The question was simple: How do you get an agency excited about AI?

Not with another deck. Not with another theoretical conversation about the future. And definitely not by making AI feel like something only a few “technical” people are allowed to understand.

You make it creative.

You give people the tools, the training, and a reason to play. You show them that AI is not some abstract force coming for the industry. It is something they can use right now to make something they never thought they could make.

That was the thinking behind Saatchi & Saatchi’s AI Film Festival.

I had been thinking a lot about how to make AI feel more accessible inside the agency. The opportunity was not just to talk about AI, but to get people using it. To make it less intimidating. To show that the best way to understand these tools is not by watching someone else use them, but by making something yourself.

So we built the festival around a simple belief:

People learn AI best when they are creating with it.

Instead of asking employees to simply understand AI, we asked them to use it. To write with it. Visualize with it. direct with it. Edit with it. Push it. Break it. And ultimately, make a film with it.

We Trained the Whole Agency, Not Just the Creative Department

One of the most important decisions was opening the festival up to everyone.

Creatives, strategists, producers, account teams, finance, HR, operations. Anyone who wanted to participate was invited in.

That mattered because AI cannot just live in one department. If an agency is going to transform, the whole agency needs to understand what these tools can do.

We trained everyone who wanted to participate on the core AI tools and workflows needed to create a short film. That included everything from concept development and scripting to image generation, video generation, voice, music, editing, and finishing.

The goal was not to turn everyone into expert filmmakers overnight. The goal was to remove the intimidation factor. To show people that if they had an idea, they had a way to start making.

And they did.

By the end of the festival, 35% of the agency had participated. We had more than 40 films submitted. And from all that work, we selected three winners.

But the films were only part of the story.

The Real Win Was Understanding

What made the festival powerful was that it gave people a real, hands-on understanding of what AI actually feels like to use.

People saw how quickly an idea could become visual. They saw how fast a script could turn into a scene. They saw how much creative momentum could come from a single prompt.

But they also saw the limits.

They learned that AI is easy to use, but hard to get perfect. That the first output is almost never the final output. That taste, craft, judgment, and persistence still matter. Maybe more than ever.

That was one of the most important lessons.

AI is not magic. It is not automatic. It does not replace the need for a strong idea or a clear point of view. It responds to direction. The better the human input, the better the output.

For many people, this was the moment AI stopped feeling like something happening outside of them and started feeling like something they could actually use.

It opened everyone’s eyes, not just to what AI can make, but to how it works.

It Became More Than a Festival

What started as a creative activation became one of the most meaningful ways we have helped transform the agency.

The AI Film Festival gave people a safe, playful, and highly visible way to experiment. It created a shared language around AI. It gave teams permission to try, fail, improve, and share what they learned.

It also proved something important: transformation does not have to feel corporate.

It can feel cultural. It can feel competitive. It can feel entertaining. It can feel like an agency doing what agencies do best: making things.

For us, the festival became one of the main ways we brought AI into the culture of Saatchi & Saatchi. Not as a mandate. Not as a software rollout. But as a creative challenge people actually wanted to be part of.

The impact went far beyond the films themselves.

People who participated now have a better understanding of what AI can do, where it struggles, and how it can support real creative work. Teams across departments are more fluent in the tools. More people are thinking hands-on about AI, not just theoretically, but practically.

That is how transformation starts.

Not with a single expert. Not with a single department. But with a shared experience that gives people the confidence to begin.

What I Learned

The biggest lesson from the AI Film Festival was that AI becomes much less scary when people use it to make something personal.

A film gave everyone a reason to care. It turned training into participation. Participation into creativity. And creativity into cultural change.

More than 40 films later, the takeaway was clear:

AI is not replacing imagination. It is expanding who gets to bring an idea to life.

And sometimes, the best way to teach an agency the future is to hand everyone a set of tools they have never used before and say:

Make something.