AI + Creativity: How AI can help (not hurt) your brand

AI is reshaping how manufacturers create. Manufacturers can do it sooner and extra effectively than ever earlier than. It could generate concepts, produce content material, and ship campaigns at a scale that was unimaginable only a few years in the past. However right here’s the catch: AI isn’t human.

That doesn’t imply we should always concern it or keep away from it. Used thoughtfully, AI generally is a highly effective device. But when we hand over the reins fully, manufacturers danger shedding the very factor that units them aside, that being their distinctive voice, distinctive type, and authenticity.

AI works greatest when it acts as a device to streamline processes, permitting human creators to deal with the strategic choices and distinctive concepts that outline their model.

The nice aspect of AI (when used proper)

AI will be useful when you’ve got a small group and never a lot time. Or, when you’re a giant model coping with plenty of content material in numerous languages, AI can provide you an enormous increase.

Want a proof of idea that’s onerous to provide? AI could make it occur. Must put out adverts in 5 languages throughout ten nations? Simple (however use with warning). Working with a small funds however huge desires? AI can help you in taking the small steps to attain this.Take Audi’s “Linked with Nature” idea marketing campaign by Zed Anwar. It’s an incredible instance of utilizing AI with a transparent objective.

The conceptual marketing campaign for Audi is absolutely fairly easy, however it’s used with a objective. It’s speculated to reveal how Audi matches seamlessly into the pure world. Ripples, webs, and sand trails that echo Audi’s iconic 4 rings to advertise their dedication to sustainability by way of electrical and hydrogen innovation.

The concept started with an concept rooted of their model objectives & values, and AI helped visualise it. Producing an idea like this by way of conventional digital means would have taken extra time and price to create. When guided by a transparent imaginative and prescient, AI doesn’t take away from a model’s spirit, as a substitute, it will possibly enrich the story, making it extra vivid and fascinating.

The unhealthy aspect of AI (the place it will possibly go improper)

As we’ve seen, AI can deliver quite a lot of advantages, however it isn’t perfect – not to mention excellent. We’ve all seen AI pictures gone improper. Additional arms, unusual faces, or textual content that doesn’t make sense. If you happen to’re launching your model and any of those points slip by way of, it might have a detrimental impact in your prospects’ notion of your model, and in the end end in a lack of belief.

In terms of utilizing AI to ‘artwork direct’ sure ideas, it’s important to do not forget that AI immitates pre-existing types. Directing that type poorly can simply seen, particularly in illustrations. AI is enhancing at a fee the place life-like pictures have gotten more durable to differentiate from actuality, as seen within the Audi ideas above, however graphic design and illustrated ideas nonetheless can have an uncanny really feel to them which will be abrasive with audiences. I like to recommend having a look at ‘Why Does AI Art Look Like That?’ by Keith Edwards to know why it will possibly really feel that method.

With no human eye and a fastidiously thought-about technique, AI can go away you with work that falls flat, feels low cost and cheesy, or worse, off-brand. Take Skechers, for instance: their recent ad featured an AI-generated picture of a mannequin carrying their sneakers, however uncommon distortions and odd particulars rapidly caught consideration on-line.

This wasn’t their first AI experiment- final yr, a Vogue spread with AI visuals sparked related reactions. Their expertise exhibits that whereas AI can assist deliver inventive concepts to life, it nonetheless wants human steerage to maintain the work real and related to the model’s true voice. In any other case, campaigns danger trying generic and damaging belief. As one viewer stated, “You really didn’t save any cash as a result of now I hate you.” 

The reality is, AI can get you about 80% of the best way there, however it’s that first 20% the place human creativity is required. When AI drives the concept, manufacturers lose their distinctive voice and actual enchantment. If we relied on AI to do the entire job, then the top outcome could be a world filled with manufacturers that each one look and sound the identical. We want human thought to permit for differentiation. 

So how can we use AI responsibly?

AI doesn’t know your model’s values. It doesn’t perceive your prospects. It could’t really feel when one thing’s off or when a narrative really connects.

If you happen to simply give AI a clean web page and hope for magic, you’ll find yourself with content material that feels like everybody else’s. And in a sea of comparable AI-made stuff, the manufacturers that stand out are those that assume first, after which use AI to assist.