59 seconds in an AI agency
In this demo we put to the test how much of the creative process we could tackle with five generative AI apps and only 59 seconds.
Imagine this scene.
You scan the room wearing your Apple Vision Pro. Your five person creative agency team sit at shared desks in a futuristic virtual studio.
One is there with you IRL in Melbourne, another is in Sydney. One lives on the other side of the world. The last two are not of this world, they are AI Agents ready to start work.
You share the brief, in this case an Easter social media campaign for your eco-tour company Inspiring Journeys.
Briefly interrupted, your Vision Pro shows you a notification, and for a moment you are elsewhere.
Under a minute later, you rejoin the virtual studio, and are amazed to see that your team have already created a great first draft of the campaign, from research to insight, to ideas to production!
This might seem like a vision of the future, but it’s closer than you might think.
Inspired by Ethan Mollick’s thought provoking demonstration from last week ‘What Can be Done in 59 Seconds: An Opportunity (and a Crisis)’, we decided to put to the test how much of the creative process we could tackle with five generative AI apps and only 59 seconds.
As with Ethan’s demo, we had five applications open in different windows at the same time. They were primed and ready to go with prompts, and once the timer started we hit ‘Generate’ in each window. We stopped the clock after 59 seconds and had created;
- A market research report, with insights supported by data
- A campaign idea (“Bush Bites, eco-conscious luxury escape inviting travellers into Australia's World Heritage rainforests to discover rare native fruits and spices, and handcraft delectable chocolate creations. Guided by Indigenous leaders, guests will forage for local ingredients, then craft boutique chocolate bars with a master chocolatier using sustainable practices”)
- A campaign hero illustration
- Still images for social media creative (x 5 ratios)
- An animated creative for social media ads
Yes, in 59 seconds! You can watch the demo in this video:
Experiment in action
Admittedly we cheated here, as this creative process would really be run in sequence rather than in parallel. Meaning an AI agency would require at least 4 minutes and 55 seconds to create all this output (!)
Evaluating the output of the gen AI apps, it’s probably not going to win a Cannes Lion, but they demonstrate just how far creative teams can get using generative AI tools that are available now. Many of them for free.
The tools we used were;
1. Market Research & Insights GPT
2. CreativeGPT (by Addition) for campaign ideas
3. Midjourney for the campaign illustration
4. AdCreative.ai for (still) social post creative
5. Leonardo.ai for animated social post creative (look carefully at the video above, the generation finished at 58 seconds, phew!)
While preparing for this experiment we also looked at Osum (market research), Runway ML (animation), Jasper (creative writing) and ElevenLabs (podcast). These would all be promising alternatives to the tools we used if you had two minutes rather than just 59 seconds.
Will AI replace creatives in the design process? We don’t think so. With each step there is an interpretation of the results, and if we’re honest the first output is generally not the best, with iteration of the prompts and human intervention the results improve considerably.
Used well, generative AI tools can give creative teams super-powers, allowing them to create more iterations and experiments more quickly, and also put these into the market for testing with customers (which was outside the scope of this demo). What’s more, repetitive tasks (such as image resizing) can be automated, freeing up time for more creative endeavours.
If you had a minute to spare, would you hire an AI agency for your next campaign?