AI TRANSFORMATION
WHEN CREATIVE EXECUTION FINALLY CATCHES UP WITH CUSTOMER TARGETING.
Al is changing how quickly businesses can turn customer understanding into relevant creative execution.
5 min read | 26 August 2026
We recently joined more than 100 people at Canva's Ireland launch event in Dublin. The room included marketers, designers, founders, recent graduates and businesses already using Canva in very different ways.
Michael McLoughlin of Canva shared that around 430,000 people in Ireland open Canva every month. So this felt less like the arrival of an unfamiliar product and more like Canva building a community around something already embedded in how many Irish organisations create.
AI transformation and AI-enabled creative tools dominated the presentations. We saw how creative assets can be generated, adapted, resized and repurposed across channels, while Brand Kits, Brand Voice and controls help teams stay consistent. Canva Enterprise extends that idea across larger organisations and teams.
One part particularly resonated with me: the ability to create and iterate multiple assets quickly.
Knowing exactly who you want to reach is less valuable if you can't efficiently change what you say to them.
From accessible design to accessible Al.
My first meaningful exposure to Canva was years ago in the Caribbean, when I was leading Digital Customer Value Management at Digicel.
Members of the team started using Canva to create quick assets for engagement campaigns rather then waiting for external creative resource every time. We saw enough value to provide Canva licences across the team That was before generative Al.
Tne value then was making design more accessible. What I saw in Dublin suggests the next stage is making Al-enabled creative execution more accessible while adding the governance needed to use it at scale.
The opportunity has moved from democratising design to democratising creative execution.
More creative freedom needs more guardrails.
Al makes it easier for more people to create. Governance helps ensure that doesn't simoly create more inconsistency and noise.
More content does not mean more growth
The opportunity isn't simply to use Al to create more things.
It's to shorten the distance between understanding what a customer neeas ana being able to det on that understanding
The event was valuable for another reason too: the people. I reconnected with former colleagues, met people across Dublin's marketing and creative community and heard directly from people using these tools in their work.
Those conversations are increasingly where the interesting questions about AI sit: not whether the technology works, but how it changes the way businesses actually operate.
For much of my career, data and targeting moved faster than creative execution. Al may finally be helping close that gap.
The question now is whether businesses use that new capacity simply to make more content, or to make their commercial activity more relevant, responsive and effective.
Continue the conversation
If this resonates with how you think about growth...
I'd love to hear your perspective.