Ideasicle x Case study

“We had very little time, and even less budget. But Ideasicle X’s rapid ideation, coupled with a willingness to think outside the box when it came to production, enabled us to produce great work for a fraction of the time and cost of the traditional creative process.”

Matt Resteghini, CMO Hallmark

“When you write a creative brief about enterprise staffing technology for hospitals, and ask the team to do ‘funny’ all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best. The best is exactly what the Ideasicle X team delivered. Smart, funny, breakthrough work - all produced as creatively as it was concepted. Thanks, team. This process was a blast.”

Catherine Sheehan, Founder, Strategy by Sheehan

Why this case is interesting:

It’s the first produced campaign from Ideasicle X. That’s the biggie. For the first time in our juddgment, AI-production was ready to handle human-generated ideas.

But it’s also a great example of “cascading projects” from one Ideasicle X service to the next:

IX Concierge: two rounds of 10+ campaign ideas using our tech platform and accessing four Ideasicle Experts.
IX Freestyle: team of two (writer/art director) from the IX Concierge team also assigned to flesh out and produce approved campaign concept.
Production: 100% artificial intelligence that our team managed.

Now…on to the work!

IX Concierge

The first step in our mission was to come up with over 20 campaign concepts using our IX Concierge service. Shout out to Catherine Sheehan, from Strategy By Sheehan and retained by Hallmark, for her outstanding brief, deep understanding of the target audience, and her many strategic battles won prior to our involvement.

The company.

Hallmark offers healthcare workforce management technology to hospitals.

Why does the brand exist?

Hallmark believes that an “inside out” approach to staffing is better for the entire hospital ecosystem. Meaning, hospitals can get ahead of their staffing problems by crafting in advance a custom pool of proprietary “inside” talent made up of current employees and nurses the hospital contracts with directly, and turn to this pool before going outside and paying 40% commission.

The Ideasicle Expert Team.

I wanted to stack the team with creatives with at least some health care experience, given the nature of the assignment. And they didn’t disappoint. But assigned Ernie and Rich to execute the final approved idea through IX Freestyle.

**Roger Baldacci,** Creative Director, Writer

**Claudia Caplan,** Creative Director, Writer

**Ernie Schenck,** Creative Director, Writer

**Rich Wallace,** Creative Director, Art Director

2 rounds of ad campaign Ideas

A week after we briefed the assignment in, we came up with about 40 raw ideas on the platform and presented 11 of our favorite advertising campaign concepts. We asked the client to sleep on the ideas for a day or so and then provide detailed feedback.

Because the one thing you can’t get into a creative brief is what the client likes and doesn’t like. So the client’s reaction to the first round of 11 ideas is critical because it gives us the parameters for a second round of ideas.

Now armed with the client’s feedback, we did another round of 40-50 ideas using the Ideasicle X virtual platform and presented 12 curated ideas this time.

After much discussion, the client landed on one campaign as their favorite.

Approved ad campaign Idea

After a total of 23 ideas were presented rapidly over two rounds and two weeks, the Hallmark clients went back to a first-round idea called “Metaphors” as their favorite. They liked that the concept was hard hitting, easy to get, and visually provocative. I had to agree. It’s hard to see a guy in a pickle and not wonder what the hell the ad is all about.

Importantly, a line from another idea presented was attached to the “Metaphors” campaign to further ground it strategically:

“Don’t just outsource. Insource.”

That line became THE campaign line ending all of the executions succinctly, strategically, and creatively.

Now it was time for execution, where human intelligence met the artificial kind.

IX Freestyle

creative execution

Ernie Schenck and Rich Wallace were assigned the additional role of execution of the “Metaphors” concept through IX Freestyle. They had TV, print, social, trade show, and other ideas for the campaign. Thing is, Matt Resteghini, the Hallmark client, informed us of the production budget and let’s just say…it wasn’t much. Not enough for one TV spot shot the traditional way.

But, to our client’s credit, and after he saw the many AI generated images that we generated in the concepting phase (see samples nearby that I created myself using ChatGPT), Matt asked us to consider using AI to execute the final creative.

Rich and Ernie took on the challenge. I’m telling you Rich may be the hardest working art director I’ve ever worked with. He happened to be the one who came up with the original spark of the “Metaphors” concept in the IX Concierge project, which the rest of the team built upon to get it into its final form. But Rich really felt ownership and serious creative love for this concept.

I asked him to describe the human/AI production process. All of the finished work is below.

Rich Wallace:

While AI is an incredible tool, it’s not magic. The more knowledge you have—whether it’s in film, lighting, or art direction—the better your images will be.
This campaign had an ambitious vision but a much more modest budget. To bring the idea to life and preserve its essence, just about every part of the execution relied on AI, from the images and voiceover to the motion.
Creating each visual required writing precise prompts. Striking the right balance between detail and simplicity was key. Achieving the desired result involved a lot of trial and error.
Once we had the images we liked, we moved on to retouching to fix AI imperfections. AI is fast, but speed sometimes sacrifices quality. It can generate people with extra fingers, unfinished body parts, or missing details. These "AI artifacts," as we call them, were fixed by a retoucher, James, who happens to be a human.
After retouching, we moved to animation. The process for AI-generated motion is similar to stills—AI has the same strengths and weaknesses. Just like with images, AI imperfections in motion need to be corrected using traditional editing software, a task once again handled by a human.
With the motion finalized, we added a voiceover, created using AI. Each voice has its own delivery, and sometimes punctuation needs to be adjusted to get the right read. In some cases, we had to spell words phonetically to ensure correct pronunciation.
Finally, we worked with an editor—again, a human—who used traditional editing software to piece together the motion footage, voiceover, and music into 30-second videos.

Rich also spent hours on the type treatment of the headlines to make them approachable, attention getting, but also fun. Here’s what came out of all that…on budget to the penny. We are quite proud of it.

See interview with Rich on our recent Learning Session all about how he pulled this off, the tools he used, and other tips and tricks.