While every agency races to cram as much AI as possible into its credentials, Zulu Alpha Kilo does the opposite: it fires its AI employee.
Premiered in late October 2026, “The Chat” is a hilarious satire of our industry. It’s also a lesson in positioning that every agency, brand and marketer should take to heart: intuition, taste and the human eye are still what clients are buying.
An AI Employee’s “Too Efficient” Performance Review
The setup fits in a single scene. Karen, an agency executive, asks CHAD, an overeager AI employee, if he has a minute to chat. CHAD is convinced he’s about to get promoted. In reality, his phenomenal productivity has become a problem: by cutting out all the unnecessary work, he’s wiping out billable hours.
And the review goes off the rails. CHAD is accused of ripping off last year’s Grand Prix winner, making up campaign results, and then lying about all of it. Along the way, the film takes shots at every sore spot in the business: billable hours, bloated productions, awards cheating and creative egos.
As for the cast, Carly Heffernan returns as Karen, already seen in ‘Living from Work’ (see below), the agency’s post-COVID return-to-office satire. Kyle Dooley voices CHAD. The film was written and directed by Zak Mroueh the agency’s Founder and Creative Chairman, with group creative directors Nick Doerr and Gui Bermejo, and produced in-house by Zulubot.
What AI Can’t Sell (Yet): Taste
The film doesn’t reject AI. It reminds us what AI can’t replace. CHAD works fast and churns out a lot, but he copies, he fabricates and he feels nothing. What he’s missing is exactly what a client pays for when choosing one agency over another.
For Zak Mroueh, creatives are unpredictable, stubborn, sometimes difficult, and that’s precisely what makes them original thinkers. He sees AI as “another tool at our creative disposal,” right alongside our wonderfully flawed humanity. Behind the joke, the message is serious. A brand doesn’t just buy deliverables. It also, and above all, buys:
- A sense check: human experience, in marketing and beyond.
- Taste: the ability to pick the right idea out of a hundred decent ones.
- Feeling: understanding what a brand makes people feel, not just what it says.
- Risk-taking: daring to break the rules and ignore best practices, something a model trained on what already exists rarely does.
The more content these tools pump out at scale, the rarer, and therefore the more valuable, human judgment becomes.
“Maybe I should go in-house. Clients love me.”
“When Everyone Zigs, Zag”: A Textbook Case of Agency Self-Promotion
Context matters a lot here. ‘The Chat’ premiered at the “Agency of the Year” event hosted by Strategy, the Canadian trade magazine covering marketing and advertising, where shortlisted agencies traditionally screen a self-promotional film. In other words, it’s the showcase of the year in front of the entire Canadian industry.
In 2026, the temptation in this kind of exercise is huge: show off your tools, your agents, your AI-powered workflows. And the timing invites it, as many agencies are cutting staff or freezing hiring to hand the work over to AI agents. Zulu Alpha Kilo goes the other way. While everyone zigs toward tech, the agency zags toward humans, with humor and self-deprecation. And it’s no one-off: Zulu Alpha Kilo Toronto has built its positioning and its distinctive voice largely by skewering the absurdities of the business:
- “Say No to Spec,” against free spec work in pitches.
- “Catch Me If You Cannes,” on the excesses of award shows.
- “Left-Handed Mango Chutney,” on the race for awards.
- “World’s Worst RFP,” on absurd requests for proposals.
- “Billy’s Lemonade,” which mocks big corporations buying up agencies.
The result: every year, the industry waits for the new “ZAK” film. An agency that dares to laugh at itself and its industry proves exactly what it sells: creativity with a point of view.
In “Left-Handed Mango Chutney,” an awkward dinner party skewers the ad industry’s awards obsession and the inflated case studies agencies craft to win them:
In ‘Living From Work,’ a twist on “working from home,” a fictional agency takes return-to-office mandates to the extreme by making employees “live at the office” seven days a week, mocking toxic work culture:
What It Means for Anyone Working in Advertising
If you work in advertising or marketing, this film is good news. Mastering AI tools is becoming table stakes, not an edge. What will set you apart is everything CHAD doesn’t have.
- Sharpen your taste: watch, read, critique. Being able to explain why one idea beats another is a rare skill.
- Own your point of view: in a pitch or a meeting, one well-argued opinion is worth more than a list of AI-generated options.
- Be the sense check: AI produces, you decide. Show in your portfolio how you filtered, chose and championed an idea or a project.
- Zag in your own career too: if everyone’s profile says “AI expert,” tell the story of an idea drawn from your own life, a risk you took against best practices, or a gut instinct that paid off.
The film’s sign-off says it all:
“Still proudly employing humans, flaws and all.”
Bottom line: AI is a fantastic accelerator, but as Zulu Alpha Kilo reminds us, it’s also our human imperfections that make great ideas. And, paradoxically, they’re also what clients come to an agency for.
CREDITS. Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo. Founder & Creative Chairman, Writer & Director: Zak Mroueh.
Group Creative Directors: Nick Doerr, Gui Bermejo. Production: Zulubot. Cast: Carly Heffernan (Karen), Kyle Dooley (voice of CHAD).
