At SXSW London, Picsart CEO Hovhannes Avoyan made a compelling case: marketing isn’t just changing, it’s compressing. Roles, timelines, tools, and expectations are collapsing into one fluid workflow, driven by the emergence of AI agents.
While many panels this year circled around AI as a looming disruptor, this session took a more grounded approach. Avoyan didn’t speculate on the hypothetical future. He focused on what’s already here and what marketers are still too slow to adopt.
From Specialist to Supergeneralist
The traditional marketing model relied on a web of roles and tools: creative teams to ideate, designers to build, marketers to optimize, and analysts to measure. In that structure, the process was as much about coordination as execution.
But with generative AI now embedded in creation, curation, testing, and optimization, Avoyan argued we’re witnessing the rise of a new archetype: the supergeneralist. This is the solo operator, or lean team, that can concept, build, and iterate campaigns across channels with minimal dependencies.
It’s not about replacing designers or media strategists. It’s about making previously inaccessible capabilities available to millions of creators and small businesses that couldn’t afford traditional agency models.
Velocity as a Growth Lever
Central to the argument was a sharp insight: velocity beats volume. Most marketing performance gains, Avoyan noted, come not from increasing spend, but from compressing the cycle between idea, test, and iteration.
By embedding AI across Picsart’s workflow from design to asset generation to deployment his team reduced the turnaround from campaign idea to test from six weeks to just a few days. This acceleration means more AB tests, faster feedback, and better creative ROI.
Importantly, the cost savings are not just about efficiency. They unlock creative risk-taking. When campaigns cost less to produce, teams are more willing to test bold ideas, niche audience segments, or unusual formats.
The New Creators Aren’t Agencies. They’re Individuals
A running thread through the session was inclusivity. Avoyan shared that his original motivation for building Picsart came from watching his daughter struggle to access high-quality creative tools. That ethos of unlocking creativity for everyone now extends to entrepreneurship itself.
In his view, AI agents aren’t just reshaping enterprise marketing. They’re democratizing the ability to build brands and businesses. A teenager selling t-shirts on Etsy, a solo coach building a personal brand, or a side-hustler launching a newsletter all now have access to end-to-end campaign tools previously reserved for corporations with design and media budgets.
Closing the Fragmentation Gap
Avoyan also addressed a friction many marketers know too well: tool fatigue. In the current landscape, launching a campaign can involve a dozen platformsideation in Figma, image creation in Midjourney, editing in Canva, video production in Runway, and publishing across Meta, TikTok, or Google Ads.
The result is a fragmented workflow riddled with inefficiencies: asset handoffs, subscription costs, learning curves, and broken data trails.
Picsart’s next frontier, Avoyan revealed, is building a unified ecosystem an AI-native platform where campaigns can be created, customized, tested, and launched from one place. Not just for simplicity, but for smarter iteration and performance optimization.
Not Automation. Amplification.
Throughout the talk, Avoyan emphasized that AI agents aren’t replacing marketers. They’re amplifying them. Making marketers faster. More adaptable. More ambitious. Able to test what would’ve been unaffordable. Able to personalize at scale. Able to launch ideas that used to live in backlogs or pitch decks.
This shift is especially significant for small businesses and solo creators the segment most underserved by legacy ad tech and design platforms.
What used to take a team of six and a six-figure budget can now be done by one person, in a browser, in a week.
The Real Disruption: Access
In a moment flooded with generative hype, Avoyan cut through with clarity. The real revolution isn’t just the AI. It’s the access.
Access to tools. Access to time. Access to iteration. And ultimately, access to growth.
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