Paper Moose is marking its 15th year with a new thesis on the future of agencies, AI and creative work.
The agency said the next 15 years will be shaped by the difference between tasks requiring intelligence and those requiring “geist”, the German word it uses internally to describe the spirit or X-factor behind truly creative work.
Paper Moose argues that while raw intelligence tasks can be automated, the generation of great creative ideas cannot.
The agency had humble beginnings, starting as a group of entrepreneurs in a garage, riding the first wave of digital video production.
They said the democratisation of camera technology and editing software helped smaller companies compete with traditional production houses, taking Paper Moose from a filmmaker collective into a full-service agency.
Now, in 2026, the agency said it is facing a larger wave of AI automation.
“The question is no longer whether AI will dramatically transform our industry,” the agency said.
“In what appears to now be the industrial revolution for knowledge work, the question is what will be left for humans to do.”
Why Paper Moose says AI cannot automate “geist”
Paper Moose said today’s AI systems are strong at tasks that can be benchmarked and improved through reinforcement learning.
But the agency argues that great creative work cannot be reduced to a single measurable outcome, as in games like chess, where the result is clear.
“You could argue a ‘creative’ benchmark could be developed, and you could hypothetically sit a world-renowned creative director in front of a million sets of creative and have them pick winners until the model learns to choose exactly as they would,” the agency said.
“But even then, you have frozen that single sensibility.
“You have lost the diversity of creative outlooks that makes what we would say is a truly great creative idea stand out and resonate with human beings.”
Paper Moose said that unless there is a fundamental leap away from large language models to another AI technology, there does not appear to be a way to automate “geist”.
Moose Review takes aim at slop creative
While Paper Moose does not believe AI will replace the generation of great creative ideas, it said automation will still heavily affect the creative industry.
The agency warned that “slop creative” could drown the industry in low-quality work, which is why it has built Moose Review.
Moose Review is an AI creative testing tool that assesses creative quality against a framework derived from marketing science research that predicts advertising effectiveness.
The framework draws on marketing science practitioners, including Byron Sharp on mental and physical availability; Les Binet and Peter Field on emotional brand advertising and long-term growth; Karen Nelson-Field on attention economics; Orlando Wood on right-brain creative performance; and Daniel Kahneman on System 1 processing.
How Moose Review works
Moose Review works by polling “Synths”, or synthetic focus groups, and running them through tuned questions.
Paper Moose said the Synth responses closely mirror real human subgroups by up to 94%, while removing some of the challenges of human testing and allowing for faster results.
With more than 20,000 reviews in the Moose Review library, the agency said the results are “staggeringly close” to traditional focus groups, at a fraction of the cost and time.
“Moose Review gives us what creativity has never had before: a verifiable output with a quick feedback loop,” the agency said.
The agency said the tool can test early concepts before production spend and finished assets, helping kill weak ideas cheaply and confirm strong ones confidently.
Portal and the future agency model
Paper Moose has also been building its own internal agency software, Portal, to handle business operations across scheduling, documentation, chat, financial tracking, strategic research and media implementation.
The agency described Portal as a foundation for automating agency intelligence work, freeing up capacity for more “geist” thinking across client businesses.
When combined with its in-house production and media capabilities, Paper Moose said the model allows for speed and quality.
A leaner, faster, wilder future
Paper Moose said its bet is that the future of agencies will be built on humans focused on “geist” tasks, supported by near-full automation of intelligence work.
“AI will not replace creative agencies – but it will force them to become leaner, faster, wilder,” the agency said.
“The next fifteen years belong to those willing to dramatically alter their business models to balance the automateable and the ineffable.”
Top image: Paper Moose founders