, AI doesn’t eliminate the need for human creativity but expands it. When used thoughtfully, AI increases the creative output of individuals and teams, shortening the distance between concept and execution while still requiring human judgment, taste, and direction. 

But expanded capacity also brings expanded responsibility. If AI accelerates creative possibilities, leadership determines whether that possibility ever turns into impact. In moments driven by culture, speed becomes less about tools and more about whether leaders are willing to empower teams to act.

Hypothetical Scenario: A Team Almost Misses the Moment

(A short, fictional, but painfully familiar, snapshot of leadership, creativity, and AI colliding in a fast-moving cultural moment.)

Friday, 8:12 a.m. — Slack, #culture-response

Head of Social: “This trend is everywhere overnight. If we’re going to show up, it has to be today, not next week.”

Executive Creative Director (ECD): “Agreed. Let’s move fast. Two hours to explore. No decks.”

Strategy Lead: “I’ll outline guardrails so we don’t chase something we can’t defend.”

Creative Director: “I’ll use AI to spin up headline ideas, visual moods, and social formats. Rough only.”

9:10 a.m. — First review

Creative Director: “Thirty directions. Ten usable. Three feel right.”

Head of Social: “These two already feel late. Everyone’s doing them.”

Brand Manager:  “I’m not fully comfortable yet. Can we see a few more options?”

(Momentum slows)

9:38 a.m. — The Failure Moment

Head of Social: “The trend is peaking faster than we thought. If we don’t lock something soon, it’s not worth posting.”

Creative Director: “We’re starting to polish instead of deciding.”

Strategy Lead: “...And we’re drifting outside the guardrails.”

(Silence in the channel)

9:42 a.m. — Leadership Intervention

ECD: “Pause. We’re doing the thing that kills speed.”

Brand Manager: “I just don’t want us to get it wrong.”

ECD: “I get that. But waiting is a decision. We’re choosing to miss the moment.”

ECD (continued): “One idea. Clean execution. If it doesn’t meet brand or legal needs in ten minutes, we kill it. Otherwise, we commit.”

9:55 a.m. — Reset

Creative Director: “Going back to the strongest direction. Simplifying.”

Legal Partner (looped in early): “This version works. Just avoid that one line.”

Head of Social: “We can still post by noon if we lock now.”

11:58 a.m. — Launch

ECD: “Queue it.”

Post-Mortem (Later That Week)

Brand Manager: “We almost talked ourselves out of relevance.”

Creative Director: “AI helped us see options. Leadership helped us choose.”

Strategy Lead: “The risk wasn’t the idea. It was hesitation.”

ECD: “Culture doesn’t wait for comfort. It waits for clarity.”

(While hypothetical, this reflects a very real shift playing out across the creative industry, one where AI is accelerating how work gets made, but leadership, intent, and authenticity determine whether that work actually resonates.)

Why Leadership, Not Technology, Is the Real Bottleneck

The scenario may be hypothetical, but the tension is real. As AI accelerates how quickly ideas can be generated, refined, and deployed, the constraint is no longer creative capacity. It’s leadership.

AI is already removing friction across the creative process, with research showing that:

• Up to 26% of creative tasks can now be automated, particularly repetitive or production-heavy work like basic image editing, versioning, and early-stage content generation.
• Nearly 75% of creative professionals report that AI is already useful for visual searches, image manipulation, and ideation.

The result is undeniable: creatives are gaining speed.

But speed alone doesn’t create value.

What AI can’t do is decide:

• What’s worth making
• Why it matters
• Which ideas deserve to exist in the world

Those decisions still sit firmly with humans, and increasingly, with the leaders responsible for setting direction, standards, and taste.

That’s why the real challenge of AI isn’t technological. It’s organizational. Without clear intent, shared standards, and trust-driven systems, AI simply produces more output, not better work. In fast-moving cultural moments, hesitation, misalignment, or over-governance can be just as damaging as poor creativity.

TLDR: As execution accelerates, judgment becomes the differentiator. The brands that win won’t be the ones that adopt AI the fastest. They’ll be the ones that build cultures where leaders empower teams to decide, commit, and move — quickly, intentionally, and with taste.

So yes, leadership can be the bottleneck. But judgment is the differentiator. And no, the answer isn’t “move slower” or “turn the AI off and light a candle.”

Once you’ve removed the leadership friction and given teams permission to move with actual intent, the next question becomes unavoidable: what does your brand sound like when it moves fast? Because speed without taste just gets louder — not better.

Authenticity Is Still the Currency

Let’s be honest, opting out of AI entirely isn’t realistic anymore. That’s a bit like refusing to use a keyboard because you learned on a typewriter. Respect the craft, absolutely, but no one’s banging out briefs on carbon paper.

As Laylee Bodaghee, CEO at Shadow Knights Studio, explains in a Wix Studio blog, AI is already baked into creative workflows — from project management and design to writing, music, and production. Smaller teams aren’t doing less creative work; they’re spending more time shaping, refining, and directing AI-assisted outputs instead of building everything from scratch.

That’s not the problem. The problem is forgetting what actually feels human.

As AI tools spread across nearly every creative medium, Bodaghee cautions against letting them smooth out the rough edges that make work feel real, or worse, exploit the people behind it. She’s excited about what the technology can unlock, but only if creatives stay intentional about what they amplify and what they ignore.

In other words: AI can help you scale execution. It can’t help you care.

“The authentic experience will continue to be a currency of the future,” Bodaghee explains. She compares it to the enduring appeal of analog watches, handmade pottery, or live music played on real strings. Even when AI-generated work becomes commonplace — maybe even expected — there will always be value in creative work that carries intention, imperfection, and emotional weight.

And that’s the point. The brands and creatives who stand out in 2026 won’t be the ones pretending AI doesn’t exist (or the ones letting it run unchecked). They’ll be the ones who understand their voice well enough to know when AI helps clarify it and when it starts to blur it.

Authenticity doesn’t mean rejecting tools. It means knowing what sounds like you, what feels aligned versus opportunistic, and what’s actually worth putting into the world.

And that responsibility?

Still human. Still leadership.

Creative Fundamentals Matter Now More Than Ever

If authenticity is the currency, fundamentals are the mint.

In an era of instant outputs, infinite variations, and AI-generated everything, the most valuable creative skill is becoming increasingly rare: knowing why something works. Typography, hierarchy, composition, spacing, and craft aren’t relics of a pre-AI world. They’re the filter that keeps good ideas from getting lost in the noise.

As Veal puts it, the danger isn’t that AI is moving too fast but rather that younger creatives are skipping the slow parts that build taste.

“We’re living in a moment of instant gratification, where you can generate a hundred options in seconds,” he says, “But what’s getting lost — especially in how people are learning — is the discipline of fundamentals. If you don’t understand the building blocks, you won’t know what to keep, what to refine, or what to throw away. AI doesn’t fix that. It exposes it.”

That tension is already playing out on teams. A junior designer can generate dozens of logos or layouts in minutes (impressive on the surface), but without an understanding of type pairing, spacing, color theory, or brand nuance, speed quickly turns into noise. Meanwhile, senior creatives with years of hands-on craft can guide that same process with intention, helping teams recognize quality, restraint, and cultural fit when they see it.

This is where AI becomes a multiplier, not a shortcut.

Researcher Tomasz Weglarz echoes this shift, noting that AI won’t eliminate creativity, but rebalance it. Less time will be spent on technical execution. More time will be spent on strategy, concept development, and critical thinking. In that environment, the most valuable skills aren’t mechanical — they’re judgment-based: taste, idea management, cultural intuition, and decision-making.

And that’s exactly why fundamentals matter more now than they did before.

They’re what allow creatives to:

• Spot the difference between more ideas and better ideas.
• Refine AI-assisted outputs into work with intention.
• Mentor the next generation without letting tools replace taste.

In 2026 and beyond, the creatives who stand out won’t be the ones who generate the most. They will be the ones who know what’s worth keeping.

The Sweet Spot for Creative Leadership in 2026

Well, that was a lot. 

But here’s the main point: the work ahead isn’t about choosing between speed and craft, or AI and humanity. It’s about balance. The strongest creative teams won’t waste energy policing whether someone “used AI.” They’ll ask better questions instead. Questions like, “Was it the right use?” “Did it sharpen the idea or blur it?” “Does this still sound like us?” 

In 2026, great leadership means pairing fast tools with slow thinking and grounding teams in fundamentals, passing down taste through mentorship, and treating AI as a collaborator, not a crutch.

Move quickly, yes. But anchor that speed in judgment, intention, and human perspective. Tools will keep evolving. Taste is what endures.

Let’s be honest: opting out of AI entirely isn’t realistic anymore. That’s a bit like refusing to use a keyboard because you learned on a typewriter. Respect the craft, absolutely — but no one’s banging out briefs on carbon paper.

At Artisan Talent, we help creative leaders build teams that know when to use AI — and when to close the tab and trust their taste. If you’re hiring, or figuring out what comes next in your own creative career, we’re here.