Published 26 February 2026
Growing fears over AI displacing human agency and creativity and diminishing the quality of content (see Key Stats, including those on AI Slop) are spurring renewed appetite for human-made artistry. Globally, the number one thing consumers want brands to prioritise in 2026 comms is human-made content (Sprout Social, 2026). We spotlight three strategic directions: ads celebrating slow artistry, revealing creative processes behind brand storytelling, and campaigns reviving traditional or unusual craft.
Macro Drivers of Change
Regional Focus
Pillars of Innovation
Trend Duration
Showing Process: Making as Messaging
Globally, 55% of social media users say they’re more likely to trust brands publishing human-generated content (Sprout Social, 2025), placing an imperative on brands to show that their creative goes beyond AI prompts. Catering to this cohort, brands including the BBC, Apple and US skincare brand Starface are sharing behind-the-scenes content spotlighting the collaboration, ingenuity and skill underpinning their storytelling.
- BBC Reveals Human Effort Behind Pyrotechnic Stop-Motion Olympics Ad: Trails Will Blaze, the BBC’s in-house campaign for the Winter Olympic Games 2026 (created in partnership with Yannis Konstantinidis, director of British animation production studio Nomint), prioritises human creativity over heavily digitised, industry-standard visual effects. The ad pairs ultra-precise stop-motion animation with deliberately unpredictable pyrotechnics as a visual metaphor for the Olympians’ trailblazing achievements.
An accompanying YouTube video (26,000 views) documents the ad’s complex behind-the-scenes production, from the technical expertise of digital animators (who created the 3D-printed stop-motion models), to the careful co-ordination of camera crews, set dressers and pyrotechnicians working to harness the volatile visual spectacle.
Consumer pushback against AI slop is palpable and there is a renewed desire for brands to overtly celebrate the creative collaborative process. It's not about going full analogue – it’s more about human connection and the serendipitous tangents that result from personal engagement.
- Apple Unveils Process Behind Puppet Production: Revealing the artistry underpinning its Critter Carol Holiday 2025 ad (which saw forest animals using a hiker’s dropped iPhone to record themselves singing), Apple launched a behind-the-scenes short showcasing the painstaking production process. This included the hand-crafted puppets, teams of bodysuit-clad puppeteers (later removed in post-production), and set designers’ efforts to build a forest landscape 3ft off the ground to conceal voice actors. As of February 2026, it has over 445,000 views.
It follows widespread critique of its 2024 Crush! ad – which saw an industrial press desecrating objects of human creativity (books, musical instruments), suggesting its latest iPad could outdo them all.
We’ve witnessed a significant increase in clients’ appetite to champion the artists they commission. Recently, an airline flew a Danish illustrator to East Asia to experience the luxury of the flight but also to soak in the culture with a few days of guided tourism - providing a wealth of behind-the-scenes content for social media.
- Starface’s Socials Spotlight Allure of Behind-the-Scenes Content: Highlighting human artistry in a way likely to resonate with younger, digital-native audiences, Starface’s social media profiles regularly share the process behind its brand-themed artist collaborations.
In January 2026, it traced Australian multimedia artist Annabel Le’s process from initial sketches and sculpting to fine detailing when creating a trio of clay dolls for an Instagram post. Similarly, a December 2025 collaboration with Malaysian-Chinese mixed-media artist Karen Cheok charts the journey from pencil sketch and clay sculpting to paint airbrushing and final canvas varnishing – receiving over 783,000 views and more than 38,500 likes on TikTok as of February 2026.
Slow Craft-Centred Comms
As highlighted in Internet Trends 101: Friction-maxxing, audiences are increasingly reintroducing resistance and human effort to counter the anaesthetising effects of the hyper-convenience of tech-streamlined contemporary lives – 46% of Americans sometimes intentionally choose inefficiency to slow things down (Horizon Futures, 2025). This shift presents an opportunity for brands to spotlight time-intensive creative endeavours, as exemplified by Corona’s pinhole photography campaign.
- Corona’s Pinhole Photography Campaign Foregrounds Time-Intensive Craft: In November 2025, the Chilean arm of Mexican beer brand Corona launched its centennial campaign, Made by the Sun. This championed the slow process of analogue pinhole photography, which uses a dark box, small aperture and sunlight to develop images.
Created with Argentinian advertising agency David Buenos Aires, 100 photographs were taken along Chile’s coastline, capturing its rugged beaches, native flora, and coastal residents’ daily lives. A dedicated webpage houses the images, each captioned with the time and place it was taken and, highlighting the medium’s slow process, the exposure length, ranging from one to 40 minutes.
The campaign also included a free public exhibition at Chile’s Mercado Urbano Tobalaba and limited-edition book of the solar-produced images.
Campaigns & Comms Resurrecting Idiosyncratic Traditional Artforms
Globally, 76% of consumers believe that creativity, craft and imperfection will always matter more than machine-made art (Human8, 2026), underscoring the necessity for brands to spotlight the idiosyncrasies of human artistry in their comms. We spotlight two approaches: mass-market fast-food giant McDonald’s McFlurry recreations via mixed-media art and stained-glass mosaics, and French luxury fashion house Hermès’s handcrafted, lithography-esque e-commerce design.
- McDonald’s Canada’s McFlurry Remakes Hero Analogue Artistry: Celebrating the 30th anniversary of McFlurry’s 1995 global debut in a restaurant in New Brunswick, Canada, McDonald’s partnered with seven local artists to produce multi-format images of the dessert. Each artist practices crafts rarely seen in an increasingly digitised world – thus implying the dessert was worthy of such depictions.
Featured works include Sarah Nicole Dart’s nature-inspired cyanotype prints (made by exposing UV-reactive chemicals to sunlight), Nessy Thomas’s mixed-media artwork inspired by Canada’s historic Black communities, Jill O’Reilly’s stained glass mosaic, and Cynthia DeCoste’s plein air painting, created in front of a live audience (see also Showing Process: Making as Messaging above). The finished pieces were later photographed and showcased across billboards on Canada’s East coast.
- Hermès’ Hand-Drawn Homepage Embraces Artist Imperfection: Translating traditional craft into digital spaces, in January 2026, Hermès collaborated with French illustrator Linda Merad to redesign its e-commerce homepage with hand-drawn icons. Merad’s aquatic illustrations, aligned with Hermès’ A/W 26 theme L’appel du Large (The Call of the Open Sea), are inspired by lithography – intentionally retaining etched imperfections that evoke the hand-laboured craft.
Alongside the web design, Hermès shared short films featuring the illustrations on Instagram, animated by motion designer Kit Klein and soundtracked with dreamlike chime music from Pascal Armand (both French).
- Burberry Marries Traditional Craft with Modern Identity: Suggesting that traditional craft has a role to play in contemporary storytelling, British luxury fashion brand Burberry has continued to affirm its commitment to traditional craft and makers as part of its ongoing brand modernisation (see Future-Forward Heritage: Reinvigorating Brand Identity in NRF 2025).
In June 2025, it partnered with Scotland-based wood engraver Jonathan Gibbs to reimagine the brand’s knight logo. An 18-second Instagram Reel documents the artist’s journey from virgin wood block and precise engraving, to the unrolling of the finished print, accompanied by crisp audio of the tactile process. Ben Cox, director at Central Illustration Agency (which represents Gibbs), notes: “It was a dialogue-free homage to the magic of craft.”
The resonance of behind-the-scenes content is growing as audiences increasingly seek proof of brand campaigns’ human-made origins. Behind-the-scenes content resonates when it documents the technical skills and complex co-ordination of human creatives (BBC and Apple) and reveals the journey between scrappy ideation and polished final product (Starface). Affirm human craftsmanship by making these processes visible.
An influx of fast-paced, formulaic AI-generated content alongside a growing appreciation for anti-streamlined resistance and human effort (see Internet Trends 101: Friction-maxxing), is spurring an increasing appetite for comms that platform slow, deliberate, human mastery. Look to Corona Chile’s solar-produced pinhole photography campaign as a blueprint for spotlighting the value of skilful, time-intensive human artistry.
Growing scepticism toward generative AI-produced art (see Key Stats) is driving a newfound consumer appreciation for the quirks of unusual human-made craft. Brands should draw inspiration from McDonald’s Canada’s McFlurry recreations produced by niche craft techniques and Hermès’ intentionally imperfect lithograph-inspired e-commerce design, partnering with artisans to platform traditional craftsmanship across physical and digital spaces.
