I spent 20 years learning to navigate an industry. Then I built a campaign for the man who’s dismantling it

Late last month, we put up a sign. Thirty feet tall, 230 feet wide, with white letters on a hillside along the 101 in Los Angeles. We built it to film a project. Nobody knew that. All Angelenos saw were enormous letters appearing on a ridge overlooking the freeway, and the city lost its mind. Commuters slowed down to film it. TikTok and Reddit filled up with people trying to figure out what it was. Local TV ran segments. Tom Sandoval from Vanderpump Rules posted on Instagram, worried it would block his Hollywood Hills view. We hadn’t announced a thing.

When we unveiled the campaign that the sign was for, I felt what you’d expect. Elation. Relief. The specific satisfaction of a project landing the way you designed it to land. And then, within hours, something I hadn’t planned on. A thought that sat in my stomach like a stone: I may have just spent months building the most compelling argument for why my own role is about to be fundamentally rewritten.

The sign spelled out the name Billy Boman. Boman is an AI video director based in Stockholm. His clients include Google and Klarna. He works largely alone with AI tools and delivers commercials and videos that compete with those produced by the largest advertising agencies. No massive crews. No seven-figure........

© Fortune