‍

In the nearly three decades since Christopher Lloyd moved from Los Angeles and opened his first business in Oklahoma City, his marketing and media companies have been through several rebrands, mergers and transformations.

None bigger than in 2020 when Lloyd partnered with Casey Cornett, and a year later, they brought Spark Creative, Scissortail Media, Studio Flight, Cornett Marketing and Lloyd Entertainment under one roof to form Flight, a full-service marketing and advertising company.

Since then, the duo has not only watched their company grow but also has earned critical recognition for their work. That includes winning several awards that now adorn their office in Bricktown.

But as Lloyd (CEO) and Cornett (President) enter the second half of their first decade together, Flight is at a crossroads. The company is evolving from a traditional media advertising shop into a strategic-creative growth partner that was hastened by the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

AI has created a sea change that has inspired both excitement and fear in the industry. But instead of fighting against the oncoming wave, they chose to get out in front of it.  Flight decided to look upon the nascent technology as something that could help take their work from being just an advertising company to something much more.

“I guess a lot of people look at AI, and they think Chat GPT. They think of AI as a software subscription, and AI is not a software subscription,” said Lloyd. “It’s not something that’s just Am I using the most AI tools? Am I replacing people with AI? Am I chasing the hype of AI? That is not what it is. It is very much using resources to have faster insight, to have higher output, to have a higher ROI (return on investment). It is very much fundamental to kind of that next level of where we’re going.”

However, according to Cornett, Flight is not turning the reins over completely to AI. While they look at its capabilities as more than just a tool, it is still only an enhancer to the human element they have surrounded themselves with.

“One of the revolutions of what we’ve been talking about in moving into the company that we are is that we look around the room today and the majority of the staff, like almost all of the staff, are all senior-level multi-year marketing agents,” Cornett said. “So, if any client is coming to us or a potential client coming to us, they’re going to be surrounded by senior-level staff. We have a leadership team, and they are experienced, they are the best, they are knowledgeable, and that wisdom allows us to solve client problems and create new opportunities because of the fact that they have such a depth of experience.”

Flight has a full-time staff of 14 and is currently looking to add two more positions. Yet, they do not envision themselves trying to grow bigger in terms of staff size.

“In today’s world of the gig economy, it is not as imperative to continue hiring larger staff,” Cornett said. “Meaning we can take on quite a bit without feeling the crunch. And so I don’t think it would be our goal that we need to triple in size. Maybe we triple in revenue and output. But I don’t think just tripling in size today is as important from an outsider’s perspective on how great an agency is as it was in 1998.”

Flight no longer considers itself as just an advertising agency. Their new company tag line, ‘Strategy and Creative Built to Elevate,’ is meant to show they are ready and adaptable for whatever the future brings.

“The core of Flight is still the human element. But while not using it as a tool, I can say that it is a craft,” said Lloyd. “AI touches a little bit of everything, but how can it be used for the best for the clients and for us? Those are the things that you need the best thinkers in the room to continue figuring that out. When we talk about what AI is doing for search, what AI is doing for websites, how people are using AI for even film and video, I mean, there’s a lot of different innovation coming. And I want to be surrounded by the smartest people when we figure that out.”

While there is no guarantee that Flight’s directional pivot is the correct one, Lloyd and Cornett are willing to take the chance.

“There’s fear every day, but I think our clients have fear every day,” said Lloyd. “Our clients have complex problems that they are coming to us with, and so that’s great, we can all live in it together, and we can all solve it together, and we can elevate it together.”

‍

Read the article at the Journal Record.