Creative Services ®evolution

Chapter 1: A Gut Punch, a Rainy Night, and an undeniable Market Truth

Part 1 of 2 — A story and a brief historical segue
Chapter 1: A Gut Punch, a Rainy Night, and an undeniable Market Truth
by Wes Kennison
2 min read

It was a rainy night as I struggled to parallel park on Rampart, in the French Quarter. We were on our way to see Snarky Puppy play at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre when my client told me something that was a bit of a gut punch at that moment. He said:

“Wes, you can’t put creative and technology together in the same company. You have to pick one. People will always be confused about what they’re buying from you if you try to do both.”

This wasn’t just any client. He was something of a mentor—someone whose opinion mattered deeply to me. I’d learned so much from watching him effortlessly steer what should have been a complicated client landscape, for YEARS. So, when he spoke, I listened.

His advice was wise, and correct, and yet… I didn’t let it slow me down.

That night, Snarky Puppy closed their set with Shofukan, and on the drive home, I attempted to articulate, for the first time, something that’s since become the cornerstone of what we do here at version47:

Creative services $pend today doesn’t make market sense without the leverage that technology provides us, in the form of custom tools that you make yourself.

The Long Arc of Creative Tools Evolution

This idea didn’t appear out of nowhere. The democratization of creative technology has been building for decades—especially in video.

Here’s how the gate came down:

  • 2005: YouTube launches, giving everyone a place to publish video.
  • 2010: Canon releases the 5D Mk II—the first true DSLR that made cinematic video affordable.
  • 2012: The “codec wars” end with the MP4 standard, making high-quality, small-file video playable everywhere.
  • 2013: Adobe Creative Suite shifts from a $3,000 box to a monthly subscription—professional tools for anyone.
  • 2015: YouTube becomes the world’s university for learning to use these newly liberated creative tools, making access to up-skilling free and ubiquitous.

In less than a decade, the keys to the video production castle were handed to everyone. The old guard of commercial video production—once built on exclusivity and barriers to entry—was replaced by the everyman's take on expression using these tools.

Enter AI (and the Illusion of “New Value”)

Now, AI has taken center stage. It’s flashy, hyped, and funded. But it’s not new—it’s the next chapter in this same 20-year story of accelerating tool evolution.

Blaming AI for the disruption of creative services misses the point. The real story is that tools have finally reached automated capability. They’re smart, scalable, and deeply connected. But they still lack the human component that makes creative work worth buying: taste, experience, craft, context, and resonance.

And that’s where our opportunity lives.

The Real Advantage

When everyone has access to the same tools, the tools stop being the differentiator. The differentiator is what you do with them, just like it’s always been.

That’s why the next phase isn’t just about using tools—it’s about building your own. Tools that act as an extension of your creative intuition, automate what can be automated, and amplify the thing your clients actually pay for: your craft.

This is what we mean when we say "Custom Tools."

They don’t replace the creative—they protect it. They make your expertise scalable, your delivery faster, and the idea of booking you to solve client problems a no-brainer.

And that’s where we’ll pick up in Chapter 2.


Coming Up

We’ll unpack what your clients are actually paying for. Spoiler, it's NOT your tools.


Bonus