At the UK advertiser trade body ISBA’s annual conference last week, Shun Matsuzaka, creative planner of ad agency, McCann Japan and his team of tech geniuses, showed off AI-CD – the world’s first AI creative director capable of directing a TV commercial, which was first introduced in 2015.
The team, in a newly-created division called McCann Millennials began their project by breaking down a TV commercial into two parts: the creative brief and the elements of the ad. The creative brief explains the type of brand, the campaign goal, the target audience, and the claim the ad should make, while the elements of the ad include things like tone, manner, celebrity, music, context, and the key takeout.
Their next step was to assemble a database of deconstructed ads from all the winners of some of Japan’s biggest award shows from the past 10 years — mapping and tagging each of the elements of the ads to help determine what made them successful.
The robot was pitted against human creative director Mitsuru Kuramoto to create an ad that conveyed the message: “Instant-effect fresh breath that lasts for 10 minutes” for Clorets Mint Tab.
The first client willing to test the AI creative director’s abilities was American confectionery brand, Mondelez.
The client was asked to fill out a form with all the elements they wanted to appear in the ad, after which the robot then scrambled the database for ideas (humans were required to actually produce the final creative).
The two spots (the one done by a human and that done by the AI) were then thrown to a nationwide poll, where consumers could vote for which ad they preferred.
Ad 1
Ad 2
The first ad, created by the AI robot lost to the human director with a close 46% of the public’s votes.
However, when the ad executives present were asked to make a pick, they voted for the funny ad created by the AI robot, demonstrating just how creative and interesting AI can be.
Matsuzaka also announced his two big predictions to the audience: “The future ad agency evolution will be based on its algorithms, which are created by humans,” and “innovation only happens when the traditional barriers of partnership are broken down.”
The next focus of the McCann Millenials is “Japanese Idol”, as they make moves to build a commercial database for the music industry to see if it can create the next pop smash hit.