[Exclusive screening] Buckle Up Briefing #9: The future of branding keynote.

Speaker A: Hey, everyone. I'm super excited to talk to you today here about the future of branding. I hope I can show you that the future of branding is bright and generative. I'm Steph Hammerlink. Um, during the daytime, I help build the brand at Allen globally. Um, Alan is a healthtech, uh, player, which you might recognize from the mascot, but more about that later during the night. Um, I help other brands with brand strategy, branding as a consultant, and, uh, at least according to some, I'm also getting to be known as the mascot guy. I've helped, uh, quite a few, uh, brands with either building or scaling their mascots, um, such as Dreamland, of course, Alan. Ah, there's Marcel. Ah, there's a few others. Um, and I also teach at the school of branding. And then finally I, uh, have my. What used to be a podcast called let's Talk Branding, which you might know, but actually I transformed that into a newsletter where I share exciting news about the world of brand building, mascots and generative AI together with my mascot, uh, Marcel. So, yeah, that's Marcel. He has a bit of a main character vibe, so I hope he doesn't, uh, disrupt us too much during, uh, this talk. But what, uh, I really want to talk about, uh, today is two potential futures for branding, marketing and AI as a whole. One future is quite depressing, the dystopian even, the other a little bit better. So, uh, I suggest we start with the darkest future, AKA were cooked. So imagine a world where brands are producing the same generic content. Everything just feels similar. But, yeah, I know what you're thinking. This is already happening. It's called the sea of sameness and it exists today, right? Well, it's true. I mean, according to a study by Ipsos, only 15% of brands are truly distinctive, aka consumers recognize the brands for who they are. That means that the other 85% of markets, budgets, marketing budgets, are basically being thrown down the drain. Can it really get worse? Yes, actually it can. Because now that sea of sameness is actually a swamp. We have a few key ingredients that make up this toxic cocktail. First off, we see that already today more than half of web traffic is automated, AKA bots. So the whole dead Internet theory is coming. And we see that 40% of video content on social media is estimated to be AI generated. And this is a problem because what we see is when AI trains on other AI is what we call model collapse, where basically the quality deteriorates, deteriorates and do something a lot worse. And then we have the CFO who Heard that finally, cheap, good and fast is all possible at the same time. So, uh, just let's fire everybody and, uh, automate all the content generation, right? All these toxic ingredients lead to a cocktail and a sort of tipping point called the sloppening. A drudgy world of murky, weird, clickbaity, generic content where everything is just one weird, bland remix and it's sucking brands and consumers in. Now, let's talk about slop. It's a real thing, right? It's flooding the Internet. Um, a lot of people talk about it. Everybody's calling everything slop. So, uh, there's a couple of things, at least for me, that define real slop. So first, it's pure engagement clickbait. It's unhinged, it's weird, it's absurd. It's designed with the only sole purpose of grabbing the attention. Secondly, uh, usually there's very little human action. Input. Input, right. That it's. It's just almost like one shot. It. Text to prompt. And especially now with Sora, which is most of the videos you can see here, it's just people typing out something very basic. And then the model does all of the filling in, which is also why it feels so generic, of course, because it's not unique. It doesn't have personality, it doesn't have a strong story. It's just fun to watch. And then as a last point, it's mostly twists on, um, what familiar things that already exist. Existing content, ip, it's memes again, it's this remix culture. And that works because when people see something familiar, they usually tend to keep watching it versus something that is already old. You could make the argument that a lot of Hollywood is actually now being, uh, all the sequels are some sort of, like, slop version. But obviously there's a lot more creativity in there and it's not pure engagement clickbait. So it's a bit on the edge of what's possibly being defined as slob. And bonus points for destroying the environment and of course, unethically training your models on, um, materials that the artist did not agree with or don't have any incentive from. And we're eating it up. So all these AI videos are trending like crazy on, um, TikTok on YouTube. Sora actually became the number one app in the App Store in only a matter of a few hours. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Marcel. Marcel, stop. It's okay, it's okay. Sorry, sorry. I'm trying to. Oh, my God. Okay. Sorry for that. As I warned you, Marcel can get A little bit weird and he loves some good old slop. Okay, so now that we've explored that slightly unhinged future, let's look at a little bit more exciting future, AKA we're cooking in this future. Brands become living, breeding, talking entities, engaging and delighting their audience, driven by human creativity and powered by generative AI. First let's look at some brands that are building this future today. Obviously we have Allen, um, which is an interesting brand and I work for them of course. Um, but I think Allen has really embraced M AI uh in the way that it should. And I just want to show you this cool ad.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker A: So that's a uh, recent uh, ad we did uh, for Alan, uh, where we used AI to produce it. You can also see some of the other visuals there with our mascot. Our mascot was actually made with 3D, but then we trained the model on it so we can use it however we want. Um, so let's do a quick slop fit check, uh, based on this last ad compared to what we saw in the previous future. So is it pure engagement? Clickbait? Well, actually no, it's entertainment driven. Yes, uh, it has a strong hook. But um, the idea is to have a clear objective in mind. The goal here is really to build awareness around Alan's offering. So not really. Does it have very little human input? Actually no. Um, I worked on most of the script, the storyboarding, the visuals, creating the actual animations. Then I handed it off to a, uh, motion designer who worked on fine tuning the motion. There were other designers involved in giving feedback, designing some of the screens. And so all in all it was like roughly three humans working on it for a couple of days. Um, and so no, uh, we actually put in a lot of effort thinking about the story, uh, crafting it, designing it and so on. And then is it a twist on the familiar existing content or IP or memes? Not really. I mean obviously, um, doing a twist on the familiar on its own is not a bad thing per se. It's only when it's like doing that without existing in a specific brand, uh, world with a specific entertainment driven objective that you, you don't really have, uh, content that drives uh, success or impact for your brand. You're just creating, you know, attention grabbing stuff. And in this case, uh, this ad was made in Alan's specific brand universe. The look and feel, the colors, obviously the mascot, but also the characters. There's uh, the tone of voice, there's the music, everything uh, fits into that brand world, which I think is Also something that shows, uh, the difference between slop and like really just good, uh, creative, uh, with AI. And then finally we have the bonus points. Is it destroying the environment and is it unethical? Well, um, there's still a lot of work here, so I'm not gonna claim that, uh, we solved that. If you compare, like doing um, an actual video shoot or doing a 3D studio rendering where you take a couple of weeks and a couple of people to do it, um, most likely it's probably even a lower carbon footprint than what we did. I mean, purely in terms of, uh, GPU rendering. Also, um, what I see is now that we're beyond the hype cycle, uh, there's a lot more mature asset management and recycling approach. So we're not just generating hundreds of images on the fly for every little spark we have. We're looking into using assets that exist, reusing them, recycling them. Uh, also, when it comes to localizing or creating other scenarios, there's a lot that can happen here making it more efficient and also less resource intense. And then on the unethical part, um, there are a few newer models like Firefly, Moon Valley, um, and I think also Google is investing a lot m more in cleaning up their databases or finding ways to make it less, uh, ethically worrisome. So these things are shifting and I think it's on us in the industry as well to demand that and to push further on it. But there's still a lot of work to be done, let's be honest. But that's not the real problem, I think. But there's another problem. When you create, um, like AI content, there is a lot of pushback, especially online. These are just a few comments I have received on like, uh, articles, videos, whatever I created. And you can see people have like a real reaction to it. It's like intense hate. Uh, they call it unethical. And of course, uh, if you're working for a brand or if you're a founder, then, uh, there is a real fear, uh, of pushback, even worse. So the question is, of course, what can we do? Well, first, what you need to know is that in research we see that when people are shown, uh, content, videos, imagery, without knowing that it's AI, they often even prefer it. So it's not that people hate, innately hate, AI stuff. It's more that when they know it is. And at this point in time, because of some of the other reasons I talked about earlier, they often, uh, are very vocal in expressing their hate. But again, uh, looking at some of the research and for example, this recent ad from Coca Cola, uh, just released this week, we see the interesting two worlds collide. On the one hand we see, um, basically people going mad about this ad, like, Coca Cola lost its spirit, it's disgusting, it's terrible. And on the other hand, we see in system one testing that it's an exceptional, uh, score. So 5.9. Uh, so basically this means that normal people watching this ad just love it. Obviously this is because Coca Cola has spent decades on this team on this ad. And so it feels familiar. You're happy that the holidays are back. But it really shows that when people see AI content and it's made like, with high quality and it's good enough, um, that most people are just like, looking at the ad, uh, saying, ah, uh, that's kind of cool. And that's it. So I think we will get past this point. There's also the issue, of course, of what we call the uncanny valley, where if we want to show, like, if we really want to replace hyper realistic or like real videography, then there is a chance that we'll probably never pass the uncanny valley, which is where things like, feel 99% there, but still off. Like, I don't know if you remember Polar Express or any of these, uh, really heavy CGI versions where we spend a lot of time trying to make it look real. It's hard. So it's clear that there are some issues. If you are a brand, um, today and you want to invest in AI, so what can you do? There's three options that I want to discuss. So the first one is just being upfront about AI.

Speaker B: Don't worry, this is an AI generated video about a group of friends on a night out and they make a couple of pretty bad decisions. We tried to depict the story as realistically as possible. However, we regenerated the ending just because we can. Don't drink and drive. Real life can't be regenerated, generated.

Speaker A: So here AI actually becomes part of the message. And I think that works well because you kind of put people, uh, like beyond the detective mode of trying to spot whether it's AI or not and just, uh, get a sort of acceptance and curiosity about the story. And so in some cases this is a very interesting approach. I don't know how long this will last. As of course at some point the novelty will die off and maybe people, people will be like, okay, yeah, so what? It's an AI ad, but in any case, interesting for now.

Speaker B: I made $420. Uploading my homework. I paid my car payment with money from my data. Upload your data and get paid. I got paid 320 for foot pictures. I made $800 for all my Streamo videos. Upload your data, make money. AI companies are paying a ton of money for training data. So upload your content and make it rain baby.

Speaker A: So the second option definitely uh, a one I like personally a lot, is basically embracing the medium and even going harder on it, so making it even more uncanny. Um, embracing the weirdness. I uh, think it's an interesting approach and again it's something we see uh, a lot uh, happening now, especially with some of the work by PG Aseturo who's like leading the way in this uh, style. Uh, and I think it's interesting because it recognizes that yes, AI is flawed, but we can tell interesting stories with it. And uh, I have another one, uh, that's also embracing this in a really cool way.

Speaker B: Well that was good. Short but good. Well, there goes another satisfied customer. M.

Speaker A: So as you can see in both of these films, um, it's clear that like things are a bit weird.

Speaker B: Work has been weird lately. He's going to fly the coupe and fast. Luckily, AI mode and Google search can help him hatch a plan. It's got to be quick and it's got to be. Yeah, that should do it. Phew. Things were getting dicey there for a moment, but now everything's gravy. Plenty of quick getaway. Just ask Google.

Speaker A: So uh, in this video I would say this is like the, the, the last option, uh, and, and it's something we've been seeing a lot more recently. The Allen ad that I showed you was a similar uh, technique technique where basically you circumvent the uncanny by working with animals working in different, less realistic styles. This helps you tell a story without people being overly focused on um, like you know, the humans are not real uh, discussions. And I think it's one of those things, especially for brands. It's very interesting because you can basically create a very distinctive art style and really own that. And there is also a sense of like a bit of um, like texture and humanism that goes back into it by showing like uh, by using things like uh, stop motion techniques. So I think it's an interesting one. In any case, generative AI shouldn't replace videography or photography in my opinion. It's a new medium. This is a film for Gucci and there is this scene uh, that uses generative AI and it's just something that would be almost like impossible to do with VFX even. And that's why I love it. Like it's, it's something that feels right and natural in this story and it's the right technique at the right moment and I think that will be something that we'll see more and more. There's even like artists that are imitating a video which I think is hilarious. So yeah, the future is definitely hybrid and I think that's where a lot of the most interesting stuff will happen in that latent space in using real video, mixing it and so on. There's a couple of techniques I want to show you quickly that will help us. One, there is of course um, video editing that is becoming a lot smarter where basically you can add or remove elements, you can uh, tweak things in a way that uh, is very interesting and was very much impossible before if you weren't like a heavy VFX artist. So I think this will um, give a lot of creators new possibilities. There's also motion style transfer, which is again something interesting where you can take existing movement m from whatever, from sports, from dance, from anything and you can style transfer it like putting it in a new uh, world basically. And again, this is interesting for brands because you can remix things in your own aesthetic. And then of course we will also have more creative control. Um, things like detailed annotations where you can basically uh, write on the screen exactly what uh, motion you want to happen will, uh, allow us to tell more intricate stories and be less repetitive, reliant on the model to fill in these things. And also very interesting is it allows us to close the gap between idea and execution. I think that's something that has worked for me a lot when I was trying to pitch new ideas. Ah, you know, if you're working for brands, it's sometimes hard to convince them early on because you don't have uh, all the materials yet to showcase what it could look like. And now thanks to uh, Generative AI, you can basically go from sketch to a mock ad in a couple of minutes. Which is of course great to, to bring an ID to life, not to, to do as the final product because I said, as I said like one shoting this um, is not per se the right way, but at least to bring ideas to life, it works. And look, the real power is still human creativity. This is a recent ad for McDonald's where everything was handcrafted, hand designed, hand animated and filmed. And yes, I mean it's beautifully made. But the reality is that this is like only possible for a few brands in the world to make this type of ad. And I hope we keep doing it, but at the same time for a lot of other brands, smaller brands, but as you've seen also Google and Coca Cola, it's a reality that they won't always be able to make this type of thing. Um, thanks to Generative AI, you can make your CFO happier too. No, it's not cheap, fast, good. It's cheaper, faster and good if you invest enough time in it. So how do you make your brand future proof? How do we prepare it for the Generative era? There's three rules I want to discuss with you and give you some examples and then we're done for today. So the first rule, and this is just the first rule of branding and brand building in general, is you have to be unmistakably you. And how can you be unmistakably you is you have to be very iconic, very recognizable. Heinz did a really cool campaign where they asked Dall E, which is, uh, a bit outdated by now, but uh, to basically draw ketchup. And what, what they got was their product, uh, in different versions. But it really shows that if you're iconic enough, even AI will prompt you. And I think that will also be an interesting case where we as brands have to show up in these models visually, verbally, of course. But the real interesting thing about being unmistakably you is that if we look at the data, the most recognizable assets is not your logo. I'm very sorry. It's actually characters, it's jingles and it's sonic devices, which means these are living, talking, singing assets. And I think that's interesting because that's exactly what Generative AI unlocks. Designing these characters, bringing them to life is a lot easier with Generative AI. It used to be something for only a few that have big budgets. Rule number two is be highly entertaining. It's not enough to have memorable assets. You need people to watch them, to grab the attention, to do cool stuff with them and only then will you be remembered. Of course, and this is a real problem because, and we see that actually showmanship, uh, the thing, you know, the skill where you bring entertaining, creative ads is dropping in the last decades. And salesmanship, or what we also see in Les Binette and Peter Field's uh, idea of the long and short of it, sales activation has been on the rise. You know, digital performance marketing, conversion oriented rational marketing has been very much on the rise and we've abandoned showmanship. But if we look at the data, showmanship, entertainment creativity is actually what creates more lasting brand growth. We see it on all the metrics. If you do that properly, you get more bang for your buck. And let's face it, it's a very hard environment out there. The same slice of reach you bought 20 years ago now holds less attention in someone's head and it costs you 220% more than a decade, which is kind of crazy if you think about it. So of course attention is the new gold and the way to grab attention is to really stand out. And I really like this framework which is called like fuck what cool. Where basically the first stage of anything you create must be shock and grab attention. And this is also again what slop does really well. But then you also have to build a layer of intrigue, pull people in, make them more interested, build curiosity. And finally you have to have a resolution and payoff. And as I said before, the art is to do this within the brand, the universe that you are working for. Uh, and if you do that, then I think uh, Generative AI really allows you to become a show man or woman again and again. We can see this with new generative AI techniques such as Runways Act 2 or video to video, where basically your performance in front of just a normal webcam can become something really entertaining and interesting. And this gives tools to creators. And the last rule, which is, I think one that is often forgotten, um, in this new space is we have to be playable. We've seen an evolution of user generated content where first we had like, okay, people were blogging, there was fan fiction, there was uh, people writing stuff, then there was video. Um, this is still where we see a lot of things happening, especially on TikTok and Instagram. And then there's 3D, um, things like Roblox, but also Web 3.0 and generative AI of course, where basically it's no longer just um, like a 2D or like a streaming version, but it's really almost building worlds where fans can play in. And this remixing or this like playing around with content is happening today. Uh, we see it of course in Sora, uh, we see it with Harry Potter, uh, Raves, which is the brands currently are fighting this. And of course uh, this is because legally ip, um, I get it, you've built long and hard on this IP and then suddenly people are just messing with it. It's a problem. But at the same time it's also a reality. Fans want to play with it, want to engage with it, don't just want to be a passive observer. And so, um, I think this is a bit of an interesting playbook where you see a lot of the traditional strong IP brands like Studio Ghibli. They first built these beautiful art pieces, films that people love, then they build theme parks. Uh, actually Netflix is doing this. Disney obviously is doing this. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, strong IP brands that do this to further expand their IP and monetize it. But the last part, remixing the IP by fans, giving them the sandbox to play around with, it is not happening from the brands. And what happens then is, for example, what you get with Ghibli is the Ghiblification, where basically people are just starting to generate Ghibli images with things like, uh, OpenAI ChatGPT, um, because they love living in that world. But it's of course it's not on the terms of Ghibli, it's on the terms of defense. Uh, and we'll see more of that blurring of the lines between the original and the derivative, you know, ushering in an age of remix. And I think we'll have to rethink what IP means. Um, and the reality is, I think, for example, for Studio Ghibli, imagine if they had created a sandbox where people would have been able to generate this. I think that would have been a smarter play for them. And we see this with uh, some interesting brands like Doodles, who created a very iconic, uh, illustration style and now allows fans to not only create their own avatars, but also create their own art with their own custom proprietary model. So again, they created the sandbox and they invited their uh, fans in to play. And we also think, uh, about this at Alan, my coach Alan, ah, Anna calls this the distributed brand era, where basically, um, you have less control over your brand and you let fans play around with it and you embrace that, you embrace that fact. But of course to do that you need strong codes and as I mentioned before, strong living, breathing characters, sound and so on. This was an interesting campaign we did, um, where, uh, we invited uh, our audience in. They created over 27,000 healthy, uh, wishes, postcards. Send them to their family and their loved ones. So it was a great example of like a simple campaign where you give people the tools to create remix your own codes, uh, and it worked really well. So basically generative AI allows you to make your brand sandbox. Um, this is a, uh, Marcel mascot dot com. This is actually where Marcel lives, uh, where I create all sorts of apps. Where you can hug with Marcel, you can uh, draw with Marcel, you can do all sorts of stuff. Uh, I would say go spend some of my credits, uh, if you're up for it. Uh, it's kind of fun, uh, it's a kind of fun environment. And it's exactly what I mean with like brands, uh, being a sandbox and even, uh, it's great because I'm the smallest possible brand you can be. It's a personal brand and I can still do this. This is something that five years ago would have required huge budget engineers, lots of different people. And uh, now that's not the case. Um, so I think if you're an interesting brand, an entertainment brand, you will stand out. And if you stand out and people memorize you, then they will want to play in your world. And that's something I think that we see uh, now in gaming where things like this are happening, where the Simpsons and Fortnite do a collaboration and people just want to play as Homer Simpson because they, they remember that it's iconic. Uh, so Genai not only makes your brand a sandbox, it also makes you conversational. Uh, actually this is uh, the recent launch of Microsoft's new Micro Assistant, um, which is not the only one we'll see. You know, uh, it's an obvious play. When you have LLMs, you build a face for it, but people will get used um, to uh, interacting with these living breathing characters. Uh, you might say like it's the rebirth of uh, Clippy, but in a more natural way. This is another example of that where you have Tolands. And so that will be very interesting to see how characters will not only just be like, you know, moving around talking but actually being able to go in conversation with you. And the last point I want to make here is that to be playable you also need to be somewhat immersive and real time or interactive. And this is again very interesting to see where things like real time video are coming, uh, where you can basically not just watch a video but actually engage with it and see it uh, change in real time. This really changes the dynamic of content creation. It makes you part of it, uh, and that's I think something very interesting. And of course we have things like um, Google's uh, Genie 3 or videos, which is basically allowing you to build any possible world, so called world models. So yeah, a lot of interesting stuff happening. And to recap, I think that's important, whatever you want to do in the future is that you are unmistakably you. So that means you have the right assets to stand out, that you use those assets to be highly entertaining, to really grab the attention in a fun way, and then to invite your audience in to play in that sandbox, engage with them, go in conversation, be gamified in a way. So my final question to you. Are we cooked or are we cooking? Thanks for the attention.