Adrian's Angle: The AI Revolution That's Actually Working (And It's Not What You Think)

Spoiler: It’s not about replacing anyone, it's about human-first AI in marketing.

Here’s what caught my attention last week:

A marketer in Thailand turned a silly TikTok trend about ice cream into a 130% sales boost. An Indonesian e-commerce giant processed 7,000 angry customer tweets and transformed them into campaign gold. McDonald’s let AI write stories, then had humans make them actually good.

What do these wins have in common? Humans stayed in charge.

The Plot Twist Nobody Saw Coming

While everyone’s been arguing about whether AI will steal our jobs, the smartest companies quietly figured out the real game: AI doesn’t replace you. It makes you unstoppable.

Robert Gilby (Disney, Dentsu, Nielsen) nailed it in a recent MartechAi interview:

The real transformation is human-first. Not model-first. Not automation-first. Human-first.

The real transformation is human-first. Not model-first. Not automation-first. Human-first.

And the data backs him up.

Three Stories That Changed My Mind About AI

🇮🇩 Indonesia: When 7,000 Complaints Became Pure Marketing Gold

Tokopedia was drowning in customer complaints on Twitter. Instead of hiring an army of analysts, they fed the chaos to AI for sentiment analysis. But here’s the thing: humans interpreted every insight and redesigned their entire customer response strategy.

The result? They didn’t just solve problems faster.

They turned complaints into competitive advantage.

🇹🇭 Thailand: The Ice Cream Hack That Broke TikTok

McDonald’s Thailand spotted a viral trend around soft serve mashups. Instead of letting algorithms take over, their team hand-picked the best user content and amplified it with Spark Ads.

Human curation + AI distribution = 130% sales increase.

🌍 Global: When AI Writes Stories (But Humans Make Them Human)

McDonald’s UK/Ireland let ChatGPT create personalized in-store stories. Then human editors rewrote everything to actually sound like humans wrote it.

The pattern is clear: AI generates. Humans elevate.

Why “Just Automation-First” Companies Are Missing the Point

I see it everywhere. Brands rushing to automate everything, thinking speed equals strategy.

Plot twist: It doesn’t.

The companies winning with AI aren’t the ones replacing humans fastest. They’re the ones making humans better.

At SQREEM, our AI finds behavioral audiences without invading privacy. But technology alone isn’t the magic. It’s how our clients’ media teams use those insights: questioning outputs, adding brand context, making strategic calls.

Real creativity happens when humans and machines work side by side — each amplifying the other’s strengths.se those insights: questioning outputs, adding brand context, making strategic calls.

That human layer isn’t a bottleneck. It’s the entire point.

The Numbers Don’t Lie

Recent consulting data reveals something fascinating:

→ Boston Consulting Group: APAC businesses with scaled GenAI see 25% faster time-to-market

→ Deloitte: Companies with mature AI governance get 28% more employees using AI effectively

→ The mic drop: These same companies achieve 5 percentage points higher revenue growth

Translation: ROI comes from thoughtful adoption, not just fancy tech.

What This Means for Your Next Monday Morning

Stop asking “How can AI replace this process?”

Because in Southeast Asia, where cultural nuance matters, regulations shift constantly, and audience behaviour varies wildly, context is still king. This is particularly relevant when considering the AI Wave Shifts to the Global South.

And context? That’s what humans do best.

The Real Revolution Isn’t What You Think

The best AI doesn’t replace your team. It upgrades them.

Every substantial piece I’ve written recently involved AI somehow. Not to write for me, but to sharpen my thinking, or challenge my assumptions. For instance, sometimes I leverage ChatGPT for menial tasks.

AI is my co-pilot. But I’m still flying the plane.

Your Turn

If you’re navigating this shift — whether you’re agency-side, platform-side, or brand-side — I want to hear from you.

How are you approaching AI adoption? What’s working? What’s not?

Please share a comment, or slide into my DMs. Let’s compare notes on building something actually human-first! 💪

Because the future belongs to the companies that figure this out first. This aligns with the idea that AI will not replace you if you evolve.

What’s your take? Are you seeing human-first AI adoption in your industry?

Thanks for reading,

Adrian