Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a futuristic story or even a technology of the future. It is a powerful tool for the development of science and culture, and the current world of advertising.
The use of AI is predicted to have an impact on the economy at the national level, with the United States leading the way. According to the company’s forecasts PwC, thanks to the development of this technology, the state will receive up to 16 trillion (yes, trillion) dollars by 2030. Several other countries have artificial intelligence in their official national strategies.
But let's go down a few steps - from the strategic to the applied meaning of AI. How is this technology already used in marketing, communications, branding and advertising? What conclusions can be drawn from other people's mistakes regarding its application in our own strategies? Where else should artificial intelligence be used, besides content? We answer all the questions in this material together with Head of Design Sasquatch Digital Agency Alley of Ears, that analyzed the current dynamics of the application of AI technologies in Ukraine and the world. It takes the entire creative sphere and design in particular as a basis.
AI in numbers
Various sources offer quite contradictory data on the start of the use of artificial intelligence and the primacy in its application by brands. And ChatGPT, as never before, aptly notes: the pace of technology development is so rapid that it is impossible to name clear leaders here. Many began to use the capabilities of AI to one degree or another almost simultaneously.
However, thanks to the research of Projector AI Lab, we know for sure how artificial intelligence came to Ukrainian business and what it is most often used for here. The findings are based on a survey of employees in 150 companies, ranging in size from 10 to over 1,500 people, from various industries: product, outsourced and outstaffed, digital and advertising agencies.
So, 64% of those surveyed started exploring AI capabilities on their own initiative. Only 15% indicated that their company funds the use of this technology in their work. The same number reported that they use their own AI tools. And 24% also have them in development.
It is not surprising, but Ukrainian companies most often resort to using ChatGPT and Midjourney. In terms of profession, designers are the leaders in using AI functionality. Copywriters and PR specialists are in the top three.
It is worth noting that artificial intelligence tools are also integrated into regular services that digital agencies have long used. For example: photo stocks, platforms for email marketing, media buying, or sales automation. Therefore, in some cases, an employee may not even realize that he is in contact with AI every day in his work routine. At the same time, for example, Work.ua specifies that you can use ChatGPT to create a job description on their website. It works great.
AI: the experience of global brands
We found the earliest mention of the use of artificial intelligence in branding among the cases of Ogilvy & Mather Italia. And it dates back to 2017. Then the agency sold the idea to its client Nutella that each of their jars is a unique work of art. And as proof of this, it developed 7 million exclusive labels using AI. The identity formed the basis of a comprehensive advertising campaign on social networks and other communication channels. All jars had a unique code so that collectors could identify them. The collectible Nutella went on the shelves of Italian supermarkets, where it was sold out within a month.
Ironically or not, Italy was the first Western country to restrict access to the ChatGPT resource due to privacy concerns.
At the height of artificial intelligence's popularity, the Cosmopolitan team has released the world's first AI-designed magazine cover. Of course, the job wasn't entirely left to a machine. Digital artist Karen Cheng also worked on the design. But the final version was reportedly created in 20 seconds.
Alibaba Group's websites are no longer a nightmare for copywriters - now the tedious work of effectively describing product lines is done by artificial intelligence. This is the company's own product, which was trained on millions of texts from real copywriters. The innovation has yielded results: the program writes 20 thousand lines of text per second for Taobao, Tmall, Mei.com and 1688.com.
Edenred UAE startup uses AI to moderate and communicate with customers. Their AI-powered WhatsApp chatbot is multilingual and can handle common customer queries 24/7. As a result, Edenred’s average response time has decreased by 96%.
Lingerie retailer Cosabella is reporting equally impressive results. They weren’t satisfied with working with an agency that was setting up the brand’s advertising campaigns across all channels. Cosabella brought in its own AI platform called Albert to help with the effort. Since then, the company has more than tripled its return on investment and expanded its customer base by 30%. One of the most notable changes this AI tool has achieved has been an increase in Cosabella’s revenue from social media, including an increase in purchases through Facebook.
It should be noted that Albert does not deal with creative work, so the layouts in active advertising campaigns to promote Cosabella on social networks are not very expressive. But even they, according to the PR department, work extremely effectively.
A striking example of the use of artificial intelligence is the creation of the old money style influencer Feli. She is both a product and a brand at the same time. Just imagine what the result could be if Feli developed one of the fashion brands for herself.
Finally, the review of the world's AI cases is a completely useless, but extremely attractive project for sneaker fans. This is a limitless online gallery of shoes, but in fact none of them exist in the real world. All sneakers for the site were created using artificial intelligence, which processed images of 50 thousand real pairs of sneakers from various online stores. This option for using technology is potentially useful for those businesses for which it is important to keep traffic on the site.
AI in Ukrainian communications
Let's consider the Ukrainian experience of using artificial intelligence for SMM promotion of the Kyiv brand using the example of a company that calls itself the first in this business in a press release.
In fact, the development company Budhouse Group implemented AI technology in early 2023. But their marketers weren’t just watching or testing how artificial intelligence works. They actually released layouts and texts for the promotion of the Nikolsky shopping mall in Kharkiv, created with the help of AI. The team plans to use the technology during the renovation of the FABRIKA shopping mall in Kherson. The developer is pleased with the creativity. Honestly, my design sense is not, but you can see for yourself.
But the project of other Ukrainians using artificial intelligence has already been evaluated at an international competition. The TWID agency team won the Best of the Best award in the Brand Design & Identity category at the Red Dot Award 2021. The designers applied for it with a visual identity for their client Zibra. 500 different fonts formed the basis of unique generated letters, a logo, a pattern, and a series of animations. The result was obtained through machine learning, and the agency did not hide it!
Another creatives - currently without a high award, but with a fun video about kefir's love for a spoon. This is a case of the Ukrainian agency Bickerstaff.495 and the Andaction studio - an animated video for the "Go Karpaty" campaign. In one of the scenes, the Midjourney tools were used to create static frames, and Stable Diffusion and Deforum were used to implement the animation. How do you like the result?
One of the popular features of ChatGPT, thanks to which the world got to know it, is writing books. The team from the publishing house "Ranok" did not miss the opportunity to try how it works. They created and even published a children's book "I Want to Mars!" in an edition of 500 copies. Midjourney was responsible for the illustrations. The book can still be purchased, even at a reduced price.
How did this initiative work in the world? Ammar Reshi, an employee of the fintech company Brex, used artificial intelligence to develop something similar - a children's book called Alice and Sparkle. After sales began, Reshi faced a barrage of criticism and even death threats.
And books created using neural networks and put up on Amazon even led to a journalistic investigation. The audience was outraged, because they felt cheated: top books contained unverified facts and poor-quality texts. Journalists discovered that it was not one or two, but dozens of publications on cooking, programming, gardening, business, medicine, religion and mathematics, as well as books for self-development. That is, if a few publishers in our country take the courage to experiment, then in the USA a powerful industry of AI publishing and the creation of "artificial" authors is developing!
But let's get back to our country. The founder of the lingerie brand Meméme, Vladyslav Guristrimba, is very pleased with the use of AI tools. Thanks to the classic tandem ChatGPT + Midjourney, the team created one of the recent collections. ChatGPT suggested print ideas, the name of the collection, and helped with communication on social networks.
Many Ukrainian brands have decided to involve artificial intelligence in SMM communication. This is so obvious that it is not even worth considering as a separate case. I will say only one thing: these images look as inorganic in the feed as the strained smiles of corporate employees from the drains, but among the content of the latter, you can at least not count the models on the fingers of your hands.
There is also a case of effective use of AI in communications and feedback among Ukrainian companies. ChatGPT helps Ukrzaliznytsia analyze passenger requests in the carrier's application: there are an average of 1,300 per day. Previously, this was processed by a person, but now ChatGPT first sorts text messages by topic. The chat is wrong only in 10% cases. So, now it is easier for the response team to communicate and respond to the most pressing requests.
I consider one of the landmark projects using AI in creativity to be the social initiative "This is Yours," which encourages people to search in Ukrainian. This is the case when combining several tools based on artificial intelligence technology yielded a bright result.
Facaps of AI marketing
But if only all cases of using artificial intelligence for brands were successful! The press service of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine got into a short-term scandal because of this, when it published a post about the tragic shelling of the city of Dnipro. The reason for the hate was a photo of a child generated with the help of AI. Society turned out to be unprepared for such a move. Although, in my opinion, it is more ethical than publishing real images of children deprived of their rights due to the war in a state of extreme despair without the consent of their parents.
«"Novyi Kanal" also suffered from hate due to the use of AI. With the help of ChatGPT, media professionals prepared informative content about Oles Honchar for their own social networks. But they did not take into account the fact that this tool can fantasize very much like the truth and interweave outright fakes among real facts. It is necessary to pay tribute: the channel responded to the accusations with dignity.
It is quite unusual that the capabilities of artificial intelligence are used in online communications of Oschadbank. Their marketing director Serhiy Grabchak optimistically shared on Facebook that testing AI in the company is already yielding good results: previously, an SMM specialist would spend half a day writing a content plan, but with the involvement of technology, the same work can be done in 15 minutes. In addition, Serhiy told reporters that photo shoots for content can be replaced with AI services, spending only an hour and a few dozen dollars on it.
However, the bank continues to hold real photo shoots and publish them in the usual format, as it has done for many years in a row. The only mention of the use of AI in Oschad is the post of the marketing director. And what else is there - one generated image in a futuristic style. Maybe it's worth waiting a little longer?
The situation seems to be similar at 3DLOOK. Their CEO said that he decided to hire ChatGPT instead of an SMM manager, but the style of communication on the page - both textual and visual - did not change at all. Was that how it was intended?
At the global level, one of the high-profile failures associated with the use of artificial intelligence occurred in the field of visual art. German photographer Boris Eldagsen created a photo together with a neural network and submitted it to the international Sony World Photography Award competition. The work won, so the author enthusiastically told the world how he created it. The international community and, in particular, the jury of the competition did not appreciate the sincerity and innovation and disqualified the artist.
Sasquatch Digital agency experience
As we can see, there are many cases when Ukrainian brands or agencies work with AI in an unsystematic way: they try to create experimental publications or make a PR excuse and stop there. At the same time, abroad, the creative industry is building systematic work on the basis of artificial intelligence technologies.
We at the agency also work with AI every day. First of all, our designers use the built-in artificial intelligence tool in Adobe Photoshop Beta. Every day we are faced with the need to «extend» a frame or remove an unnecessary element from the composition with two clicks. In simple scenes (interior, nature, additional elements), AI copes brilliantly! In addition, this is only the first version, so I am sure that Adobe is working on fixing bugs (such as the number of fingers, detail, etc.). Here are examples of our routine processing of images with AI.
Moreover, artificial intelligence allows us to quickly analyze large amounts of data, as well as offer recommendations for existing designs. This significantly increases the efficiency of our work. Sasquatch Digital designers rely on the visual experience of thousands of colleagues from around the world, so AI for us is already an obligatory element of brainstorming and generating new ideas for clients. During such cooperation, this banner appeared, for example.
Another way to use AI in the design department is to create moodboards for future product shoots. We are also considering a hybrid option - for some clients this may work well. In the process of hybrid shooting, we create a background using AI and add an image of the product or person on top of it, adapted in terms of lighting and composition.
We don't build entire content plans or test posts using artificial intelligence. But, of course, we've used its methods when it was relevant. Now, for us, it's an everyday tool for increasing efficiency, expanding our team's expertise, and improving customer service.
Conclusions and advice
Well, the noticeable results of using AI in an industry close to ours make us convinced: artificial intelligence is not a short-term trend or a joke, but a technological trend with which your business/brand has time to coexist in the same reality.
An experienced audience may recall how digital communications once invaded marketing billboards and television advertising. And that feeling when it's 2006 outside, all your competitors already have Facebook pages, and you're still waiting for a better opportunity.
These brands are probably debating with their marketing teams about whether to abandon time-tested stock images in favor of crafting content. Instead, cutting-edge companies are already not only testing, but also using elements of artificial intelligence every day.
We have analyzed the public experience of using AI and can confidently state: the difference between Ukrainian cases is that we talk little about actually calculated financial results or calculations of the effectiveness of these technologies for the brand. That is, in national marketing, the development of AI is still at the stage where you can take a bold shot with a real project.
But it is also worth paying attention to the successful cases of leaders in the use of AI: almost all of them develop and implement their own tools based on artificial intelligence, so this guarantees an appropriate level of confidentiality.
Those companies in Ukraine that reach a similar level of interaction with AI in their marketing will be able to talk about its real financial efficiency. The rest will just have to play around, creating cute images without compliance with copyright and not seeing any other possibilities for using this powerful technology.
