Why Generative AI is such a Game-Changer for Creative Production

The news has been abuzz recently with talk of Artificial Intelligence (AI), with most of the discussion ‌centered around ‌recent advancements in generative AI. 

For years we’ve become familiar with analytical AI that is used to process and analyze data. You come across this AI everyday when scrolling through your social media feeds, with AI-backed algorithms determining what content you see. 

Generative AI is different in that it enables you to create something new, rather than analyzing what already exists. Through generative AI tools, you can turn your thoughts (via prompts) into text, imagery, sound, and video. 

The arrival of this technology is a game-changer for many industries; none more so than marketing.

Generative AI tools couldn’t have come at a better time for marketers. Over the last few years, the digital landscape has developed in a way that has created an insatiable demand for content—especially ad creative. With this, marketing teams have been put under the pump, needing to produce more and more creative in shorter timeframes, and with budgets that have either stood still or decreased in relative terms. 

By harnessing the power of generative AI tools, marketers can work more efficiently, increase their creative output, and make their budgets go much further. 

Adoption of this technology is already relatively widespread, with 44% of marketers currently using AI for content production. 

What does this look like? How exactly are marketers using generative AI within the creative production process? Let’s take a glimpse at some of the current use-cases.

1. Tackling tedious tasks & working more efficiently

When producing ad creative, there are a lot of small monotonous tasks that can end up requiring a big chunk of time from your day. This can be anything from filling out a brief, sourcing music, writing copy, or providing a designer with revision comments. 

These tasks are a major hurdle standing in the way of marketers achieving the required volumes of creative output. To tackle this issue, a lot of generative AI tools are being developed to help handle some of the heavy lifting, freeing up time for marketers to focus on bigger picture items. 

An example of this can be seen with AI copy generators. 

If you don’t have a dedicated copywriter on your team, or you’re experiencing writer's block, AI-powered copywriting can help you whip up your ad copy in the click of a button. 

This is a feature we have already built into our creative platform, ShuttlerockCloud. When filling out a creative brief, users have the option to use our copy inspiration tool that generates three copy suggestions based on the brand’s product description and target audience. 

2. Filling in the gaps

Traditionally, when producing creative you’re limited in what you can produce by the assets that you have to work with. The arrival of generative AI changes this. 

With generative AI tools, you can diversify and expand your existing assets to unlock new possibilities with your ad creative.

What do I mean by this? Well, let’s imagine you’re an automotive brand, and you want to show your car driving along a coastal route, but what you have instead is an image of the car driving through a forest. AI image generators can help here by taking the car and placing it within any background that you require. 

Along with background replacements, AI image generation can also help you extend existing images, conduct virtual video shoots, or create completely new imagery from scratch. With these newfound AI-powered abilities, you can fill any gaps that you have with your existing assets. This allows ‌you more freedom and flexibility when producing your ad creative. 

With Shuttlerock, brands can work with our dedicated AI team ‌to generate on-brand assets that can be used within their video ads.

3. Iterate & scale

Today’s marketers need a high degree of variation in their creative assets to keep things fresh, and target messaging to specific audiences. 

Manually creating these variations can be extremely time and resource intensive. This process, however, can be made immeasurably faster and easier by leveraging generative AI.

Above you can see this in action. On the left is a hero video (built using AI-generated assets). To the right of the hero video is a number of AI-generated text variations, enabling the brand to test a bunch of different messaging approaches. Let’s ‌say you want to add in some VO; you can create this using AI speech generation and create variations with different voices that match your different target demographics.

It’s easy to see how you can start to quickly and easily iterate, scale, and refresh your ad creative with the help of generative AI.

The surface has only been scratched

While marketers are already finding many use-cases with generative AI in the creative production process, it’s important to note that this technology is still very new and the surface has only been scratched in terms of the possible utility it can offer.

At Shuttlerock, our mission as a creative solution is to unlock the ability for brands to cost-effectively produce high-quality digital creative at speed and scale. Going forward, we see generative AI playing an integral role in helping us achieve this mission. 

We have already started incorporating generative AI tools into our creative solution, and we have a number of developments underway to expand upon this. If you would like to learn more about our current AI offerings, plus a glimpse into the future, please feel free to get in touch with one of our team members.