AI, Creativity & What Comes Next: A Panel Conversation

We’ve all been talking about AI. Now let’s talk about what we’re actually doing with it.

AI isn’t arriving in advertising. It’s already here.

It’s influencing how creative gets made. How media gets planned and optimized. How agencies research prospects and pitch new business. How teams analyze information, test ideas, and make decisions.

So the question isn’t whether AI will change our industry.

It’s what it’s actually making better, what it isn’t, and what happens next.

Join AAF Baltimore for a candid conversation with leaders working across creative, media, business development, and agency innovation about how AI is showing up in the work right now.

No AI 101. No crystal-ball predictions. No endless tool demo.

We’re getting into the questions advertising professionals are actually wrestling with as AI becomes part of the everyday workflow.

Whether you’re already building it into your workflow, cautiously poking around, or still side-eyeing the whole thing, this conversation is for you.

Come for the panel. Stay for the people and the inevitable “okay, but what tools are you using?” conversations after.

MANY PERSPECTIVES. ONE INDUSTRY MOVING VERY, VERY FAST.

Meet The Panel

Cory Hudson

Sr. Creative Lead, North America | M+C Saatchi Performance

Cory Hudson is an award-winning creative leader with 20 years of experience in performance creative. He has worked with some of the biggest brands in the world and built a career around developing innovative solutions that drive results without sacrificing creative craft.

Today, Cory is exploring how emerging technologies like generative AI can work alongside traditional creative thinking, helping teams move faster, test smarter and expand what’s possible while keeping strong ideas and human creativity at the center.

Beth Cyphers

Senior VP, Marketing & Growth | Media Works

Beth Cyphers is a senior leader at Media Works, an independent, women-owned media agency, where she has spent nearly two decades helping clients navigate an increasingly complex media landscape.

Her experience spans paid media strategy, planning, buying, optimization, measurement and analytics, with a particular focus on translating emerging technologies and evolving media capabilities into meaningful business opportunities for clients.

Today, Beth is helping spearhead Media Works’ AI initiatives, exploring how artificial intelligence can enhance the agency’s work, improve efficiency and intelligence and ultimately deliver greater value to clients. Her perspective combines deep, practical media expertise with a forward-looking view of how AI is reshaping the advertising industry.

Mark Gray

Vice President of Business Development | GKV

Mark Gray joined GKV as a Digital Analyst in 2020, expanded into account management in 2021 and was promoted to Vice President of Business Development in 2026.

His background in analytics and client strategy shapes how he approaches new business today, using data, technology and emerging AI tools to identify opportunities, better understand prospects and help position the agency for growth.

In his current role, Mark leads GKV’s business development efforts and is particularly focused on how AI is changing agency prospecting, pitch development, client expectations and the broader agency new business process.

Moderated By

Matt McDermott

VP of Growth + Innovation | idfive

Matt McDermott is VP of Growth + Innovation at idfive, where his work sits at the intersection of creativity, strategy, technology and agency growth.

Over more than two decades, Matt has built and led multidisciplinary agency teams and developed work for organizations including Comcast Universal, Stanley Black & Decker, Johns Hopkins University, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, the U.S. Navy and United Way.

A longtime educator and mentor as well as an agency leader, Matt brings curiosity, experience and an appropriately skeptical perspective to emerging technology and the role AI should play in the creative and agency process.

What We’re Getting Into

AI is moving too quickly for another conversation about whether it matters. We want to talk about what happens when it becomes part of the work.

How are creative teams actually using it?

Where is it creating meaningful efficiency?

What can media teams do now that they couldn’t do before?

How does it change agency prospecting and pitching?

What are clients beginning to expect?

Where does AI improve the work, and where can it make the work worse?

What still requires taste, experience, judgment and a human who knows what they’re doing?

And, yes, we’ll probably get into the tools people are actually using too.