From Concept to Campaign: Utilizing AI to craft bespoke visuals
The team behind Scenes sat down for an interview with Owen Williams, Managing Director at sixredsquares, a UK-based creative agency specializing in branding and online marketing. The conversation sought to explore the possibilities of AI and how the technology was used in a recent collaboration between our two agencies in order to bring compelling concepts to life through bespoke images made for a UK travel agency.
Why AI?
Scenes: Hi Owen, can you tell a bit about the background of the project and why you decided on taking the AI-route?
6RS: Yes, so a client of ours was looking to do a campaign in the new year. That sort of winter campaign is a peak time for travel brands looking to promote holidays and getaways, and we came up with this idea of that ‘just booked feeling’, which would involve people dressed in holiday clothing whilst doing everyday chores or tasks. It could be the commute or it could be grocery shopping - things like that.
So we thought, okay, how do we make this happen. We could do this with traditional photography, but that would involve quite a lot of locations and require quite a lot of permissions, models, etc. And we were quite tight on time, so we started thinking about AI and how this could be a really good opportunity to do that. Then we started researching AI agencies, and that's when we came across Scenes. We had a look at some of your existing work and how you operate, and it seemed like a good fit, so we got in touch, and the rest is history.
Scenes: So you haven't used AI for campaigns like this before?
6RS: Not as a main component, no. We've done bits with it, but this was the first time that we'd used AI as a central component for a campaign.
Scenes: Interesting, can you elaborate a bit on some of the main reasons why you chose to use AI for this project?
6RS: Like I said, there's a massive logistical benefit, for example, not having to get permissions to film or shoot on trains. In this country, especially in London, it takes forever to get permission. So there's a time aspect and a logistics aspect. It kind of reduced how many moving parts were involved as well. Fewer people involved meant easier management for us. And I think because it was quite an abstract concept, it really lent itself to AI, because you could be a bit more inventive using AI. Those are all reasons that we wanted to use AI, and I think another reason was that it gave us more control over the diversity of the characters. It's quite important for a client like ours to be representative and inclusive of different cultures and diversities. Using AI worked really well for making sure that there was a nice diversity across all the characters.
I think the point about diversity is interesting with AI because you've got to be sensitive when creating these characters and how you treat diversity. For instance, we had to create a family scene and when we were looking throughout the characters, we were looking to show different cultural backgrounds and different ethnicities. And it was interesting, doing that with AI, because you had a lot more control. Whereas if you were taking the photographic route, you would have to try and find models that fit this specific profile. And that can be really challenging and time consuming, not to mention expensive. So doing it through AI was really interesting. I really liked how diverse we could be with the characters that were created.
Scenes: So you got to tailor every detail for the project.
6RS: Yeah, exactly. It's quite interesting because the way we produced the final adverts is that we sort of gave these characters names. It is still kind of strange that you can create these people out of a bunch of commands, but also very cool - we really enjoyed it.
Working with AI
Scenes: Has working on this project in any way changed your opinion of AI?
6RS: Yes, I think we learned a lot. It was quite a steep learning curve for us. Like I said, we'd never used it to this extent, and judging by what your team was saying, we were pushing it quite hard as well. I think you sort of learn what you've got to compromise on. There are some things you do have to compromise on, and you have to think on your feet a little bit and be flexible, which is always a good thing, I think.
Looking at how you can create complex compositions and bring an idea to life throug the different rounds of iteration was interesting as well. But just the clarity and the detail that you guys were able to render it at was brilliant. And when we're doing a campaign for a client like this, where it's being used on print as well as digital, the output needs to be really sharp - and it really was. So, I think that learning how AI can produce content that can work on printed output as well as digital was really interesting to try out.
Scenes: Do you see potential for using AI to create the imagery on future projects?
6RS: Absolutely. We're very idea-driven at sixredsquares. We like to come up with innovative ideas and try to push our clients to do interesting things. I think this project has really opened the door for us to do more abstract concepts and bring them to life in a much simpler way. So that’s been great and has also encouraged our team to start thinking about new ideas they can pursue.
A lot of companies are very limited on the image side of things, and this particular client is an example of that. Using AI means that we can create something highly targeted, so we don't have to rely on stock imagery, which is a bit generic and doesn't feel owned by the brand. So I’d say that another really big advantage of using AI is that we were able to be very targeted and create the characters around specific customer profiles.
Scenes: What did your client think of the final result?
6RS: They loved it. They really did. We're actually in the process of rebranding this client and there's lots of scope with this particular client to move it forward and see what we can do, but they were really pleased, and it also got some really good feedback in the travel press, so it's been a really good result overall.
