5 Minutes with… PJ Pereira
Adobe XD is a proud supporter of LBB. As part of the sponsorship of the ‘5 Minutes with…’ channel, we spend time with some of the most innovative and creative minds in the industry.
Up today is PJ Pereira, founder and creative chairman at Pereira O'Dell and chief creative officer at Serviceplan Americas.
PJ's agency is credited with such things as the creation of the first ever social film ('The Inside Experience' for Intel and Toshiba in 2011) and the participation of a brand in the Official Selection of Sundance Film Festival in 2016, before branded entertainment was the thing it is today. In 2022 during Cannes Lions, Pereira O'Dell's first festival since joining Serviceplan Group, it was named Independent Network of the Year.
But beyond advertising, Brazilian-born PJ is also a best-selling novelist - not to mention his three martial arts black belts. He has just released his first ever novel in English, 'The Girl from Wudang' - "a story about immortality, martial arts and artificial intelligence”.
What better time to catch up for a long overdue '5 Minutes with...'?
LBB's Addison Capper chats with PJ about the experience of getting truly in the weeds of AI, the importance to him of having creative endeavours outside of advertising, and why he thinks the "risk of doom" with AI is outweighed by positive possibilities.
LBB> Your latest novel has just launched. Congrats! I'd love to know what first inspired you to write a novel about AI. Was it somewhat of a lightbulb moment or something that was niggling at you for a while?
PJ> Some people grow up hoping to see a flying car, or mankind landing on Mars. I grew up programming a computer, which I learned to do right after I learned how to write. So for me, that dream has always been seeing a machine that thinks beyond what it was programmed to do. And we’re finally getting there. Maybe they will help us get to the flying cars now.
LBB> You began studying AI around seven years ago, but it really feels like the technology has gained so much traction and has advanced in the last couple of years. How did that, if at all, impact the writing process?
PJ> Ten years ago the technology started to pick up speed and I started to attend events, follow the news, and I realised I just couldn’t make myself continue to write what I was working on (a book about martial arts) without including AI into it too. Then I told a friend I thought I was going to make my next book about kung fu and artificial intelligence, and he immediately leaned forward in the most contorted confusion… and intrigue. That’s when I realised I had something interesting in my hands. I just needed a story.
LBB> How have your feelings towards AI evolved over the course of writing this book?
PJ> The book forced me to broaden my perspective and in a way, compartmentalise it. Because as a novelist, the spectacular and threatening were juicier, but I couldn’t ignore the potential leaps in science, in health, climate… or the transformations that would come to our industry and the economy.
LBB> Let's talk about those feelings a bit more! Generally, what are your thoughts on AI and its potential implications - both positive and negative - on everyday life?
PJ> What is everyday life? Is it your freedom from driving in a traffic jam? The stress of losing your job? An inflamed political debate on the dinner table? Learning that your kid’s incurable disease no longer is?
Writing this book made me realise I had to look at and judge the risk and opportunity in four different ways: 1) as an individual, 2) as a business person, 3) as an industry and an economy; and 4) as a species. Every time I open my email and find out about another stunning advancement in this field, I do my best to isolate these four perspectives so at the very least I can manage my anxiety.
LBB> As a creative, what are your thoughts on its implications for the advertising industry? How are you interacting with it at Pereira O'Dell/Serviceplan?
PJ> At my first AI event, I heard a high exec from a big tech company saying the biggest question he heard was ‘I know AI will Impact my business, but how?’. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I could only see it after I started to experiment with it, because AI is a very experiential technology. You can have glimpses of the future by playing with it. When you’re reading, not that much. And while I was playing with it, it became clear that there’s an incredible change coming. For strategy, our ability to compute massive amounts of unformatted data will make us much smarter. On the media front, my bet is the impact on real time micro decisions — how we will be able to make not one media plan but infinite media plans, one for each consumer we will want to reach. Production will see things get significantly cheaper and faster. And on the creative side, we will for the first time have technology helping us not only on how we visualise an idea, but in the creative process itself, because AI can be an incredible creative attachment for our brains.
LBB> On top of being an author, you're a multiple martial arts black belt holder. How important are these extracurricular activities to your role as a creative leader?
PJ> They are essential. In order to be really creative, you have to pour yourself into your ideas. It’s a very personal process, like being an artist. Except we aren’t artists, we are in the service business. From that conflict between the artistic impulses and the business responsibilities comes a lot of frustration. An emotional weight that eventually forces some of the most brilliant among us into early retirement. Well, having a parallel gate for those impulses helps. When someone kills the best idea you’ve ever had, instead of going home and thinking a piece of your soul was ripped from you, you can spend another creative outlet to focus on, to heal, and come back stronger for the next big idea you want to sell.
LBB> More generally, how important do you think it is for advertising creatives to flex their creative muscles outside of their day jobs? And how do you convey this to your creatives?
PJ> It’s a bit tricky in the short term because we are all needy people who want to believe we have all the attention in the world. But I push them as much as possible to pursue other creative avenues for the same reasons I do. In the long term, it pays off – it prevents some of the natural burnout that happens in our profession.
LBB> With things like pitches and tough deadlines, a career in advertising can take a lot of a person's time! How have you fostered an environment at your agency where people can exercise these muscles outside of work?
PJ> A small part of that is creating an environment where people have time for that. And we try our best. Not perfect, but very intentional. The real difference between this is a personal decision to dedicate that time to something more creative than letting all your free time be consumed by scrolling on your phone or binge watching the latest big show.
LBB> You've been involved in so much big, important work in your career. Does one project stick out as feeling particularly so for you? Why?
The world had a scientific emergency it managed to solve. Then a logistical emergency it figured out too, just to realise we had a communications problem with the vaccine acceptance. It was the biggest, most complicated, most urgent problem we’ve ever had to tackle. And not only did the team at Pereira O’Dell step up to the occasion, but once the strategy was clear the entire industry jumped in to help. Agencies, tech players, media companies, advertisers, celebrities… it was our collective Avengers moment.
LBB> To finish, in your opinion, will AI bring more good or bad to the world?
PJ> OK this will be a feeling rather than a calculation, but since the implications of AI are so vast, so independent, and in so many different fields, I’d rather think of chances than one overall balance. So I’d guess:
- 3% chance of a true disaster;
- 50% chance of really bad social implications that will make the world more complicated and unfair;
- 90% chance of pushing science to incredible places that will transform life for the (much) better.
For me, the 3 and the 90% cancel each other out. There’s a risk of doom but it’s more likely to cure important diseases.
What’s left is the point in the middle. The 50%, which means it can go either way — it can increase the inequalities of our world (if we keep its access exclusive), or it may be a historical opportunity to shrink them (if we use this reset to accelerate the growth of marginalised parts of our society). That’s a result we can all influence, if we start to work on it right now.
