• by Cory Treffiletti , Featured Contributor, 6 hours ago

When was the last time you watched the movie “Air”?  The movie came out in 2023 and tells the story of how Nike pitched and won the business with Michael Jordan.  It’s a great movie starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and if you’ve ever done an ad pitch, you can relate.  I’ve watched the movie five times, and each time I take away something different.  Most recently, I took away an underlying lesson that no matter what, this business will always require real people to make it work.

The movie is set in a time before AI and the internet, before all the tools that make the current ad landscape what it is.  But there’s still the underlying connection between people, and how that connection is used to create emotion, tell a story, and establish a relationship.  The pitch from Damon’s character embodies what truly won that business and what turned Air Jordan into a global megabrand that lives on today and dominates the sports industry.  It was about radical empathy and knowing how to sell “the one” vs. the many. 

This is something AI will never do.  It will never understand “the one.”

AI is a tool that can understand broad concepts, create strategic ideas, and apply them to your business.  AI is a linear thinker and does an excellent job of synthesizing and applying concepts to an audience, but the ability to think tangentially, read a room, and understand the human element is wholly human and can never be replaced.

You can see the same thing when you watch “Mad Men” and see Jon Hamm as Don Draper in a room during a pitch.  That ability to weave a story, connect with the audience, and truly understand their reactions is something no AI will ever be able to do. 

AI is logical, not emotional.  It is linear, not tangential.  It cannot improvise in a room the way Damon’s character does when he sees a meeting going south because of the standard video edit created to pitch the brand.  AI would have seen that video through and followed a script.   It never would have changed course on the spot, eventually winning the deal and creating the most important sports brand ever.

The idea of “going with your gut” cannot be programmed.  It is the antithesis of a rules-based algorithm, which is why it cannot be AI-ified.

AI would probably have recommended against the eventual Jordan deal itself, and the way the deal was structured as a revenue share, because prior to that deal, no deal was ever structured that way.  Nobody had ever seen the player as the brand.  The brand was always superior to the player, but the people at Nike knew this could be different.  At least, a few people at Nike knew this to be the case, and they bet their careers on it. 

Thankfully for them, and for all of us, they were right.  I sit here writing this piece in a pair of low-ankle Air Jordans because of an emotional tie I have from growing up watching Jordan and because of how that meeting went way back in the '80s. 

AI would never have created Air Jordan.