Generative Media: The Way forward for Visible Advertising and marketing
Every minute, Facebook users upload 147,000 photos and Instagram users post over 347,000 stories. That's a tremendous amount of content entering the digital space every day – which can be a problem for digital marketers.
In a world where everyone seems to be creating content, creating everyday content is simply no longer enough.
You need to create visually engaging, high-volume, unique content without overwhelming your marketing budget.
Let me introduce you to generative media and all of its possibilities.
What are generative media?
Generative media are computer generated art or “photographs” as shown below. In other words, it is not an artist who draws the pictures or does the design. Everything is made by artificial intelligence (AI). This is how it works:
- The artist “instructs” the machine to create content within certain parameters or algorithms.
- The machine generates images according to these algorithms.
- The artist can change the parameters for creating content at any time.
You can see it as a collaboration between artists and machines – there is still a creative process that could benefit from a professional artist's eye. In this medium, the artist gives some control (and work) to a computer.
But if you're not the artsy type? You can give the machine complete control. Here are some examples from Generated.Photos of AI-generated stock photos of faces:
Think of a conventional artist. You can spend hours, days, or even weeks working on the same piece. While this is fine for personal use, it might not be suitable for creating scalable marketing content.
With generative media, the same artist can create hundreds if not thousands of quality pieces in the same amount of time. All you need to do is set a few rules for the computer to follow. The machine then generates content within these parameters until the artist switches the program off or the program runs out of new possibilities.
This isn't just a visual technique either. You can use generative media to create music streams, slogans, dialogue, and marketing videos. Take JustEat as an example.
JustEat is a platform to order groceries directly from your mobile device to the door. The company worked with Snoop Dogg to launch a new advertising campaign and wanted to expand that to its Australian subsidiary MenuLog.
The solution? Use AI technology to swap the name "JustEat" for "MenuLog" and move Snoop Dogg's lips differently.
Remember, generative media is not just about art or imaging. You can successfully use these techniques across a variety of media to boost your marketing efforts.
Take that away? Generative media are extremely diverse and work effectively across different media.
Are companies currently using generative media?
Yes – and far more than you might think! In fact, the global generative media market is expected to reach nearly $ 398 million by 2025. Here are just a few examples for other companies that are already using generative media:
Use of Generative Media by Yelp
Yelp is a popular website that publishes reviews of companies. As part of its marketing strategy, Yelp uses generative media techniques to:
- Assemble a large number of images
- Identify textures, colors, and shapes in user-submitted photos, and create lists of places with similar functionality that may appeal to the same users
- Examples could be users visiting many kid-themed restaurants or relaxing bars
Malaria must die and generative media
The Malaria Must Die charity used generative media to enable David Beckham to speak in nine different languages in their campaign videos. They used video synthesis technology to synchronize Beckham and made him speak those languages.
How Baidu Uses Generative Media
Baidu, a Chinese search engine, uses a generative technique called "deep voice" to create synthetic voices to communicate with audiences. The algorithm “clones” a person's real voice for use on everything from marketing videos to campaign slogans.
Where in the past it took an extremely long time to create even one voice, it now takes less than 30 minutes of data training for each voice – and they work on thousands.
Other terms for "Generative Media"
You may find other terms such as “generative art” and “code art” on the Internet. They are just different names for generative media. Here is a list of the terms currently used for generative media:
- Generative design
- Generative art
- Algorithm art
- Evolutionary art
- Synthetic art
- Code art
- Procedural art
This is not an exhaustive list, but rather gives you an idea of how broad and diverse generative media can be in different industries.
Why should marketers care about generative media?
Generative media is not just about creating content in a purely artistic sense. It's about visually enhancing the overall user experience. Let me give you an example.
Suppose you are hosting an event to showcase your brand. Instead of going for static, immutable backgrounds, you might want eye-catching backgrounds that will draw crowds. Additionally, you may want users to engage with the display by taking photos or videos to share on social media, or just immersing themselves in a stunning visual experience.
Generative media makes this possible because you can program algorithms to generate new patterns, images, and videos on the screen with relative ease (and inexpensively).
The best part? You don't have to draw all of these patterns yourself or hire an artist to do them. The algorithm does the work for you.
What can we get out of this? Generative media can improve your engagement as the technology offers a rich experience.
Still not entirely convinced it's worth taking a look? Here are some statistics to watch out for:
- Over 70% of people prefer personalized ads. By combining generative media with other techniques such as machine learning, you can customize everything from emails to videos with names and individual settings, and provide users with a complete ad experience.
- Over 500 million people watch videos on Facebook every day. Customize your videos, use them to showcase your brand personality and make them attractive to try and take advantage of this high traffic volume.
- Adding fresh, interactive content to your email marketing can increase click rates by 73%.
- Around 72% of people prefer videos and visual content over text marketing. Therefore, visual media should be central to your marketing strategy.
Identify possibilities for the use of generative media
With regard to digital marketing strategies, here are some tips on how to use generative media in your company:
- Is your marketing strategy based on high volume content creation? By integrating AI or generative art, you can produce the amount of different content you need – without compromising on quality.
- Consider customer reach. If you are trying to reach audiences around the world (e.g. if you are a vlogger or if you use videos a lot), generative media can help you communicate in different languages by generating language scripts as we have seen before .
- Are you customer oriented? By using generative media to personalize ads and videos, you can increase brand loyalty.
- Use generative media to stand out at one-off events and raise your brand profile. For example, you can provide algorithm graphics on jumbotrons or posters.
In other words, generative media can help you build the story behind your brand, increase your customers' reach, and increase engagement by delivering a rich experience.
And it doesn't matter what type of business you run. Take Yelp for example. At first glance, this is not the kind of brand that you typically associate with generative media or machine learning. However, this only goes to show that companies have limitless possibilities to incorporate generative media into their marketing strategies.
Create generative media project
Whether you're ready to tackle your own generative media project or outsource the work to a freelancer, there are a few steps you need to take. Let's look at these two options.
Create your own generative art
Would you like to develop your artistic skills and design your own project? First you will need some tools.
You can choose open source software that lets you create your own encoded graphics, or supportive creative apps for creating songs and symbols. These tools are relatively inexpensive and easy to use if you have a basic understanding of coding.
Once you are familiar with the new tools, you can either let the computer “decide” which designs to create, or you can set your own parameters. You can find hints and tips on platforms like YouTube. You can also download pre-made generative art from websites like Generated Photos.
Outsource generative art projects
If you're not artistic, don't have time to learn the craft, and there aren't any team members to use, it might be best to outsource content creation. Hire a freelance artist to work with your team. Check out platforms like Creativepool to find talent.
Alternatively, if you're just looking for a piece or two, you can purchase pre-made generative artwork from platforms like Etsy.
Use Generative Art in Your Marketing Strategy
Are you ready to use generative media in your digital marketing campaigns? That's how I would go.
- Make clear what you want to achieve. How does generative art support your marketing goals? Are you using it for a one-off event or will it become part of your brand's story?
- Set a clear budget for how much you can spend. When distributing posters or making brochures, don't forget to consider the cost of printing and materials. You may also have to pay artist fees or subscriptions to software platforms.
- Check out your competitors. What are you working on How do you use social media?
- Think about how you are promoting the use of generative media. Are you going to use social media to tell your customers about it? Or are you going one step further and working on a press campaign?
Don't forget to set a schedule for reviewing your progress and tracking your metrics. What are you looking for?
Marketing aims to convert leads into customers. So you need to know if your generative media will work for you. Consider tracking:
You can also do A / B testing, which allows you to compare one version of an advertising campaign with another. Does your generative media campaign outperform your other campaigns? My A / B test computer can help you here.
Popular generative artist
If you want to find out about generative media for yourself, here are some of the most popular generative creators that are transforming the art scene:
GMUNK
Bradley G. Munkowitz or "GMUNK" uses a mixture of light projections, artwork and other visual effects to create programmable displays and displays for events, conferences, exhibitions and concerts.
With a client list that includes Dolby, Maserati, and Nike, it's safe to say that GMUNK is a top artist in the field.
Michael Hansmeyer
Hansmeyer uses generative techniques to create 3D architecture. Its exhibits can be found all over the world, from the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo to Design Miami / Basel.
He uses generative art to explore the intersection between the unexpected and the expected and believes in the power of AI to speed up and improve the creative process.
Taryn South
Taryn Southern is known as the first artist to use AI to compose and produce an entire album. She was named one of the top 20 women in VR and has appeared at major events like Google's AI Summit and VidCon.
Mike Tyka
Mike Tyka, co-founder of Google's AMI (Artists and Machine Intelligence) program, is one of the first artists to “draw” portraits using generative media. They are created by a neural network trained to “visualize” imaginary people and draw what they “see”.
Conclusion
From Instagram to e-commerce stores, generative media can improve the overall user experience and improve your marketing strategy. I think whatever industry you're in is worth exploring.
How do you find generative media? Have you tried it yet?