Two companies approached me with exactly the same idea: a team of characters, each embodying one brand attribute. A brand A-Team. Human and machine both pull toward the middle – what's new is the scale. The result is Premium Sameness: work nobody objects to and nobody remembers.

Luxury advertising ran on visible effort: cost is the message. But the reflex has changed – from "How did they do that?" to "Which AI tool did they use?" Soon anyone can make this on a laptop, on a Tuesday. The new luxury isn't what's hard to produce. It's what's hard to copy.