Balancing Originality and Strategy: The 4A Modes Framework of Human-AI Collaboration in Advertising Creativity

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Balancing creative originality with strategic discipline remains a fundamental paradox in advertising creativity. Although generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) can produce novel recombinations of creative elements, it may not reliably align with brand strategy and campaign-specific executional requirements. To address this tension, organizations are reconfiguring creative workflows through new forms of human-AI collaboration. Drawing on an inductive multi-case study of five advertising organizations, including an incumbent agency and an AI-native startup, this study develops the 4A Modes Framework of Human-AI Collaboration. Organized along two dimensions of AI autonomy and process embeddedness, this framework identifies four modes of collaboration: Augmentation, Automation, Agentic, and Alliance. Furthermore, we identify two evolutionary paths through which organizations systematically navigate this tension: Process Integration and Native Innovation. Across both paths, micro-ambidexterity enables practitioners and teams to flexibly switch between and recombine collaboration modes within a single production process. Overall, these findings provide a theoretical lens for understanding the structural transformation of creative production and offer practical guidance for achieving effective and sustainable human-AI symbiosis.