Success Stories and Gen AI strategies of leading brands and agencies

AI has transformed the world of advertising and marketing. From local businesses to the biggest advertisers, everyone has incorporated Generative AI in their communication in some way or the other. Yet, the question looms: does everyone master its implementation effectively?

On January 11, 2024, afaqs! hosted a GenAI Master Class, where prominent brands, agencies, and industry leaders shared their insights and approaches to AI. Here's a glimpse of what they discussed.

Binaifer Dulani, founding member and creative, Talented and Varun Khiatani, strategy, Talented

One of the most successful campaigns to come out of 2023 was Britannia’s 1947% More History campaign. The duo spoke about how Talented- a mere 10-day-old agency at the time, managed to crack one of the most important campaigns for a 106-year-old brand. Dulani discussed how they managed to change the narrative behind Independence Day at a time when most retail brands have turned it into a ‘Black Friday Sale.’-esque event.

The campaign used Generative AI technology to portray rich visuals of the freedom movement and recreate the younger profiles of the 5 freedom fighters whose stories have been told by themselves.

Khiatani also discussed the challenges they faced in the execution as AI was greatly restricted to text-to-video at the time. Without any AI firm helping them, the agency had to use four different AI tools to create the workflow for the campaign.

Binaifer stated that one of the campaign's significant achievements was the amplification of freedom fighters' stories through mainstream media, which was always the purpose behind the campaign.

Anupreet Singh, chief revenue officer, Gan.ai

One of the biggest themes in advertising in 2023 was ‘personalisation’. Singh spoke about the wide-scale acceptance of personalised videos. According to him, there is a staggering difference between the completion of personalised vs non-personalised videos online. The video completion rate for non-personalised videos is just 9% meanwhile it is 46% for personalised videos.

He gave examples of various campaigns that used personalisation at different levels. For example, Vivo launched a three-stage personalised video campaign that targeted customers who were at different levels of their purchasing journey. A personalised video from Virat Kohli led to a massive improvement in the morale of the on ground sales team and hence increase in target attainment by the brand’s sales representatives.

Similarly, he shared how they have managed to personalise not only voices but also other aspects like names of the customers on screens, and names of restaurants in personalised ads. As per Singh, by 2025 every ad will be tailor-made for different people with the help of AI. “It takes less time to create a thousand personalised ads vs. one traditional ad, there will be thousands of different variations of one single campaign,” he states.

Mayuresh Dubhashi - Group executive creative director, Leo Burnett

Mondelez stands out as a company that has consistently placed technological innovation at the core of its advertising strategies in recent years. Noteworthy among its AI-driven initiatives is the well-recognized #NotACadburyAd campaign.

Singh spoke about the brand’s #SayitwithOreo campaign that generated playful responses cloned in Farhan Akhtar’s voice and helped people find practical answers for difficult situations. The campaign saw three billion impressions and more than ten million website visits with a 40% engagement rate and 99% positive customer sentiment.

Singh shared that what they do at Mondelez is that they don’t keep AI/Tech at the centre of the campaign but rather focus on the customer experience and needs and look at how they can be personalised. According to him, brands should ask the important question of what can AI do for them vs how they can use AI.

Sidharth Singh, sr. manager, countlines and gifting, Mondelez International

Another notable AI-driven campaign from Mondelez was the My Birthday song campaign. Singh shared insights into the challenges faced, underscoring the necessity of integrating four distinct AI technologies to achieve the final output. He emphasised the critical aspect of identifying genuine customer needs rather than using technology merely for the sake of ticking a box.

Akhilesh Sabharwal, chief technology officer, Zoo Media

Sabharwal took the audience through how Zoo Media constructed a custom GPT, known as BrainstormGPT, on the OpenAI platform. This pioneering conversational ad platform incorporates AI-enabled tools, facilitating the creation of branded conversational experiences. Notably, brands such as Wrangler have successfully utilised this platform.

He shared valuable insights on how the platform keeps collaboration at the forefront and also showcased BrainstormGPT’s user-friendly interface, and task-oriented bots that creative agencies can leverage.

Sabharwal underscored the user-friendly nature of GPTBrainstorm.IO, highlighting its ease of use in comparison to developing a GPT model from the ground up.

Guru Vaidya, solution consulting leader, Adobe

In his address, Vaidya focused on Adobe AI’s solutions and capabilities. He emphasised the importance of transparency and accountability in GenAI and highlighted how Adobe champions the causes of accountability, transparency and responsibility.

He highlighted that Adobe is integrating Firefly, a generative machine learning model for creatives in its products like Photoshop, Illustrator, and Adobe Express. This allows advertisers to create and train exclusive models of Firefly that can match their brand’s language and sentiment.

He demonstrated a number of Adobe AI tools that can be used to create realistic images, templates for brands as well as animations and social media posts. Adobe is also doubling down on AI models for audio and video content with new models for sound, music and API options in real-time.

Vaidya states, “In another five to ten years, AI will have replaced stock websites for designers, and video and audio capabilities will also be on demand for brands.”

Chandrika Deb - India growth lead, Canva

Deb highlighted how Canva now brings together multiple generative AI tools in a single platform, making it easier for users to access various solutions for different use cases. She demonstrated various use cases of different Canva AI tools like Magic Studio, Magic Design, Magic Grab, Dall E etc.