Technology never scales in a well-rounded way. With AI awards being a new thing, this remains true.
It was a bit of a wake-up call judging the Digiday AI Awards this year. I got an unfiltered look at how tech and marketing teams are actually using AI in the wild. If you want to understand where the industry’s head is at, sit behind a judging panel. You’ll see the excitement, the experimentation, and sometimes a lot of copy-pasted sameness.
Here’s the sitch: AI has officially taken over marketing. It’s in every deck, every brief, every brainstorm. But recognition? That’s lagging far behind. There’s no shortage of AI use; there’s a shortage of applause for the work that truly moves the needle.
Why does this matter? The industry hasn’t yet built a shared understanding of what award-worthy AI looks like.
What Did AI Awards Submissions Consist of?
Across submissions, one pattern was impossible to miss: everyone’s using AI, but few are using it interestingly.
Most entries leaned on what I’d call safe automation, creative optimization, hyper-personalized targeting, copy versioning, and predictive ad placements. It’s the kind of work where AI is a silent workhorse rather than a creative partner. It runs tests, pulls reports, and switches off the underperformers before anyone notices.
These are good, useful applications. But they’re not exciting. They don’t challenge the boundaries of what’s possible; they just make the old way more efficient. It’s AI doing busy work, not creative inspiration.
That’s what made judging so interesting, and in a way, sobering. AI adoption in marketing has exploded. But very few teams are actually putting their work up for recognition. There’s is a plethora of creative AI use out there, here’s two examples that are stretching those boundaries.
Mucinex Mucus Masher - An AI-powered game that lets players generate bizarre, unique scenarios to crush its Mr. Mucus mascot
Heinz - Draw Ketchup Campaign - Campaign proved its brand dominance by asking image-generation models to “draw ketchup” and consistently getting images that looked unmistakably like Heinz
Why is there no further recognition for campaigns like these two? Maybe because it still feels early. Or because many marketers think their use of AI is too “sloppy” or “ordinary” to win awards. But that’s exactly the problem, we need to filter out the slop and recognize the extraordinary.
Right now, awards are needed to map that frontier, defining what innovation, ethics, and creativity look like when a machine sits beside the creative/marketer. These awards aren’t just about trophies. They’re a mirror, showing us what we currently value and what we might be overlooking.
Standout Submissions - When AI Use Actually Felt “Good”
Among all the technically solid but familiar campaigns, one submission stood out like a spark in a sea of dashboards: an AI-generated radio station for Slice soda.
This wasn’t a gimmick (although I do admit the songs were cheesy and slice-soda themed). It composed, mixed, and evolved its own sonic identity in real time. You could listen to AI generated radio-hosts, different genres, and even commercials. It wasn’t optimization, it was creation. It felt weird listening to AI music, like eavesdropping on a machine trying to understand rhythm and emotion (a very basic understanding to be honest).
That’s the kind of project that deserves recognition. It wasn’t about chasing efficiency metrics. It was about collaboration, a human idea amplified through a machine’s capacity to imagine differently.
Why Awards Like This Matter
The point isn’t that every brand needs to launch an AI radio station. It’s that we need to create more spaces to celebrate when AI becomes something more than a spreadsheet with a personality.
Recognition matters because it signals what’s worth aspiring to. If the only celebrated use cases are ones where AI makes ads cheaper or faster, we’ll flatten its potential to nothing more than a productivity tool. But if we start rewarding creative risk using AI, the kind that blends logic with intuition, we’ll push the industry forward.
AI is no longer a new shiny toy. The shiny toy is what we do with it.
Catching up…
The AI boom is real. Judging the Digiday AI Awards made me realize that recognition frameworks haven’t caught up to reality. We’re in a boom with no major applause yet. The tools are powerful. But until we start celebrating the teams using it well, the story of AI in marketing will stay one-dimensional. The more we surface those examples, the faster the industry will mature.
Because the truth is, we don’t just need better AI.
We need better recognition for it.
What Coffee Am I Drinking this Week?
Roaster: Bloom Tostadores
Roast: Caminos del Inka