The puppets in e.l.f. Beauty's new holiday ad are wearing real makeup. Someone brushed it on, one frame at a time. Levi's put out a stop-motion spot the same day, Monday, Nov. 2, with a nod to its 1995 “Clayman” ad. This is the year a two-sentence prompt can make a passable commercial. And the people who still build ads by hand are booked solid.
Katie Deighton reports the trend in the Journal on Tuesday, Nov. 3. AI has forced ad agencies and production houses to cut prices and cut jobs. The surprise winner is the slow stuff. Claymation. Hand-drawn animation. Embroidery. People are pushing back on AI pictures everywhere, in big campaigns and on the menu board at the local shawarma stand. That is sending brands the other way.
Booked solid in Oregon
Shel Rasch co-founded Stunt Puppet Pictures, a stop-motion studio in Oregon, with her husband Justin. For five years they said yes to nearly every brief. Now they turn work down. “The whole last year, we've been nonstop booked,” she said. Justin recently worked on a claymation ad for the Mac Mini from Apple (AAPL). In Burbank, Cami Kwan of Apartment D Films, which animated the e.l.f. spot, says inquiries have doubled in two years. Apple knows the backlash firsthand. In 2024 it said sorry for an ad in which a press crushed artists' tools. This year it used glasswork, stop-motion, embroidery and fluid dynamics instead.
Greg Hahn of the agency Mischief explains the pull. People put a value on effort, he says, and in clay they can see it. Viewers can tell every frame was thought out, and that's worth more when “good enough” is free. The public mood helps. A Gallup and Bentley University poll found 39% of Americans now say technology does more harm than good, up from 31% a year earlier. Brands know AI can copy the handmade look. So e.l.f., Prada and Apple release behind-the-scenes films to prove the hands were real. The clip of Apple's claymation Mac Mini ad being made has more than 197 million views on Instagram.
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This is a Career story, and a small-business one. When a machine makes the generic thing cheap, the human thing gets scarcer and its value goes up. That's an old rule. It happened to handmade furniture and to live music. The clay studios win because a buyer can see the effort, and proof of effort is getting rarer. Apple (AAPL) is held at weight in 24 books; nothing added. e.l.f. (ELF) and Levi Strauss (LEVI) aren't held.
Here's the connection to your own money. Your career is the biggest asset you own, and it funds every 401(k) contribution you'll ever make. This week, write down the one part of your work a client or a boss pays for because a person did it. Then ask what you could show, like that behind-the-scenes film, to prove it. If the answer is nothing, that's the part to build now. The Rasches didn't open their studio the year the phone started ringing. They'd been at it for years before the rain came. Your earning power belongs in the plan too, so bring that note to your next review.