Oct 29, 2025
Creative operations are in the middle of a revolution - and AI is at the center of it. In a recent CreativeOps webinar hosted by HS Events, Satej Sirur (CEO of Rocketium) sat down with Michel Benhamou (COO of Hogarth France) to unpack what’s changing in creative production and how marketing and brand leaders can stay ahead.
Michel brings a rare combination of agency insight and deep operational experience, and his views on AI are grounded, practical, and above all - human-centric. Below, we break down the biggest themes and actionable guidance from the conversation.
1. Old problems, new urgency
Michel didn’t start thinking about automation because of AI. His focus on operational efficiency began long before - templating Facebook apps, automating repetitive design tasks, and finding ways to support creatives without slowing them down.
"The demand for content exploded. The demand for speed became a must. And the challenge of keeping creativity while scaling the production has been the common denominator."
Those same challenges persist today, but the urgency has grown. According to Michel, four persistent frictions continue to hold back creative operations:
Demand: Audiences today expect more content, in more formats, more often. Marketing teams are struggling to keep up.
Speed: Campaign timelines are tighter than ever. Producing at pace often compromises creativity - or vice versa.
Silos: Collaboration across brand, media, and creative teams remains disjointed. It creates delays and misalignment.
Data: Performance insights, when they arrive, come too late to influence creative direction.
These aren’t new problems. But with more teams adopting performance-based marketing strategies and personalized communications, the gaps between strategy and execution are becoming harder to ignore.
AI alone can’t fix them. But it can become the infrastructure on which better systems are built.
2. Agentic AI is changing the game - and the job description
Many teams are familiar with generative AI: tools that generate images, write copy, or adjust formats. But Michel believes the real transformation lies ahead - in what he calls Agentic AI.
"For me, the game-changer is not necessarily gen AI. It's really the way the AI is able to orchestrate, execute, collaborate with other AIs."
This isn’t about replacing creatives. It’s about creating autonomous systems that:
Take a campaign brief and translate it into multichannel rollouts
Collaborate with other systems to ensure brand and channel consistency
Analyze performance and recommend changes or new content
Michel notes that as AI handles executional workflows, human roles are evolving. Designers and marketers will become curators of strategy, brand, and storytelling - not just task owners.
"There’s a huge shift from creators to curators - the idea that creative teams are there to inspire, guide, and uphold the integrity of the message, rather than build every asset themselves."
For operational leaders, this means investing not just in tools, but in people who can think systemically, manage creative ecosystems, and understand performance signals.
3. The human matters more, not less
It’s easy to view AI as a shortcut. But Michel cautions that automation is only valuable when your team trusts it - and sees it as a tool that supports their judgment, not replaces it.
"The more you will embrace those agents, the more you will be able to create a new space for the human."
This means:
Training matters: Don’t wait until AI is fully rolled out. Involve teams early so they feel ownership.
Adoption must be purposeful: Choose tools that solve specific workflow bottlenecks, not just ones that promise productivity.
Creativity still leads: Let AI handle repetitive tasks, but keep humans in charge of narrative, tone, and storytelling.
Michel’s key insight here is cultural: tools fail when they’re introduced without buy-in. But when teams co-pilot AI - using it to extend their creative intent - the result is not just faster work, but better work.
4. Advice for leaders: Make AI real, or don’t bother
"Don’t wait for the tech to be perfect. Find real pain points, identify the right agents, and start small. If you build trust with even one success story, adoption will follow."
Michel’s advice to creative operations and marketing leaders is both pragmatic and urgent. Many organizations chase "transformation" without solving for the day-to-day chaos their teams face.
To implement AI successfully:
Start with a problem, not a tool: Whether it’s versioning delays, last-minute compliance checks, or personalization gaps - find one, measurable issue.
Solve that issue with AI: Pilot a specific workflow (e.g., resizing ad variants automatically), and prove ROI.
Scale slowly, with guardrails: Don’t go all in on a platform until you’ve understood how it fits with your people, processes, and creative stack.
One of Michel’s most valuable reminders? Not all AI is created equal. The most exciting tools often don’t plug in cleanly to enterprise systems. Leaders need to prioritize tools that work with their current stack, not around it.
As creative operations evolve, AI is no longer just a tool - it’s infrastructure. But success doesn’t come from removing people. It comes from reimagining what they’re free to do.
The future of creative isn’t AI-led. It’s AI-augmented - where strategy, storytelling, and human nuance take center stage, and AI handles the repetitive, the scalable, and the precise.
Want to dive deeper into Michel’s take on where creative ops is headed?
🎥 Watch the full CreativeOps Webinar (hosted by HS Events) featuring Michel Benhamou and Satej Sirur below:
