Currently, there’s a lot of buzz around AI-generated content. From using these tools to create a social media caption to producing a photo to share online, you’ve got unlimited options on how to use AI tools. But did you know a number of brands have already experimented on AI-generated campaigns?
In this article, let’s take a look at the different brands that have played around with AI-generated campaigns and got away with it scot-free. Additionally, we’ll discuss the pros and cons of using AI in marketing and whether the public is ready for this tool.
What are AI-Generated Campaigns?
Before anything, let’s talk about what AI-generated ads are. These are basically advertising campaigns made from artificial intelligence (AI). They can include any type of content: ad copy or visuals used to target the brand’s audience.
AI marketing, on the other hand, is entirely different from AI advertising. AI marketing has been used for many years in the field of digital marketing. Through this, marketers are able to automate tasks, personalise the customer journey, optimise digital marketing campaigns, and gain insights on customer behaviour.
Meanwhile, AI advertising is a fresh concept that a few brands are toying around with. At the moment, it is still a controversial option for brands as they play around with the possibility of using artificial intelligence to create an ad campaign from scratch. As such, here are 10 examples of AI-generated ads that we’ve seen so far:
10 Best AI-Generated Campaign Examples
#1: Coca-Cola’s Create Real Magic
Image Credit: Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola has long stood out for its iconic ad campaigns, particularly over the Holiday season where it creates heartwarming commercials intended for family reunions. So when it invited digital artists to “create real magic” using its AI platform in 2023, it piqued the curiosity of many.
As Coca-Cola explained, its “Create Real Magic” platform was exclusively built by OpenAI and Bain & Company for the soft drink brand.
Digital creatives can use the platform to generate original artwork using the brand’s creative assets from its archives. This gave participants access to Coca-Cola’s branded elements, such as its Spencerian script logo, the iconic Coca-Cola contour bottle, the Coca-Cola Polar Bear, and Santa Claus.
The campaign generated over 120,000 user-generated content (UGC) from participants, which were displayed in digital billboards in Times Square (New York) and Piccadilly Circus (London).
#2: Nike’s Never Done Evolving
Image Credit: Victorian Premier’s Design Awards
A few days after Serena Williams announced her retirement, Nike released an AI-generated video dedicated to the GOAT in women’s tennis. This was part of Nike’s “Never Done Evolving” campaign where they made use of AI and machine learning to model the different playing styles of Williams throughout the years.
The data analysed the athlete’s evolution as a player and created a virtual match between two Serenas, one from when she won her first Grand Slam in 1999, the other from her last win in 2017.
Before the simulated match was released to over 1.69 million YouTube subscribers, Nike promoted the event online. This generated interest from their followers, who grew curious about this innovative ad.
The campaign earned Nike the Grand Prix for Digital Craft at Cannes.
#3: Volkswagen’s Generations
Image Credit: Creative Bloq
While AI-generated ads are a fresh concept that many brands are interested in experimenting with, it doesn’t always get its desired results. AI art has been on the spotlight for ethical concerns, especially when deepfake technology is involved.
Take Volkswagen’s “Generations” advertisement, which featured a legendary Brazilian singer who had died in 1982. The car manufacturer hired an actress and used deepfake technology to revive Elis Regina’s imagery and make it look like she was driving a VW van with her daughter as she sang her 1976 hit.
The campaign raised concerns over the use of the imagery of late celebrities for commercial purposes. While this technology has been widely used in the past, this was the first instance where it was not for art’s sake.
Despite the controversy, however, Volkswagen remained rooted in its campaign and said that the singer’s family approved the concept. Like many who saw the campaign, the singer’s eldest son, João Marcello Bôscoli had been moved by the advert as it imagined what his mother would have looked like today.
#4: Cadbury’s #NotJustACadburyAd
Image Credit: Ogilvy
As it celebrated its 200th anniversary, Cadbury released a new campaign to get people involved in its advertising.
Called “My Cadbury Era,” the campaign encouraged fans of the chocolate brand to use its Gen-AI powered tool where their selfies can be uploaded in one of the seven Cadbury ads from different eras. Everyone who participated in the campaign was automatically included in a contest for a shot at winning £200.
In addition to this, Cadbury ran an AI-generated campaign called #NotJustACadburyAd, where it partnered with Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan and Mondelez India. Through this campaign, Cadbury wanted to encourage local store owners to use AI and machine learning for creating personalised ads.
The campaign recreated the actor’s face and voice so local businesses can promote their brand without having to pay millions for a celebrity to endorse them.
#5: Heinz’s AI Ketchup
Image Credit: The Drum
When Heinz Ketchup rolled out its “AI Ketchup” campaign, it aimed to prove its iconic standing as a brand.
Through this marketing stunt, Heinz used OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 generator to produce various styles of sauce-inspired images. But every single output led to a realisation: for computers, elements of Heinz’ signature branding were associated with random ketchup-related phrases.
The campaign was originally launched in Canada and the US in 2023. But because the campaign went viral, it was rolled out to other markets, where it earned over 850 million impressions. The campaign also earned the Canadian ad agency an award at The Drum Awards Festival 2023.
#6: Nutella’s Nutella Unica
Image Credit: The Drum
Back in 2017, Nutella played around with its iconic packaging by producing seven million different jars. They used an algorithm to come up with millions of colour and pattern combinations, which gave birth to the “Nutella Unica” campaign.
After conceptualising the idea and producing the unique jars, Nutella launched a TV commercial and digital campaign. Seven million jars were then distributed throughout Italy and sold out in a month’s time. Each of these jars came with their own code that collectors can authenticate like a piece of art.
#7: Virgin Voyages’ Jen AI
Image Credit: VML
Virgin Voyages, a cruise line owned by Richard Branson, rolled out a campaign starring a digitised version of singer/actress, Jennifer Lopez. The campaign, called “Jen AI,” uses generative AI to mimic the actress’ voice and appearance. This campaign was intended to help boost bookings by allowing customers to customise their invitations.
When the ad was released, Jennifer Lopez was introduced as the Chief Celebration Officer of the cruise line. It was later revealed that she was an AI-generated version of the singer, who was actually being played by a man named Kyle.
Since it was released, the campaign earned over 1,000 bookings. It also earned the company an increase in engagement rate, which encouraged them to look for further expanding the AI bot’s capabilities in the future.
#8: BMW’s Make It Real
Image Credit: Marketing Interactive
In 2023, BMW rolled out an AI-generated ad that featured a fictional CGI character called Lil Miquela. This is the AI influencer’s biggest brand deal to date.
The campaign, entitled “Make It Real,” shows the AI influencer driving around the BMW iX2 in a short film-esque format. Lil Miquela can be seen stepping into the real world and learning to love humans.
But don’t let that fool you. Lil Miquela is not real and has been famous as a “robot living in LA.” You can check out her Instagram account here.
#9: Coca-Cola’s Masterpiece
Image Credit: Coca-Cola
Another ad-generated campaign was “Masterpiece.” Released in 2023, the ad followed the journey of a Coca-Cola bottle inside an art museum as it made its way to a bored student hoping for some inspiration. The soft drink bottle travelled through iconic paintings, adapting the medium used to create the artwork by artists like Andy Warhol, Van Gogh, J.M.W Turner, and many more.
To achieve the effect, a combination of digital effects, live action shots, and AI were used for the transitions. The bottle finally lands on Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring,” who spins out of frame to open the bottle for the student.
#10: Mint Mobile’s ChatGPT Ad
Image Credit: Mint Mobile
And lastly, we have Mint Mobile’s iconic ad from 2023 featuring its co-founder, Ryan Reynolds, reading a script written by ChatGPT. The AI tool was instructed to “write a commercial for Mint Mobile in the voice of Ryan Reynolds. Use a joke, a curse word, and let people know that Mint’s holiday promo is still going, even after the big wireless companies have ended theirs.”
Although this was a playful experiment on how capable ChatGPT is in creating this kind of ad copy, the result was humorous and was considered “mildly terrifying.”
The script wasn’t used for a real Mint Mobile campaign, but Reynolds had read it on the ad. It also proved that AI could be up for creative tasks.
Are AI-Generated Campaigns Safe to Use?
For the most part, the use of AI is still widely frowned upon in the world of advertising. It raises ethical concerns and plagiarism worries. There’s also the behemoth threat of whether AI will take over the world (or our jobs) someday. Let’s take a look at the dangers of using AI in advertising:
It lacks that human touch
True, AI can create engaging content, but it can only do so much as it is trained. Customers crave for genuine connections. While AI works great with data analysis and crunching numbers, it fails at building trust and loyalty; in other words: being human.
Despite technological advancements, AI doesn’t have the capacity to tap into human emotions and empathy (at least not yet). This limits it from creating personalised experiences that bank on genuine connections.
Only humans are capable of crafting innovative strategies that can deeply resonate with the audience and draw in attention.
It faces legal challenges
Image Credit: Waxy
AI doesn’t create something original. Instead, it learns from work that humans created and produces something out of it. This brings in the legal concerns of copyright infringement, especially since existing work is considered fair game for AI.
For years, many small artists have been voicing out their concerns on their work being absorbed by AI and offered to other people to play around with. One such example is LA-based artist, Hollie Mengert, who discovered that 32 illustrations were being offered via open licence.
Most of the artwork was commissioned by clients, such as Disney, who own the rights to their use. While Mengert (or Disney) can sue for copyright infringement, there’s still no clear rules over this since the AI was fed thousands of works created by various artists. But if the machine was fed Mengert’s illustrations and instructed to create new art in that style, it could land you in trouble.
It creates homogeneous content
Sure, AI is impressive since it has the ability to write an entire essay in a matter of seconds. But if you truly read its output, you’ll realise that it reads robotic and doesn’t have any spark of creativity. In some cases, you’d be lucky to have content that doesn’t result in jumbled up text.
And if you’re really lucky, the produced text will not have inaccuracies. AI can digest, combine, and repurpose information that has already been created. But it sucks at creating something better than existing content.
When you run a prompt, you’ll see a bunch of text with some imagery, bullet points, or graphs here and there. But it isn’t able to produce hypothetical examples or customer stories that would create a more relatable experience.
It doesn’t always tell the truth
Image Credit: Sky News
Days after Google released Bard, its rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it quickly lost $100 billion off of its market value. This is because Bard gave the wrong answer and asserted that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was used to take pictures of a planet outside our solar system.
Eagle-eyed users quickly corrected the mistake and pointed out that the first photos were actually captured in 2004 by the Very Large Telescope.
The problem with this is that AI often creates text in huge chunks, which are difficult for humans to proofread. And because they were created by a “super” computer with the ability to go through its database in a few seconds, humans over-rely on these tools.
In one such example, OpenAI got sued for spreading false information about Georgia radio host, Mark Walters. There was also a case of a lawyer who used ChatGPT and turned out to have presented fake cases in court.
This is the problem with AI and poses a big risk for marketers or anyone who uses it. AI hallucinates and makes stuff up based on its prediction. AI is not self-aware and does not have the capability to check whether the output it strings together makes any sense at all.
Ai-Generated Campaigns
There’s no denying that AI is a powerful tool for marketers. But when it comes to creating personalised and engaging campaigns, humans are still better in driving results.
The above-mentioned examples of AI-generated campaigns simply show how powerful ads can be when humans use these tools properly. And with the success they’ve created, we can expect more AI-generated ads to come out in the future.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an example of an AI-generated ad?
AI-generated campaigns can significantly enhance marketing strategies by leveraging advanced technologies for creativity, targeting, and efficiency. Some examples include Heinz, Coca-Cola, and BMW.
How is AI used in advertising?
AI in advertising personalizes content, refines audience targeting, and optimizes ad performance through real-time data analysis. It automates ad creation, adjusts campaigns dynamically, and enhances customer interactions with chatbots. AI-driven insights and predictions improve strategy and efficiency, leading to more effective and engaging ad campaigns.
How effective is AI in marketing?
AI is highly effective in marketing, enhancing personalization, targeting, and ad optimization. It automates data analysis, refines audience segmentation, and adjusts campaigns in real-time, improving engagement and ROI. By predicting trends and streamlining processes, AI drives more efficient and impactful marketing strategies.
Is the use of AI in marketing ethical and legal?
The use of AI in marketing is ethical and legal when it respects privacy, ensures data protection, and complies with regulations. Transparency in data use and avoiding manipulation are key. Ethical AI practices require clear consent from users and adherence to legal standards to maintain trust and fairness.
