In the bustling world of advertising, a remarkable shift is underway – and it’s not just a small tweak; it’s a revolution driven by the bots.
Nestle, the food giant, and Unilever, the consumer goods multinational, among other major advertisers, are dipping their toes into the pool of generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E, all in the pursuit of slashing costs and ramping up productivity. It’s like they’ve suddenly realized that we humans, well, we’re not just expensive; sometimes, we’re a bit daft too.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has become the hottest buzzword in recent memory, capturing our collective imagination and drawing the attention of industries far and wide. Marketing teams, in particular, have their fingers crossed, hoping that generative AI will usher in an era of cheaper, faster, and virtually limitless ways to advertise their products.
Investments are pouring in like monsoon rain because everyone seems to believe that AI could change the advertising game forever. WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, is teaming up with heavyweights like Nestle and Mondelez to incorporate generative AI into their advertising campaigns.
According to Mark Read, WPP’s CEO, the cost savings could be astronomical – we’re talking about 10 or 20 times cheaper! Forget about flying film crews to exotic locations; now, they’re creating those scenes virtually.
And just to show off, in India, WPP collaborated with Mondelez on an AI-driven Cadbury campaign featuring Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. The ads had Shah Rukh Khan ‘appearing’ to ask passers-by to shop at 2,000 local stores during Diwali.
Small businesses even got in on the action, generating their versions of the ads, which garnered a whopping 94 million views on YouTube and Facebook.
WPP has gone all-in on this AI adventure, boasting a squad of “20 young people in their early twenties who are AI apprentices” and partnering with the University of Oxford for courses on the future of marketing. With a “AI for business” diploma on offer, they’re making sure their clients, leaders, and practitioners are well-versed in data and AI.
In the world of advertising, every word, every image, every video is scrutinized for its potential impact. And in this brave new world of generative AI, advertisers have already started using the technology in their campaigns.
But, as with any big shift, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Nestle and Unilever, in their AI experiments, are taking careful steps to navigate the rocky terrain of copyright issues, intellectual property, privacy, and data concerns.
They don’t want their technology spewing out human biases like it’s gossip at a cocktail party. So, they’re being cautious, and rightly so.
In the world of advertising, every word, every image, every video is scrutinized for its potential impact. And in this brave new world of generative AI, advertisers have already started using the technology in their campaigns.
Dutch gallery Rijksmuseum went viral for using X-Ray to reveal hidden objects in a Vermeer painting, and WPP used OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 to create ‘imagined’ scenes beyond the painting’s frame. The result? Nestle’s version generated a media value of €700,000 for them, without costing a cent to make.
But while some clients are jumping headfirst into this AI wonderland, others are still in the experimental phase, concerned about potential security risks or copyright troubles. And they have a point; after all, sharing sensitive information with an AI service is like gossiping at the water cooler – would you want everyone to know?
So, while the AI revolution in advertising is well underway, it’s a dance between embracing the future and being cautious with the secrets we spill to the machines. In this brave new world, the only rule of thumb is to treat AI services like they’re your best-kept secret – because in the end, they might just be.
