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RYA's MAYA Principle
Raymond Loewy built a celebrated career designing some of the most iconic brands based on tension. Consumers were attracted to surprise and delight, but repelled by things for which they had no familiarity. He called the equilibrium “Most Advanced Yet Acceptable” design: the MAYA principle. In homage to Loewy’s insight, RYA – Radical Yet Acceptable – applies the principle in a modern-day context, complete with AI and an eye for originality in a world rapidly automating to sam
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Feb 231 min read


Creativity Isn’t Automated, It’s Amplified.
Everyone wants to know if AI can be creative. We think that’s the wrong question. At RYA, we believe creativity happens when AI provokes and humans apply taste and judgment (what humans are best at), and when efficiency serves imagination, not the other way around. Hear Leslie Walsh, our GM and Head of Strategy, talk with Jeff Barrett and dive into this conversation on the It’s No Fluke podcast .
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Jan 51 min read


Creativity in Hallucination
Typically AI "hallucinations" are mistakes we want no part of. But what if they were *useful* hallucinations? Hear from our GM and Head of Product Strategy, Leslie Walsh, who talks with Lara O'Reilly from Business Insider about how the beauty of RYA is empowering a machine to “think” freely within an extremely robust dataset. In so doing, it may just propose something completely unexpected. And that’s the point. Lara called it "useful hallucination," and we think that’s aweso
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Dec 1, 20251 min read


Beyond the GPT Wrapper
A lot of AI tools these days actually add time and complexity. RYA adds speed and simplicity. Far from just a GPT wrapper, RYA’s a premium, custom-built bundle: A statistically significant proprietary dataset rooted in real audience behavior over the last decade An AI tool designed to develop bold creative opportunities based on your brief and current trends A best-in-class agency team adding their expertise from strategy and creative to production and distribution Together,
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Nov 29, 20251 min read


How to escape the AI creative vortex
AI – and the pressure to use it – makes it tempting to chase speed and efficiency. Efficiency isn’t the same as connection, though, and as marketers, we’re after authentic connection with our audiences. Efficiency is great, but it’s better when it’s in service of connection. Efficiency for efficiency’s sake is hollow, and if we find ourselves relying on statistics for originality, we unwittingly become the “man with a hammer” treating every problem like a nail. Case in point:
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Nov 17, 20251 min read


RYA at The MarTech Summit
Nothing like a live demo! Thanks to everyone who attended the live demos of RYA during the MarTech Summit. Putting the product to the test, generating insights and concepts in minutes across industries as diverse as data centers and HR professionals to Margaret Atwood fans and fast-food frequenters -- was a ton of fun. And hearing experts in those industries say things like "love that" or "I'd make that" was great validation. Thanks to everyone who joined us! Watch the introd
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Nov 13, 20251 min read


Let AI Inform, Humans Create
When brands lean too heavily on machine intelligence for creativity, the outputs converge to the mean (round of applause…statistics!). You’ve probably noticed as much in a lot of the posts on this platform. It's quicker, more “efficient," and easy to convince ourselves that it's great, but it's producing something more like a commodity: a lot of sameness, available to everyone. Admittedly, there's tension, because almost everyone is under pressure to use AI as much as possib
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Oct 16, 20251 min read


Calculated Risk, With AI
“What was once a leap of faith is now a calculated risk. Thanks to AI, creative decisions can be both bolder and better informed.” Leslie Walsh, RYA's GM and Head of Strategy, dives into how AI helps marketers move from vibes to validation. Read the full article here .
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Sep 30, 20251 min read


Defendable Creativity
Bold ideas are easy to imagine. They’re harder to defend. Harder to execute. Harder to scale. RYA enables a high-touch creative partnership between humans and AI. Our technology gives marketers permission to make bolder, more creative decisions and defend them. Our humans make sure those decisions incorporate institutional realities. Together, we make better ideas faster. We help enterprise marketing teams pursue bolder creative moves with conviction, guardrails, structure, a
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Sep 16, 20251 min read


Finalist Nomination - AI enterprise solutions (Startups)
We’re proud to share that RYA was included in SiliconANGLE & theCUBE ’s TechForward Buyer’s Guide after being named a finalist for AI Enterprise Solutions (Startups). This recognition reinforces what we’ve believed since day one: enterprise marketers need AI that can be both boldly creative AND built for institutional reality. Huge thanks to our team, partners, and early adopters of RYA!
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Sep 15, 20251 min read


Rya is a Finalist in Enterprise AI Solutions (Private Companies)
We’re honored to share that RYA has been named a finalist in the 2025 TechForwardAwards in the AI Tech – Enterprise AI Solutions (Private Companies) category. 🎉 This recognition highlights the work we’ve put into building a platform that helps brands go beyond broad personas, delivering hyper-specific consumer insights that drive sharper, more culturally-relevant creative marketing decisions. Thank you to the SiliconANGLE & theCUBE team, our clients, and the community th
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Aug 25, 20251 min read


How RYA Makes Bold Creativity Defensible
Your best ideas aren’t accidents. RYA helps you prove it faster. RYA is creative AI designed for institutional reality: the creative equilibrium where bold ideas need to be both brave and defensible. Equipped with RYA, our team helps your team move quicker, push further, and trust their instincts, backed by real audience data. We make sure what you create is radical and ready. Better ideas. Faster paths to yes.
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Aug 21, 20251 min read


RYA Called It: Taylor Swift’s “Showgirl” Era Was Written in our Data
When Taylor Swift announced her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, we had to smile because RYA already saw it coming. Back in May 2024, we asked RYA: “What should Taylor Swift’s next era be?” Using our proprietary genre dataset, RYA analyzed behavioral patterns across tens of thousands of audience profiles to map what Swifties actually want from their favorite artist next. And what did we find? Not an obvious return to romance. Not another folklore-core revival. But something
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Aug 12, 20252 min read


How RYA Came to Live
A great feature on how RYA came to life. Shout out to The AI Journal for giving us the ability to tell our story. Read it here .
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Aug 3, 20251 min read


Forbes Article - Green light for CMOs
We’re in Forbes! Excited to see RYA featured in today’s Forbes piece exploring how AI is fundamentally reshaping the role of the modern CMO — not just as an optimizer, but as a creative visionary backed by real-world data. The article highlights how forward-thinking brands are using AI to uncover unexpected audience passions — and how we’re helping them turn those insights into bold, resonant campaigns. As our CEO and Co-founder Mark Himmelsbach puts it: “AI’s most powerful r
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Jun 30, 20251 min read


Pride without pause
Pride shouldn’t pause just because the calendar flipped. Too often, LGBTQ+ support spikes in June, then disappears. At RYA, we believe support for the LGBTQ+ community should never be seasonal. And right now, it’s the transgender community that needs that support most. So we gave RYA, our AI-powered creative partner, a challenge to help support the Transgender Law Center, a non-profit driving legal and policy change to advance trans rights: GET LGBTQ+ people and allies who do
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Jun 25, 20251 min read


Turn AI Hype into Enterprise‑Ready Creative Results
Almost every company has an “AI committee” or an “AI red team,” but no adoption or progress to show for it. In a rush to use AI tools by any means necessary, some in the industry have embraced "vibe marketing," a derivative of the vibe coding phenomenon. We all know we need to use AI, but few know where to go next, what additional tools to use, or even how to get IT to approve a new product. Teams are vetting hundreds of tools (Claude, GPT, Gemini, n8n, Vercel, etc) and find
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Jun 4, 20251 min read


What does RYA stand for?
What’s in a name? The creative equilibrium. Radical Yet Acceptable. RYA. In the 1930s, Raymond Loewy developed a framework that he called MAYA: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. Loewy understood people are drawn to new ideas, but only if they still feel familiar. We built RYA on the same principle. Wild creativity isn’t scarce, but being radical for its own sake doesn’t help. It can’t be defended, so it can’t be attempted. What teams need is conviction. Confidence that bold ideas
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
May 15, 20251 min read


New Partnershit, with Qrious & Southpaw Insights
We're excited to join forces with Qrious Insight and Southpaw Insights to take RYA's AI-generated campaign ideas to the next level! As founder, Mark Himmelsbach says, "This partnership allows us to combine RYA's proprietary audience insights with behavioral trends to generate original marketing concepts that speed iteration cycles and deliver data-backed, high-ROI campaigns to decision makers." Read the full press release here .
Andrè Ulvenes Kleppe
Mar 25, 20251 min read
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