Recent weeks have seen the debate around how far AI should be used in creativity reach the mainstream.
In the advertising world, Coca-Cola’s use of AI to create its annual ‘Holidays Are Coming’ advert has sparked furious debate. Many publications reported on the ensuing social media “storm”, with users of the website X loudly expressing their disapproval of the project.
As well as many who seemed generally disillusioned by the replacement of human creativity, some pointed out mistakes such as wheels on the trucks not moving, or issues with the relative size of people to the trucks.
But Andrew Tindall, Senior Vice President of Global Partnerships at System 1, said that this hostility was not representative of the general public’s experience. When the ad was screened with audiences who were unaware of its provenance as part of System 1’s standard testing, they responded exceptionally positively to it.
In other words – how much of the negative reaction to the use of AI came from knowing it was used, rather than some inherent quality of the ads themselves?
For Coca-Cola, it seems to have been no more complicated than an efficiency decision, with European CMO Javier Meza telling Marketing Week that the use of AI had cut down both time and cost for the ad.
Some financial services brands have already taken the plunge and used AI. Earlier this year, Klarna revealed it cut its marketing spend by 11% in the first quarter of this year, partly through the use of AI.
eToro also used AI for its primetime ad campaign during the Olympics. To create the ad, eToro used Lightricks’ LTX Studio, an AI-powered video editing and storyboard tool. The tool allowed eToro to create the visuals, stills and motion for the campaign, with custom audio and voice added later from external sources.
If, as the Coke advert suggests, AI is a huge cost-saver and audiences don’t actually notice, does this mean creative marketers should simply give up?
Well, possibly not. Last week also saw actor and director Ben Affleck going viral for his well-thought out take on AI, where he argued that film-making would be one of the last sectors to be made obsolete by the technology. While his prognosis for visual effects creators was bleak, he argued that AI will increasingly be able to create convincing content, due to its lack of taste it can’t “know when to stop”.
Or to apply this to marketing, while AI may commoditise certain aspects of content, this will make creative differentiation all the more important. If Affleck is right, this differentiation can only come as a result of taste.
