AI Will Destroy Advertising's Business Model Before It Destroys Its Creativity
Artificial Intelligence cut our Hallmark production costs by about 70%—and it’s coming for the $500 billion ad industry next. For 15 years, Ideasicle stuck to ideation, leaving production to clients. It was principle: no 'production bias' to filter out ideas we don’t have the staff to produce. But when Matt Resteghini at Hallmark saw our AI-generated pitch images, he threw down the gauntlet—produce the campaign Hallmark approved with AI, on a tiny budget. The creative team, Rich Wallace and Ernie Schenck, and I said yes. Why? The campaign was too good, and AI was the only way to do it within budget. What we didn’t expect? This little pivot might just kill the 'time of staff' model for good.
Two-man production process.
Here’s how the production went down.
Ernie fleshed out all the copy in all the required elements.
Rich spent HOURS with AI prompts creating original static images.
He handed them over to a retoucher to get rid of classic AI artifacts (like six fingers).
Those images, once approved, went to an AI animator who added isolated, subtle animation to the faces, hands, and sometimes bodies to give the illusion of a live shot.
Finally, the VoiceOver was prompted and an AI voice was chosen, recorded, and then edited into the films. Sometimes they had to phonetically spell the words to get the VO to say it right.
Deliverables: 3 :30 TV spots, 6 print ads, multiple trade show graphics, and countless social media ads in various sizes. All 100% AI. All for under $150,000. See all the work here (case study).
Do you realize what this means for the advertising business model?
Look ma, no hands!
Now, we can debate about the quality of the Hallmark campaign. Is it 100% true to life? No, it’s not. Is it as effective as live action would have been? I’m not sure. But even not being sure is enough to make the following point: the “time of staff” model dies when no staff is needed to produce campaigns.
Two guys - Ernie and Rich - produced this campaign with AI and the help of a few outside vendors. Two guys!
Will it work? I think it will. The “Metaphors” concept is great. The writing of the headlines, the body copy, and the scripts are all expertly done. The art direction just begs the viewer to pay attention. I mean, who isn’t going to read an ad with a guy in a pickle? So I think the campaign will be effective. But the larger point here is, we efficiently applied humanity in only the most important place: the creative. No producers, no traffic, no account team (just me). And where there’s no staff, there’s no time. And where there’s no time, there’s no money.
See where I’m going with this?
AI is not going to murder the advertising industry. It’s just going to gut it. What we’ve demonstrated (and others have too - see CocaCola, Unilever’s AI product shoots, Puma’s AI-agent-driven ads) is the distance between concept and creation has shortened dramatically with AI. Even a company like ours who doesn’t do production can do it.
Which brings me to…
Look ma, another pivot.
We’ve pivoted several times since 2010 when Ideasicle began. We went from off the shelf software to building our own proprietary software platform. We started a subscription service where agencies can use the platform to run their own idea projects. We started IX Freestyle last year for traditional freelance projects apart from the platform.
And now this. We do production.
There’s no risk of “production bias” when using AI because AI can create anything we dream up. Our ideas will not be influenced by what we can (and can’t) produce. With AI we can produce anything.
We have 40 of the best creative and strategy people in the business (our Ideasicle Experts), a software platform that allows teams of 4 of these geniuses to come up with ideas together, and now we have AI for production.
Thank you, Matt, for pushing us. Because I like our chances vs the “time of staff” model.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post like this. Will’s bio.