Within the fluid and dynamic world of today’s marketing, juggling resources is a constant hassle for lean marketing teams, and keeping up with the industry leaders is a very real headache.

Generative AI offers a host of advantages that totally revolutionise content creation and brand representation. When you look at these benefits closely, you’ll understand just what a powerful tool we’ve been handed and how a new era of content creation and brand storytelling is emerging. Let’s start exploring the area of AI-generated imagery and understand its potential to amplify your brand’s message.

Creating impossible images

We know anything’s possible with AI image generation because we’ve seen cats in military gear standing in front of a fighter plane all over social media. But getting serious for a moment, the technology really does give us the ability to generate images that are impossible not just in terms of content, but also time frames and budgets. This new canvas is limited only by our own imagination.

Generative AI can dramatically reduce photography budgets by eliminating the need for expensive photoshoots, talent fees, and logistical planning. This is particularly beneficial for lean marketing teams looking to produce high-quality visual content on a tight budget. With AI, the cost and time associated with arranging photoshoots, waiting for perfect weather conditions, or scouting locations are virtually eradicated, significantly speeding up campaign launches.

One of our clients needed imagery of people who travel for business. They had to clearly be in easy-to-recognise locations, like London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York. To achieve this using traditional photography would have cost thousands and taken months. We were able to do it for a tenth of the cost of photography, and it took less than a week from briefing to final approved images.

Another case was for a roofing client. We conjured an image of a knight in full kit, standing on a residential rooftop, to convey the message of protection. This would have been a Health & Safety nightmare to shoot! We came up with the idea late morning and presented the visual that afternoon, taking advantage of distressed ad space with a media deadline of the next day.

Creating a unique signature style

Generative AI also offers the ability to incorporate key brand visual assets into backgrounds, allowing brands to create a distinctive signature style. At Brand IQ, we leveraged this capability to redefine the brand imagery for the Australian Marketing Institute. By integrating AMI’s new diamond logo in an elegant and subtle way into AI-generated backgrounds, we crafted a set of visuals that not only stood out but also resonated deeply with the brand’s identity and values. This approach not only enhances brand recognition but also ensures consistency across all marketing materials.

Launching faster than ever

The agility offered by generative AI in content creation is incredible. The knight on the roof ad above is a great example. The client was able to say yes to a fantastic media opportunity without having to re-run old material that didn’t resonate with the magazine’s feature. Another example was a brief we received at the end of October for a promotional campaign that they wanted to kick off mid-November.

We needed an image of a tradie cooking on a barbecue – the barbecue being the prize in the promotion. Trouble was, we didn’t have a good image of the barbecue, nor did we have time to do a shoot (or the budget for talent, props etc). Using a set of carefully crafted prompts, we created an image for the campaign that worked across magazines, instore posters, entry forms and social media – all in a matter of days.

Quality, every time

Once an imagery style has been developed for your brand, which might be a specific use of colours, a particular photographic or illustrative style, types of people, shapes, lighting etc, we can then lock in that style code and create hundreds of images in exactly the same style, achieving a consistent look and feel for all your images.

Generative AI is a transformative force, redefining the possibilities for lean marketing teams in the digital age. We’re loving working with it and our clients are very open to hearing about how the technology is evolving and what it can do for their brands.

The technology just gets better every week. Within the next couple of years AI video will be at the same level that still imagery is now. So just imagine how good stills imagery will be by then!

Want to know more about how generative AI can help your lean marketing team achieve more with less? Email me: steve@brandiq.co.nz.