With the addition of the Canva Connected App for Gemini, the Canva Design Engine now enables seamless creation in every major AI Assistant.

Turn AI-generated images from Google’s Nano Banana model into editable designs with Canva’s Magic Layers AI tool.

Connect to team context and brand intelligence stored on Canva to create on-brand designs from the first prompt.

We’re proud to continue expanding our partnership with Anthropic, integrating the Canva Design Engine into Claude for Small Business, bringing the power of content and campaign creation to small business owners.

Adobe GenStudio unites and accelerates the content supply chain with generative AI.

I have been resisting leaning to much into AI to create content for clients for quite a while.

Mainly because I genuinely value real photography, real editing, real design, and the craft behind it all. At the end of the day, good content creation is an art form. A proper photographer, videographer, editor, copywriter, or designer brings taste, instinct, timing, and experience that should not be dismissed.

But the annoying part, when I look at the analytics, the AI-generated or AI-assisted content is almost always outperforming the original, handmade content.

I am seeing it across product images, motorsport visuals, general social media content, reels, campaign ideas, and even marketing copywriting. It is not just one isolated area where AI happens to do well. It is happening across multiple formats and use cases.

And before anyone says “maybe the human-made work just isn’t good enough,” that is not really the case here. My work involves many different photographers, videographers, copywriters, editors, designers, and content creators. We are not comparing AI against one weak creator or one lazy campaign. We are comparing AI content against work produced by 20-plus different human creators across different styles, projects, and formats.

I still value human input massively. I still think real photography and proper creative work matter. But the numbers are strongly suggesting that AI content is not just working, it is being better received by the public.

That is the bit I find hard to ignore.

It does not mean human creatives are finished. Far from it. But it does suggest the job is changing very quickly. Maybe the real shift is not human versus AI, but who learns how to use AI properly and who refuses to adapt.

Curious if others are seeing the same thing in their analytics?

AI marketing tools are genuinely useful. I use them. Most good teams do.

But there's a lie spreading through the ecosystem right now, and it's worth calling out.

"AI replaces your entire marketing function."

It doesn't. And pretending it does is how brands end up with a lot of output and no results.

AI is great at execution. It's not great at strategy.

> It can write content. It can't decide what you stand for.
> It can optimise your ads. It can't tell you why people actually buy from you.
> It can generate creatives. It can't build taste.
> It can automate outreach. It can't build trust.

Use AI to move faster on the things you've already figured out.

Don't use it to avoid figuring them out.

Fact #1: AI can make content faster.

Cool cool.

But faster does not mean better, and it definitely does not mean on-brand.

Right?!

I use AI in just about all aspects of my business. For ideas, strategy, reporting, analyzing, summarizing, video editing, task management etc.

Fact # 2: the AI content output is never ready to publish just because it exists.

Especially with visuals.

The image might be “pretty close,” but close is not the standard.

The font is off.
The colors are wrong.
The layout feels awkward.
The expression is weird.
The brand personality is missing.

So now tell me am I the only one who does this???

-> I use AI-generated visuals as a idea tool, not as final creative. I take the idea, then rebuild it in Canva so it actually matches the brand.

That’s me, the human-in-the-loop.

Because without humans, AI produces AI slop, AI garbage, look-alike content, boring 💩.

That might be good enough for you, but not for me. Not good enough for professional content.

The human in you loop = quality control

Still got humans in your content creation process? 😅

I'm going to share my current workflow because I think it can help those with small agencies like mine.

ChatGPT/Claude/Manus → briefing for topics and copies

Midjourney/Ideogram/Nano Banana → images for the posts

Canva Pro → templates and final editing

CapCut → reels with automatic captions (Submagic also has some really good automatic captions)

Gamma → presentation of the report for the client, using AI for assistance.

With this, I can manage 10 clients with a team of 2 people.

Note: I use a platform that centralizes all these tools into one access point, which has helped a lot with organization (and significantly reduced costs). If you want to know which one it is, just ask in the comments.

I'm building an AI marketing team of one.

Here's the thing about being a one-person marketing & sales team at an open-source software company (JobRunr): you don't have time for everything.

So I asked Patrick for help.

Patrick is my AI executive assistant, built on OpenClaw. And this week, he built me a LinkedIn Ads review system. From scratch.

Let me walk you through how we got here.

Step 1: We did the research first.

Before writing a single ad, we analyzed our actual data. Not vibes. Data.

We pulled company visitor data from Scarf and cross-referenced it with HubSpot. IP matching, domain lookups. That gave us a ranked list of which industries and companies are actually visiting our Pro and Pricing pages.

Finance. Insurance. Government. Not what I would have guessed.

We built company lists from that intelligence and matched them to LinkedIn audiences.

Step 2: We built a messaging framework.

Patrick analyzed all our existing customer data. Hubspot data, email conversations, intake questionnaires, support questions, ads,... Then we used that data to fill in a creative strategy map and come up with 3 angles per target-audience.


Step 3: The visuals.

I showed Patrick our existing ad visuals. He reverse-engineered the visual language and wrote image generation prompts matching our brand. Generated with Gemini. I could approve, reject, download, tweak in Photoshop, re-upload. All from a review tool he built.

Step 4: The review tool.

Patrick built a web app where I review everything:
→ Ad copy with live LinkedIn preview
→ Image variants (approve, download, replace, regenerate)
→ Comments and feedback
→ One-click approve to push live

No SaaS subscription. Just me and my agent.

The proof? One ad Patrick created by analyzing my best performers and generating a variant is now my highest CTR ad at 2.65%. AI-generated. Outperforming all my manual ones.

The difference between "write me an ad" and this? Real context. Your CRM data. Your analytics. Your brand. Your actual performance numbers.

And most importantly: Your taste. You are the creative director who shows the way.

Full stack: OpenClaw, LinkedIn Marketing API, HubSpot, Scarf, Gemini, and a custom review tool. Fully built using Telegram conversations.

Happy to share more details. Or just roast my AI visuals. Either works.

5 free AI tools I use every day as a marketer
(no BS)

1. Perplexity
Deep competitor research.
With real sources attached.

2. Claude
Build full campaigns.
Funnels. Content calendars.
Long form strategy.

3. Notion
Turn messy ideas
into clean timelines.

4. Canva
Design posts.
Carousels.
Ads. Fast.

5. Gamma
Create professional
client slide decks
in minutes.

I use them across:
• LinkedIn • Instagram • TikTok • YouTube • X

Which AI tool do you use every day?

I run a small B2B agency and was trying to automate most of my work, writing ad copy, creating social content, get insights from performance data faster

so three months ago I decided to test every AI marketing tool that promised to "save time" or "automate" something meaningful

I spent $1,847 and gave each one a real 4-week trial on active campaigns

The pitch is always the same: AI writes your copy, designs your graphics, analyzes your data, generates insights- you just review and publish

that's not how it actually works, and I'm gonna be specific about why most of these tools are time-sinks pretending to be time-savers

Profound ($600/month): I tested it because my CMO saw a demo and it looked incredible. The dashboard is genuinely beautiful. I ran an analysis of our top-performing campaigns and it spit out attribution models that looked scientific. Then I manually checked the numbers and they didn't match our actual conversion data. Spent 8 hours trying to understand their methodology before support went silent when I asked direct questions. Killed after week 2.

Canva Magic Studio ($13/month): This one actually worked, but not how I expected. I thought I'd describe a campaign and it would auto-generate everything. In reallity it's a much better design tool than Canva was before, with some smart templates. But I still had to brief it properly, review every output, and fix copy. Time saved: maybe 20 minutes per week if I'm generous. Still paying for it because the design quality is legit, but it didn't change my life tbh

HubSpot's AI Features (included): The subject line generator works okay for email. The content assistant is surface-level. If you're already paying for HubSpot, sure, click the AI button- but it's not a reason to use HubSpot

Notion AI ($10/month): This one surprised me. I actually use it every day for things that aren't "AI magic." I use it as a CRM, a content calendar, and yeah, sometimes the AI fills in database fields or generates first drafts. Never once saved me hours. But the system itself (Notion, not the AI) reduced context-switching because everything lived in one place

Zapier (free tier): This is the one that actually moved the needle for me. It connected my existing tools so I wasn't manually copying data between systems. One workflow: new lead in my form, auto-filled contact in Notion, auto-triggered email sequence. Setup took 90 minutes and saves maybe 5 hours per month, pretty good!

Ryze AI ($49/month): They promise "AI that watches your ad campaigns and gives advice." What you get: alerts when performance drops, and a chatbot that gives obvious advice. Is your CTR down? "Try improving your ad copy or targeting." Unsubscribed after the trial

AI tools save time at the margins, not the fundamentals

they make a small job slightly faster. They don't eliminate 4 hours of work

the real time-saver was hiring a part-time person to do data entry and basic copywriting ($1,200/month)

that moved the needle way more than all six tools combined. But that's the honest conversation nobody has because there's no commission on recommending hiring someone