Haley Paas has spent her career at the intersection of media, creativity and data, and she's convinced that while AI is transforming advertising, it can't replace human intuition.
"AI is reshaping every corner of our industry," says Paas, senior vice president of media, marketing effectiveness and agency management at Verizon. "In creative, it's speeding up idea generation and enabling production at scale. In media, it's making optimization faster and more predictive, helping us allocate dollars with greater precision. But the limit lies in judgment. AI can process data, but it doesn't know our brand values or the cultural nuance of a message. That's where vision, human creativity, leadership and taste will still be essential."
Paas believes the most powerful campaigns connect both sides of marketing's brain: long-term brand building and short-term performance. "It's not an either/or question," she says. "It's about designing an ecosystem where both fuel each other. Long-term brand building creates the trust and emotional resonance that makes performance work harder. Performance marketing, in turn, gives us real-time signals on how we're converting that demand and interest."
She sees the best marketers as those who know when to adjust that balance. "Playing with the ratio of how much we support one objective versus the other is where brands can start to test and learn their way into better outcomes."
That sense of balance also applies to how brands navigate culture. "Relevance starts with knowing who you are as a brand and what need you are fulfilling for people," she says. "If you're showing up in culture as a one-off just to ride a trend, it's like eating a candy bar. Feels good in the moment, but it doesn't really do anything for you in the long term."
Her advice? "Root your work in your brand, product or service and what your audiences care about. Cultural participation works best when it ladders back to something only you can credibly bring to the table."
When asked which channel she'd choose to build a brand in 2025, Paas doesn't hesitate. "This may be cheating, but I'd say video due to its versatility. It's the most powerful bridge between storytelling and performance. Whether it's streaming, social or live experiences, video is where people are leaning in with their attention and where we can connect scale with precision."
Paas is also watching how the next generation of marketers are being trained to think differently. "Emerging companies are going to be at an advantage by building entire marketing departments leveraging agentic AI. They'll be able to move fast once the tech is good enough and won't have to manage through immense organizational change that was built with legacy systems and structures."
She adds that this shift is already beginning in education. "Universities are now giving students projects that have them build entire marketing departments using AI agents for different tasks. There's going to be an interesting five years ahead of us where emerging marketing talent will know how to harness the tech better, and current marketers will need to pivot how they get work done."
For Paas, the best creative and media leaders of the future won't be the ones who know everything, they'll be the ones who stay curious. "The leaders of tomorrow aren't the ones who know it all," she says. "They're the ones who can learn fast, adapt and inspire others to do the same."
In her own role, that balance between vision and adaptability is front and center. "My biggest challenge is all about balancing my short- and long-term goals," she says. "With everything happening in technology, consumer behavior and the advertising industry at large, translating my vision for transformation to my entire organization and agency teams requires a lot of energy and perseverance."
The Drum Awards Festival celebrates the brands and creators using creativity to make a real difference. Follow jurors like Haley Paas as they champion media work that connects precision with purpose and reminds the industry that even in the age of AI, human judgment still leads the way.