How Our Events Team Saved Thousands using AI for INBOUND ’24

When HubSpot’s International Occasions Group had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren’t certain in regards to the artistic route they’d take.

One factor was clear although: Given how large AI has turn out to be in the previous few years, they knew they’d incorporate it in some way.

I linked with the group to be taught extra in regards to the necessary function AI performed in pre-production – from creating eye-catching visuals with Midjourney to focused agendas with Claude.

Creating Contemporary Interstitials

Previous to INBOUND 2024, the group saved the onsite interstitials fairly constant year-over-year, sticking to static visible imagery and lightweight animation.

It was time for a change.

As a substitute of graphics that may disappear into the background, they wished to create interstitals attendees would wish to interact with.

“This 12 months, AI has been large, and we bought an intro to Midjourney and the work that Eduardo had been doing with the instrument,” mentioned Sav Aaver, former HubSpot manufacturing supervisor who led the collaboration. “We determined to look into that so as to add extra curiosity to our screens, create a brand new aspect so individuals have one thing to have a look at that sparks dialog, in the event that they’re sitting and ready and dealing between classes.”

The International Occasions group tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez, a lead designer on HubSpot’s Visible Design group, to supervise the manufacturing of contemporary interstitials with AI – leveraging Midjourney, Topaz and Runway.

They weren’t making an attempt to create one thing web new, he says, however they wished to push their branding.

“We didn‘t need it to really feel like, ‘Oh yeah, that is very on the model. It’s precisely what we might count on,’” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “We wished to discover, as a result of AI offers us these prospects – you’ll be able to take it anyplace you need however nonetheless keep the identical fashion of the model.”

After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:

• An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very summary and carefully tied to the HubSpot model.
• An prolonged model for every stage.
• A 3rd, surreal, summary metropolis theme

The Artistic Course of with AI

From begin to end, it took the group roughly a month and a half to generate 28 ultimate movies, with 14 minutes of run time tailored for seven display screen varieties on the venue.

Beginning with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colours which have all the time been the muse for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed these preliminary pictures to Midjourney.

That allowed him to generate preliminary concepts and choices to current to the International Occasions group.

With AI, the particular person doing the prompting turns into the director, he says.

“You‘re telling the AI. ‘Right here’s my imaginative and prescient. Now, exit and try this,’” he says, “It takes some time, however should you evaluate that to a group, you continue to want any individual to drive the imaginative and prescient.”

As soon as each groups agreed on the ultimate 2D pictures for every stage and placement, Garcia-Lopez headed to Runway for mini video shorts and animation.

“It took me roughly two days to create the Boston mini paper metropolis, producing all of the flat pictures and making a storyboard, going into Runway and animating all of them,” he says. “Then, I went into Adobe Premiere to edit the entire thing.”

He additionally used Topaz, an AI enhancing software program that enhances the standard of AI movies. 

I questioned, how a lot wouldn’t it value if the group labored with a vendor to create these property the quaint approach. 

Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take a minimum of two weeks and 1000’s of {dollars}.

That mentioned, Midjourney wasn’t exempt from the eccentricities that occur if you use AI to imitate actuality.

“What I introduced to the group was essentially the most presentable, the cleanest choices, however behind the curtains, there have been many generations that weren’t popping out effectively,” Garcia-Lopez says. “It was very uneven. You’d have one thing bizarre occur – buses going into one another, buses working into individuals, like all these bizarre issues.”

What took a whole lot of time was figuring out one of the best takes and cleansing up inconsistencies, he says. Fortunately, AI works quick.

“We have been iterating in a matter of days. We’d have new choices in a pair hours, so it was very, very quick,” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “As a designer, we might’ve wanted a giant group to ship all of those property, even an illustration for all of the variation of types.”

With Midjourney’s help, he was in a position to create 25 distinct types – a end result he calls “nearly unthinkable” within the time that they had.

“You want a giant group with particular abilities to perform a selected fashion,” he says, “and we have been in a position to go wild and select what we wished.”

AI isn’t with out its limitations.

Once I requested Garcia-Lopez in regards to the design challenges that include leveraging AI, he mentioned there’s a giant one individuals typically neglect.

“Enhancing one thing is definitely fairly arduous. With an editable file, like a vector-based design in Adobe Illustrator, you’ll be able to change each little element,” he says. “With Midjourney and these AI instruments, it is not that simple.”

It’s a fantasy that enhancing with AI is fast, he says. For instance, shade sensible, you won’t all the time get the very same colours you’d obtain from a shade palette. However you may get one thing fairly shut.

Aaver echoes that sentiment.

“It was a giant studying expertise for us, because the approvers and reviewers,” she mentioned, “studying what we are able to and may‘t give suggestions on, what’s a simple change, what’s not really easy.”

As well as, AI isn’t doing the majority of the work, opposite to in style perception. There may be a whole lot of bringing it again to Adobe after which feeding it again into the AI mannequin to get the outcomes that you really want., Garcia-Lopez says.

“You are able to do rather a lot with a small group, however you want abilities in different software program and an excellent background to unravel a whole lot of these points,” he provides.

Creating Customized Agendas for Attendees

Along with interstitials, the International Occasions group additionally turned to Anthropic’s Claude to create property.

“We wished to contemplate security and we love Claude as a result of it does not prepare on the info you enter,”mentioned Matt Diaz, the group lead on HubSpot’s International Occasions group. “It has a big context window so we might add a whole lot of info for it to coach on and provides us the output with out preserving that knowledge for its system.”

They wished to develop attendee personas and create focused agendas, which might then be used to advertise the occasion in an interactive “Choose Your Own INBOUND Adventure” quiz.

The group’s first step was asking Claude to create focused agendas, based mostly on INBOUND’s classes and audio system, their purchaser personas, and their targets and targets.

“It was in a position to try this inside a minute,” Diaz says, “It was actually detailed, it was unbelievable.”

Their subsequent step was instructing Claude to ensure every agenda was distinctive, with out overlapping classes, ensuring so as to add the chatbot for context and reasoning behind its selections.

The method took two to 3 rounds of critiques, as Claude would typically hallucinate, creating classes or audio system that didn’t exist.

The entire course of took lower than a full day, in keeping with the group.

“In the event you have been to rent a group to try this, you‘re speaking a number of days,” Diaz says, “they usually’re going to hit you over the top with some huge cash to try this. And this was the worth of a Claude professional subscription.”

As soon as their focused agenda was constructed, they created devoted personas for every agenda. This included marketing-focused ones just like the AI-Pushed Chief and the Advertising Technologist, sales-ones just like the Go-To-Market Strategist, and founder-inspired ones just like the Knowledge-Pushed Chief.

The second half of this undertaking concerned making a persona quiz that attendees might take to match their persona to a focused agenda.

“We have been working below the belief that, particularly on social media, individuals do not wish to go and discover out who they’re,” mentioned Sarah Hughes, the social media lead on the International Occasions group. “They prefer to be instructed who they’re by means of these quizzes or persona checks.”

The largest problem was guaranteeing that the quiz’s scoring system had even odds for every agenda, i.e. ensuring all quiz takers weren’t getting matched to the identical focused agena.

“Claude bought us roughly 85% of the way in which, after which it got here to determining that scoring rubric and ensuring that it made sense for all of the personas,” mentioned Senior Content material Advertising Supervisor Lanna Nguyen.

They revealed it on the INBOUND blog, driving site visitors by way of e-mail and social channels. To say it was profitable is a little bit of an understatement.

“In all of our 2024 weblog posts, it was the third ranked by way of impressions behind one other put up that we put a whole lot of paid spend behind,” mentioned Lanna.

This quiz grew to become a worthwhile useful resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she provides.

With so many ‘AI gone unsuitable’ tales floating round, it is a small case examine into AI getting it proper.