How Retailers can use AI in the Creative Process
There is still a degree of confusion, misinformation and fear regarding AI, with regular headlines about the risk it poses to jobs, as well as safety concerns and worries about its potential misuse. But, when handled correctly, AI can open up a world of possibilities and act as a vital tool in the creative process. In this article, Scott Waldron, Head of IPOS CREATE, explains how AI can be used to spark creativity in the retail sector.
In the retail industry, boundaries are constantly pushed to allow new ideas to come to life. Retailers pivot with every season, adapting to ever-changing consumer needs and interests to captivate their target audiences and win a bigger share of the market. New ideas have been vital to the sector’s evolution since the beginning, but coming up with a new concept in an increasingly crowded market can be difficult and executing a campaign through to launch can present even more challenges. The following tips showcase how AI can help at each stage of the journey, from concept to completion.
Using AI for Imagineering
The ideas phase of a new creative campaign can be one of the most time-consuming and expensive parts of the process for brands. Whether this is handled by an in-house creative team or a specialist agency, coming up with a new idea presents a number of challenges.
Mood boards are traditionally used at this early stage to collate inspiration and present options for the direction of the campaign. However, these are typically based on existing assets and use other brands as reference points. Generative AI is a fantastic alternative for mood boards; it enables creative teams to present a bespoke example of how the campaign is going to look and lets them play with different ideas, tailored to the DNA of a brand as well as giving multiple options to choose from. It also gives creatives the freedom to conceive and art-direct the seed of an idea as well as refining it before sharing with others.
It is possible to enter a relatively messy, early-stage concept into a generative AI tool, then extract it and apply human knowledge to refine it and rework it.
Generative AI can bring a concept into fruition in a way that would otherwise take many weeks or months and a large team to achieve. The time it saves means that more than one idea can be explored, so that the decision maker has multiple options to choose from. It also means that the weakest ideas can be ruled out at the early stage before time and money is invested in developing them further.
Briefing and Buy-In
One of the key benefits to AI in the creative process is that it is an efficient way of getting an entire team on the same page from the very beginning. Traditional methods are dependent on a person or team’s ability to communicate an idea to the decision makers then continue the concept through to completion.
What might make perfect sense in the creative’s own mind can be open to interpretation and mistranslation in the process. With AI, images of the concept can be seen and discussed before any work begins, ensuring everyone is aligned from the start and allowing agencies to bring clients into the process at a much earlier stage.
“AI allows us to refine ideas before they even leave the drawing board, aligning teams and freeing up creative energy for bold, groundbreaking concepts.”
It can also improve buy-in, as decision makers on the client side can see what the campaign will look like before they invest time and money into creating it. This allows brands to take bigger risks with bolder campaigns that they might have otherwise avoided, as well as helping to create a smoother creative process without any surprises as concepts begin to take shape.
One example of this was in the campaign concepts IPOS created for the ‘Fila Love’ campaign. We wanted to demonstrate how the theme of ‘Fila Love’ could be applied to retail outlets, shop windows, digital campaigns, adverts and social media. Using AI, we created a series of images that demonstrated how the theme could exist across every touchpoint of the consumer journey, without the need to produce an expensive photoshoot or build physical prototypes. This meant that everyone was aligned and bought into the campaign from the beginning.
Combining AI with Human Skill
Rather than being seen as a threat, AI should be viewed as an evolving tool that can help creative teams to imagine new ideas, which they then execute using their skill and experience. One example of how this partnership between AI and human skill can work best is in the photography stage of a creative campaign. The fashion brand Mango recently shot and released a new product range using AI, which on first look was hard to distinguish from a real photoshoot.
One option would be to take this back a step and use a similar approach, but purely for the planning stage. The creative team could use generative AI to spark ideas for the styling, location and lighting, in a similar way to mood boards but with a real-life illustration of the end result. This can help the team to curate the photoshoot so that the shoot itself is more efficient and impactful, helping to show the model, stylist, director and the entire team what they are working towards.
Seeing AI as a tool in the creative process, rather than as competition, can help creatives and retailers to start new conversations and spark new ideas. AI only works from a finite number of resources – but the human imagination is limitless. AI should never be used to replace a skilled human during the later stages of a process, as this is what keeps things exciting, authentic and helps to feed future data sets that are vital to the evolution of AI models. But, by combining the two together, new concepts can come to life, pushing boundaries and ultimately achieving greater results.
AI and the Human Touch
We hear a lot of chatter about AI in the hospitality industry, but we have yet to grasp its full impact and implications on day-to-day operations and the staff who keep our hospitality businesses running. Here Asif Alidina, Co-Founder & CEO of Inntelo AI talks about AI and the human touch and how this is leading to a new era in hospitality.
