Rethinking Creative Leadership in an Age of Fragmentation and Generative AI

In today’s creative industries, transformation is relentless. Audiences are increasingly decentralised. Platforms proliferate. Formats converge. And the rise of generative AI is reshaping the creative, production and distribution process in real time, whether we like it or not. In this landscape, traditional models of leadership, built for verticals, hierarchy and predictability are rapidly losing their crown. For CEOs and boards, this is not just a technological shift, it’s a leadership reckoning.

Traditional leadership models in the industry are no longer enough. Deep expertise in one genre or form of output remains highly valuable, of course - few social media stars could write an award-winning long-form play, for instance - but for CEOs and the commercial C-suite, adaptability is more essential in the 2020s than ever before. Whether commissioning television or leading a global marketing services group, leaders must now operate across ecosystems, not within silos. 

From Format to Idea 

In the 2020s, it’s easy to feel constantly on the back foot as audience consumption habits shift at speed. Leadership in media, entertainment, and marketing was once defined by mastery of a format - television, publishing, radio - and the ability to grow audiences within fixed parameters. But now content flows freely across platforms. Audiences engage in non-linear and unpredictable ways. New platforms rise and fall. Focus is easily disrupted as teams attempt to synthesise, learn and adapt. 

Creative ideas often begin in one medium and evolve into multi-platform experiences, borrowing playbooks from marketing, gaming, and social media. Funding shapes where new ideas start, often in the hands of an agile producer or writer. Consumer brands can also play a role in developing original content which might not have had the money to make the screen. AI brings down barriers to entry on blockbuster shorts, impacting what can be made by indie producers and new talent with shallow pockets.
 
Format-first thinking must give way to a more fluid, entrepreneurial mindset, with the audience central in everyone’s minds, whether they’re in front of the TV at home or streaming content on a crammed tube train.

From Silos to Ecosystems: A Leadership Challenge

As today’s audiences are mobile, selective, and participatory, modern creative organisations increasingly resemble ecosystems. They blend content creation with commerce, community, and technology, while capitalising on the first-party data opportunities this convergence creates.

This evolution requires CEOs and boards to rethink organisational design and make fast, informed decisions without a fixed playbook. Leaders must empower teams to collaborate across disciplines, embrace audience-centric planning, and navigate complex, multi-format development. Crucially, CEOs must relinquish the expectation of deep expertise in every domain and instead foster cultures of trust, specialisation, and strategic alignment.

Key questions arise:

• How do we preserve narrative integrity while distributing and changing the nature of the content at scale?
• How do we implement new technology at pace whilst minimising risk?
• Where is the ability to personalise content that is helpful vs harmful?
• What types of businesses outside of our core competitive set can we learn from?
• How do I hire people to work on areas I myself don’t understand?
• If we take senior hiring risks from outside our own ecosystem, how to we balance risk and reward?
• How do we measure the experiments we’re making, and how do we know we have the right people to push us forward?

This can be a cultural challenge for those used to captive, predictable audiences from whom they were a step removed not long ago. It prompts creative leaders to reconsider the value of their brands as a ‘personal editor’ or ‘trusted advisor’ guiding people toward content they will enjoy. Take news as an example: do audiences still distinguish between ‘TV news’ and The Times, if both are being accessed via a web browser or phone? Brands drive trust, but now they must compete across an even wider aperture.

Leading in the Age of Generative AI

Few forces are driving more uncertainty, and more opportunity, than generative AI. In the creative industries, this technology is both disruptor and enabler, viewed in existential terms even as it is adopted at speed. This forms both an operational and an ethical challenge for Boards and CEOs. From automated design tools to AI-generated scripts and music, AI and GAI are accelerating production timelines, lowering barriers to entry, and raising profound questions about originality and authorship and the future of human creativity.

There is fear in the system, and CEOs, still emerging from the shocks of the pandemic and recent strikes, must adapt their narratives to navigate it with both boardroom gravitas and creative sensitivity.

Leadership Reimagined: From Sector Loyalty to Strategic Vision

The most effective creative leaders today are not defined by their sector of origin, but by how they think. Those deep specialist experts are still critical, but the balance of skillsets around the table must become more varied. They must connect dots across disciplines, inspire diverse teams, and lead with bold, creative vision. This also opens new possibilities for talent strategy at the top.

Boards are increasingly willing to look beyond traditional talent pools, seeing us at Odgers appoint agency chiefs to gaming companies, social media leaders to music firms, and media executives to sports organisations.

We also see CEOs bring in cross-sector talent beneath them, trusting these leaders to inject fresh perspectives from technology, e-commerce, and marketing to strengthen their commercial agility. What was once perceived as risk is now recognised as strategic advantage.

The Constant: Audience Obsession

Despite all the change, one principle remains constant: the audience is everything. Creative leaders must rigorously understand where their audiences are, what they value, and how to connect with them, commercially and culturally.

But the one thing that hasn’t changed is this. Every creative leader, whether in gaming, an ad agency, a publisher or a studio, must rigorously obsess about their audience. The tools to understand them exist, and the talent to shape the future is already in place. With the right mix, and audience obsession, creative leaders can guide their teams to build on their proud creative histories and make them match fit for the next generation. 

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