Nothing is more guaranteed to cause a stir with a product or service at the minute than “…created by AI” appended to the marketing material, tagline or slogan.
Many companies have been jumped on the AI bandwagon either by taking to employing it more effectively in their businesses, or by admitting that it has forced the redudnancies of many its workforce.
Still, there’s no doubt that it has been the creative spur behind many organisations new ideas and practices.
Coca-Cola are the most recent exponent of giving free(ish) reign to its advertising and marketing department to play with the AI toybox.
Cocai-Colai
“The future of AI is here” scream the YouTube comments underneath Coca Cola’s latest advert, which uses a mixture of film, 3D and AI effects trickery from Stable Diffusion. This deep-learning, text to image AI model that has VFX editors salivating and fearing for their livelihoods in equal measure.
“Defintiely a masterpiece,” another person declares as the video unfolds. Taking place in an art gallery, the advert features a mix of students studiously sketching in their er, sketchbooks or in the cae of one, about to fall into a slumber.
Then follows the Coke bottle from Andy Warhol’s 1962 piece “Large Coca Cola” being pulled out of its frame by one painting’s protagonist, and passed from one piece of art to another, through Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, Van Gogh’s “Bedroom in Arle”, Vermeer’s “Girl with Pearl Earring” and more.
Photo by Slashio photography on unsplash.
Around the room it goes until the bottle is placed next to the certain soporific student who then, upon taking a sip from the open bottle (no question asked by hygiene or such provenance of the drink of course) begins to draw furiously on his pad, which receives approval from his teacher.
AI in advertising
Of course, Coca-Cola are not the first company to use this kind of computer magic. Burger King’s “Whopper Detour” campaign used geolocation data and mobile marketing in 2018 to redirect McDonald’s customers to Burger King’s own outlets.
In 2018, Lexus created an AI-scripted car advertisement, named “Driven by Intuition”, in which the AI was trained using data from 15 years of luxury adverts.
Similarly, Beck’s whole “Autonomous campaign” for a new beer was created by AI, from the container and recipe, all the way to the advertising strategy.
This trend will certainly increase gain further momentum as technology continues to evolve. While Coca-Cola’s video is certainly engrossing – combining the worlds of creativity and legacy – it opens up conversations around the very notion of artistic endavours and leaves only one question unanswered: Is it art?
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