AI in marketing: What we can learn from recent AI-generated campaigns

Is AI coming for the advertising and marketing industry? The big question right now is whether AI in marketing is able to compete with human-made creative for marketing campaigns, social media, and more. Whether you’re ready for the robot revolution or harbor secret fears about Skynet coming for your job (swallows), there’s no doubt that AI is already making a huge impact on how creative campaigns are generated and received. 

From completely AI-generated TV ads to digital doubles of fashion models, some of the most out-there AI marketing campaigns reveal glimpses of the likely near-future. This AI marketing guide will help you understand whether AI is the way forward for your brand management strategy, and if so, how can you adopt it into your own campaign projects?

Before you make up your mind, let’s look at the pros and cons of AI in marketing, as well as some recent examples. Plus we’ll suggest AI marketing tools to help you realise your own creative campaign ideas. We’ll cover:

Perhaps you’re a marketing purist and don’t use any AI in creating campaigns or content (that’s cool), or maybe you’re one of the 57.5% of marketers who are already using AI in their work, consciously or not. The reality is that a growing majority of design and marketing tools use AI in some way, from the minor (tracking video subtitles) to the major (complete AI content generation for creative output).   

Some critics point to the lack of naturalism in AI imagery and videos — we’re all familiar with the overly glossy and eerily perfect aesthetic that AI can bring to creative content. But with AI becoming increasingly sophisticated, and with Meta planning to enable AI ad creation by the end of 2026, there’s a strong likelihood that AI could overtake traditional marketing and advertising within a short time. So watch this space.

Ultimately, any discussion of whether marketers should use AI for campaigns needs to weigh up the pros and cons of AI in marketing, and based on this you can decide for yourself what level of AI you want (or don’t want) to incorporate into your creative process. 

On the plus side, AI is an ever-evolving and increasingly capable tool that creatives can use to ideate and generate content quickly. With the creative industries being increasingly squeezed financially, and the demand for content volume soaring due to fast-flowing social media feeds, it’s no wonder that AI marketing tools are fast becoming a stalwart of the marketer’s toolbox. 

Great for fast content generation, AI marketing tools help marketers and creative agencies to accomplish time-consuming tasks in less time, freeing up resources and leaving more space for creative thinking. AI marketing tools are also great for small teams or low-budget projects. No scope for employing a huge team of extras or editing staff for a video project? No problem! 

AI marketing is also starting to simply look better — more AI tools have scope for understanding sophisticated AI prompts, helping to create refined and highly detailed work that looks ultra-realistic. 

A clear win for AI marketing is its ability to transform an idea into multi-media output without the hard slog. Turn a static logo into a dynamic animation for an ad, or build interactive website content for customers from a simple idea. You can transform static photography into cool videos for social media, or bring in custom AI music and sound to provide the soundtrack to your creative.

Are there downsides to using AI in marketing? Depending on what type of AI marketing tool you use, it may be unclear where creative elements are actually sourced from, which is why it’s really important to use a reputable AI generator.

The level of control you can wield is also only as good as your prompt direction and the tool’s ability to interpret that prompt accurately. So you can end up spending more time post-edit ‘tweaking’ than it would take to create something more specific from scratch.

Can AI create a marketing campaign that captivates audiences and engages customers? Or do AI marketing examples sometimes miss the mark? The answer: yes and yes! The story of AI in marketing is one of both big wins and epic fails, but it seems like the good are starting to overtake the not-so-great, leaving AI-phobic agencies shaking in their boots. 

Let’s look at some recent AI marketing examples that highlight the full spectrum of automated marketing campaigns, from H&M’s AI ‘doubles’ to Heinz’ custom ketchup labels, and assess the takeaways that you can incorporate into your own marketing projects.

Independent Paris-based creative director Sybille de Saint Louvent has been quietly carving out an inspirational AI niche, with skilfully crafted fake ad campaigns for luxury fashion houses and jewellery brands like Chanel, Saint Laurent, and Cartier making her Instagram page a real feast for the eyes. 

Sybille’s work demonstrates how AI marketing tools and design software can bring authentic finesse and a ‘quiet luxury’ aesthetic to campaign imagery, making them compete for mood and quality with the real brands’ own marketing output.

The takeaways: While Sybille’s work is her own artistic experiment, her knack for lifting the aesthetic of big fashion brands and placing them within an AI context allows her to push the boundaries of what would be considered traditional luxury ads.

A delicate gold ring atop a black panther’s back, or a delicately constructed bee made from woven threads — the creative skill lies in paying attention to the small details, and applying AI techniques in a subtle way that can’t fail to surprise or delight. 

A rain-soaked woman screaming into a hurricane? An alien chugging beer at a frat party? Welcome to the sheer bonkers madness of trading platform Kalshi’s latest ad, which aired during the NBA Finals. The entire ad was created in just 48 hours using AI, from the video to the voiceover, and the cost was…$2,000. Yup. The ad went instantly viral, generating more than 20 million impressions through social media and press coverage. 

Is it original ‘creative’? Is it even marketing? The jury’s out on that one, but what’s clear is that AI-generated marketing is big news. Want to know how it was done? Creator PJ Ace breaks down the full process of how he created the ad.

The takeaways: Whether it’s your scene or not, Kalshi’s ad was impressive in its ability to capture attention at just the right moment in time. For the AI-curious, this video was catnip, and the bats**t craziness of the whole thing actually makes the most of the weird and wacky results you often get from AI-generated content. It might not be beautiful, but it sure is a talking point. 

Fashion has been one of the most willing industries to jump on the AI marketing bandwagon, and the results have certainly raised eyebrows. The latest? H&M created ‘virtual twins’ of real-life models, allowing a model to work ‘remotely’, styled in different clothes and poses for wide use across campaigns. 

To create the doubles, models were photographed in detail, capturing birthmarks, facial expressions, different angles, and manners of movement to enable a realistic virtual replica to be made. The Swedish fashion giant stated that the models will retain rights over their digital doppelgangers, receiving fair pay and control over how and when their likeness can be used. 

Not everyone thinks it’s a great idea, though. Model and influencer Morgan Riddle described H&M’s AI marketing efforts as “shameful” on her Instagram stories, highlighting the likely impact on fashion shoot professionals: “RIP to all the other jobs on shoot sets that this will take away.” Ouch. 

The takeaways: H&M is not alone in experimenting with generative AI to create more flexibility with how models can be employed. Hugo Boss and Levi’s have also dabbled in creating model doubles for marketing campaigns and website content, with jeans brand Levi’s claiming to use the tech to “increase diversity” (to expected backlash). Hmm, would another option simply be to use diverse real-life models? We’re not sure on this one — it all feels a little too dystopian (Body Snatchers, anyone?), but watch us eat our words by this time next year.  

A huge advantage of AI in marketing is the ability for customers to interact with brands on a more personal level. In other words, the ability to create content shifts to the customer, with potential for longer exposure to the brand and improved memorability. 

Coca-Cola’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign is a great example of how AI can build more interactive connections between brands and customers. Customers were able to create AI-generated art for their Coke bottle designs, using an inbuilt AI marketing tool that was able to generate millions of unique designs. The result? A fun and completely memorable experience that elevated a simple Coke bottle into a bespoke creation unique to each customer. Even better, customers enthusiastically shared their bottle designs on social media, extending the experience for themselves and their followers even further. 

Coca-Cola also extended its use of personal AI in marketing with dispensers that allow users to create custom drink flavors by scanning a QR code, choosing sticker designs and names, and hopefully creating a tasty concoction. AI also played a role in formulating the brand’s latest limited-edition flavor, “Y3000 Zero Sugar.”

The takeaways: The ‘Share a Coke’ campaign demonstrates how AI can be a highly creative marketing tool, boosting emotional engagement and memorability. The simplicity of the idea — that customers can design their own bottle — is super effective, and it shows that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to make AI part of an effective marketing strategy.

With AI image generation experiments causing weird, wonderful, and often downright hilarious results, Heinz created a witty campaign built around the idea that even AI thinks that ketchup looks like Heinz. 

Typing ‘ketchup bottle’ into an AI image generator created a bottle with an eerily similar design to Heinz’s iconic white-labeled bottle. The creative team at agency Rethink took the idea one step further:

Prompts like ‘ketchup renaissance’ and ‘ketchup stained glass’ still produced an impression of the Heinz bottle, albeit rough around the edges. The results were turned into a global marketing campaign, highlighting how Heinz ketchup is the iconic ketchup brand. This was a clever campaign that made the most of the unexpected quirks of AI imagery. 

The takeaways: Heinz is a big brand with a dominant product in the sector, so this campaign worked well for simply highlighting how well-known its ketchup is. Nonetheless, smaller brands can still take note — AI is renowned for its, erm, quirks, so why not lean into it? Rather than trying to fool your audience with realism, why not just have fun with an AI marketing campaign? This is a great way to build humor and a shared joke into your marketing content.

We’ve seen above how marketers are using AI to create effective marketing and ad campaigns that draw eyes and generate viral interest. But what remains to be seen is whether AI can win hearts. 

Camera brand Polaroid took a punt against the AI trend with a nostalgic campaign, “The Camera for an Analog Life”, for its new Polaroid Flip camera. Using slogans like “No one on their deathbed ever said: I wish I’d spent more time on my phone” and “Real stories. Not stories & reels”, the company is hoping customers will respond to a message of human connection and living in the here and now. 

Risky? Perhaps, but we’ve included this campaign to show you the flipside of AI in marketing. In the right context, and for the right product, choosing not to incorporate AI into your creative might be a smart choice.

The takeaways: While AI is a fantastic new marketing tool that can take your creativity further, it’s also wise to keep in mind that not every campaign, product, or audience will necessarily be the right fit for AI. Polaroid is a brand built on nostalgia and analog technology, so it’s a natural fit for an ‘anti-AI’ campaign, which is why this campaign is so effective and has sparked a positive reaction. Right campaign, right place.  

Other brands might be at risk of being seen as outdated or behind the times if they don’t use AI in marketing campaigns, so you really need to assess if your brand and audience will fit with a completely AI-generated campaign, human-made creative, or a balanced mix of the two.

AI marketing presents some seriously exciting possibilities for marketers and brands. The tech allows creatives to lean into the experimental, surreal, and downright weird, and often the best AI marketing campaigns play up this mood of randomness.

Keep in mind that AI can be intimidating for some people and demographics, with younger audiences more likely to respond positively to AI-generated marketing. The skill of the marketer moving forward will be in determining how much AI can and should be used to market a brand, and whether it should be made clear to the audience that AI has been a key player.

No one likes to feel misled or duped, so it’s wise to employ AI creative with a measured approach, and some of the most successful marketing strategies still preserve a human element as part of the campaign. This, as the beating heart of a campaign, often holds more innovative AI elements together, and signals to the consumer that there is still an authentic center underpinning the tech wizardry. Cool, creative marketing campaigns with real soul? That’s what we’re talking about.

So when using AI in marketing projects, be bold, be experimental, but never neglect the human touch.

Ready to start using AI elements in your marketing projects? Craft emotive AI videos for YouTube with VideoGen, beautiful soundtracks for creative content with MusicGen, and use creative AI prompts to get the best from your campaign imagery with ImageGen.