AI is shaking up creative production, saving marketing teams time and money.

But it’s not just huge agencies with hefty budgets that can innovate swiftly with new tools. Every marketing agency can use AI to move faster and stay disruptive.

Here are the 4 most effective ways it can help yours.

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#1 Generate Content with AI

The obvious one.

Most of us are familiar with Generative AI by now, especially after its surge in popularity at the end of 2022, thanks to platforms like OpenAI and MidJourney.

We've all either tried them, used them, or been amazed by their capabilities. Generative AI has truly made its way into our hands, allowing us to generate content, be it copy, images, or videos, with ease.

According to a recent report from The Drum, agencies that are improving creative content development with AI are getting tangible results with the action, too.

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For example, The Drum reports on an indie agency that used AI tools like Stable Diffusion to create design assets, cutting production time from a full day to just 30 minutes.

They saved about an impressive 80 working days overall.

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Companies like IBM are also showing some impressive results already. IBM's early 2024 campaign from Ogilvy is a prime example.

The campaign visuals created with Adobe Firefly took a quirky spin on AI errors around bias, noncompliance, siloed and unmanaged data, and hallucinations, all reimagined as surreal goldfish characters with funky shapes and digital glitches.

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Uncanny characters included a "drift fish" that’s actually a hamster sporting fish fins. The creative idea came from Ogilvy staff, who were beginning to generate content with AI and bumped into its pitfalls along the way.

IBM's team cut down the time it took to create each character variation from 15 days to just 2 thanks to the use of AI tools. Plus, with all that extra time, the team could focus more on planning and strategy, cutting the overall production timeline from six weeks to two.

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But while generative AI is great at creating content at scale, it is very bad at understanding its effectiveness in reality.

It’s time to realize that generative AI is just one piece of the puzzle.

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#2 Optimize AI Content for Stronger Brand Impact

Just like the Ogilvy/IBM campaign suggests: you need to fill in the cracks in the AI magic yourself. AI models are still inaccurate, biased, and lack reasoning.

This is where predictive AI tools come in handy. Predictive AI helps agencies tailor content more effectively to campaign goals and audience preferences.

Consider branding. It’s pretty complex to generate on-brand content with AI alone, but if you combine generative AI, creative expertise, and predictive AI, you’re on the right track for effective branded content creation.

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For a real-life example, let’s look at the campaign for jewelry brand Julie Sandlau by mixed-reality content agency Scenes.

They had just five days to create a stunning ad for Vogue magazine. Starting with over 180 unique AI-generated designs, they used Neurons AI to analyze and predict which designs would perform best.

The team used high-resolution product photos matched with AI-generated models to amp up the number of creative variations.

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Throughout the process, Neurons AI helped with one-click insights to optimize ad layout, logo, and text placement. This made their ads much more likely to be seen and remembered.

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#3 Automate Research & Repetitive Tasks

The truth is that creative efforts only “succeed” in a commercial environment if they drive sales eventually.

But you must remember that your audience has limitations, biases, and distractions.

This is why behavioral data and research are essential.

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There are a few ways AI can help you with customer research to get answers to questions like:

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Will your ad be seen?

Use AI-driven attention mapping like Neurons that’s using eye-tracking data to calculate what will be seen, and what will be missed.

Are you also curious about how many people will see your ads and assets?

Neurons AI will give you these insights. It can estimate the percentage of people who notice key components of your ad like brand logo, CTA, and much more. It also predicts the time people will spend viewing those elements.

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Which creative direction is better?

Do rapid A/B testing and compare multiple variations. With tools like Neurons AI you can run unlimited tests that’ll show you performance gaps and ways to improve your designs. It's almost like working with an experienced art director who
gives instant feedback on your creative choices.

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Will people get this?

Two common mistakes brands make in their ads are either wrapping complex messages into one ad or just repeating the same words again and again boring their audiences.

Afraid that the reader won’t understand the ad or remember the message, they repeat the logo three times, write the same thing in both the headline and the captions, and use an image that just echoes the copy. Whenever you fall into this trap, you can turn to tools that make the decisions for you.

You can for example quantify the complexity of your creatives with behavioral scores like Cognitive Demand. So instead of adsplaining or worrying about whether your message will be understood, you can use those efforts to create something more interesting that will truly make your ad stand out.

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#4 Get Attention Metrics in Seconds

We're living in the attention economy, where standing out is everything.

With trends and brands fizzling fast, our brains can only handle a limited amount of information at once, making it tough to keep anyone's focus for long.

So, on top of classic business metrics, agencies are leaning on attention metrics, too.

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Here's why attention has become the industry's top metric:

• Cookie deprecation: As third-party cookies become obsolete, advertisers and publishers are looking to alternative metrics that can act as proxy performance indicators.
• Measurement needs: Brands and agencies are hyper-focused on showing the correlation of awareness tactics to actual business outcomes.
• Attention is universal: Attention is a coherent and universal human behavior. Even cultural differences have close to no impact on it.

Getting the right data to reach the right people with the right message is a major challenge. So attention metrics have become the new must-have. Agency teams use it to figure out how well digital campaigns are doing, helping creatives see what's working and what isn’t before shipping designs to clients.

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Key Takeaways

1. Generate Content with AI

Small and large agencies are using it to crank out images, videos, and copy super fast, saving days of production time and boosting productivity.

2. Optimize AI Content for Brand Impact

Creative teams are optimizing AI-generated content with predictive tools to make sure their content aligns with brand guidelines and resonates with their target audience.

3. Automate Research & Repetitive Tasks

AI takes care of the boring tasks and helps with market research, too, giving you quick insights that help you make better decisions and create content clients will approve.

4. Get Attention Metrics in Seconds

Agencies are using attention metrics to tackle short attention spans, cookie deprecation, and the need for clear results, making them key for successful digital campaigns.

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Ready to Optimize AI Content Creation?

Neurons can help your team scale the creative process while saving time and budget.

Currently, you can put your assets to the test for free, so book your session now!

Stay disruptive, deliver measurable impact, and win through metrics with Neurons.