The Creative Industry Today Series: Part 1 — Erin Kawalecki

2024 Applied Art Advertising Awards winning campaign "Next to Stok'd" by Angry Butterfly.

We spoke with Erin Kawalecki, Partner and Chief Creative Officer at Angry Butterfly—an award-winning creative leader whose work has been recognized at Cannes Lions, The One Show, Communication Arts, London International Awards, and The Effies. She shares her perspective on how she and her team are navigating today’s creative pressures, and what it really takes to make work that cuts through right now.

To me, it’s not so much that the creative industry is undergoing a change - it’s been quietly reshaped, again and again, over the past two decades. AI may be the latest headline, but long before it arrived, agencies were already adapting to a steady compression of time, budgets, and attention.

What’s different now is the pace (and the pile-on). It doesn’t feel like there’s a single force driving this shift; it’s the convergence of many. Social platforms didn’t just fragment media; they multiplied the number of moments brands are expected to show up in. Global holding companies introduced scale, but also layers and financial pressure (not always great for the creative product, or for the human beings working there). Procurement culture reframed creativity as a cost to control rather than an investment to grow. And technology, broadly, has made more possible while simultaneously making more expected.

Together, these forces have fundamentally reshaped the economics and the energy of the industry.
The modern creative department isn’t just making campaigns - it’s feeding ecosystems. That requires different rhythms, different skill sets, and frankly, a different kind of stamina.

Culturally, there’s been a shift too. The romantic notion of “the big idea” hasn’t disappeared (and I might say it’s more important than ever), but it’s been joined - and sometimes overshadowed - by the need for constant relevance. While that creates more opportunities to connect with audiences, it also introduces a kind of low-grade, persistent pressure that can wear teams down over time. That’s where the most acute tension sits today. The expectation to do more, faster, across more surfaces, with fewer resources. AI enters this context less as a disruption and more as an accelerant.

It’s all of the things: opportunity, threat, tool, and inevitability. The mistake would be to treat it as singular. At its best, AI can unlock speed, iteration, and access - freeing up time for higher-order thinking. At its worst, it risks flattening craft and flooding the market with sameness, and taking jobs away from people. The outcome depends less on the technology itself and more on how deliberately we choose to use it.

For us at the moment, the focus is on augmentation, not replacement. We have a cheesy saying: ‘Reimagine, not replace.’ Using AI to remove friction, not meaning. Because sustainable creativity, at a leadership level, means building environments where people can do their best thinking without burning out. Where not every brief demands everything, everywhere, all at once (I’m not saying we’re perfect there).

Am I optimistic about the future of agencies? Cautiously, yes. There’s still nothing quite like the combination of strategy, creativity, and craft that agencies can bring together. When it works, it’s powerful. What gives me hope is that clients still respond to that - when they’re given the chance to see it. What gives me pause is how often the system makes it difficult to get there.

For those stepping into leadership now, the job is less about having all the answers and more about creating the conditions for better ones. Protect your team’s time and attention as fiercely as you can. Be clear about what matters - and just as clear about what doesn’t. And resist the urge to chase every new thing simply because it’s new.

If I could redesign the industry, I’d start with how we value the work. Fewer outputs, done better. More trust in the process. A shift away from volume as a proxy for value. And a shared understanding between clients and agencies that great work requires space: to think, to challenge, to refine.

For all the change, there are still only two things worth protecting: the work and the people.

LI: Angry Butterfly | IG: @angrybutterflyco | W: Angrybutterfly.ca

Such valuable insight—thank you, Erin, for sharing your perspective with us. Many will not only find resonance in your thoughts, but also see their own experiences reflected here.