State of Data & AI: Scaling AI

Creative disruption at scale

Despite these challenges, the promise of AI and its ability to drive efficiency and innovation remains compelling enough to encourage organisations to seek ways to leap over this operationalisation gap.

One company that is doing so is the international advertising agency TBWA. As a business that markets itself as ‘The Disruption Company’, TBWA has embraced AI as part of its tradition of helping brands break conventions and reframe markets.

According to its chief AI and innovation officer for Australia, Lucio Ribeiro, TBWA is focused on building tools and strategies that allow clients to embed disruptive thinking at speed, without compromising on trust, safety, or creativity.

Ribeiro said the company had moved beyond the proof-of-concept phase with several projects and was seeing solid returns from these investments. One of these was a proprietary product called RISE. With visibility of brands within LLMs now as vital as search engine optimisation once was, Ribeiro said RISE helped ensure brands remain discoverable inside emerging AI interfaces.

“AI in the enterprise isn’t a technology problem—it’s a behavioural one,” Ribeiro said.

“The biggest hurdle has been managing change, bridging the gap between ambition and readiness. Teams want to move fast, but clients need certainty—around IP, data governance, and creative integrity.

“Much of what you see online – AI-generated films, hyper-automated workflows – can’t yet be responsibly deployed in enterprise settings. The tools often lack the security, clarity, or legal footing required. Our job is to balance innovation with protection, which means we move fast, but with guardrails firmly in place.”

Ribeiro said TBWA’s strategy was to only scale those initiatives that truly shifted how the company worked or what it offered.

“ROI in this space is nuanced,” Ribeiro said.

“Sometimes it’s time saved. Other times, its creative velocity, pitch impact, or cultural resonance. We’ve reframed ROI to focus on business acceleration and competitive edge – especially in a creative context where hours saved isn’t the whole story.”

As part of a global network, Ribeiro said his team benefitted from greater capability than it could source locally, and this brought with it clarity around security, extensibility, and cost-efficiency.

“Our rule is simple: if it can’t scale securely and ethically in a commercial environment, we don’t deploy it,” Ribeiro said.

“That’s also how we evaluate tools—through the lens of trust, usability, their ability to amplify human creativity, and real impact.