Artificial intelligence opens a whole new world for brands in advertising

Brands are increasingly tapping into deepfake and artificial intelligence to personalise campaigns

Small business owners across the country were in for a surprise last Diwali. Actor Shah Rukh Khan was seen promoting neighbourhood stores in personalised advertisements for local retailers, asking consumers to do their festive shopping at these outlets.

A winner of six trophies, including a Titanium Lion, at the Cannes Lions International Festival late last month, the campaign, by Mondelez India for Cadbury, leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) to recreate Khan’s face and voice in every retail commercial. It was based on details provided by the shop owner on a microsite (notjustacadburyad.com). Nearly 139,000 such hyperlocalised ads were created in a matter of ten days during Diwali, helping small business owners who used the campaign to improve their sales during the period.

Cadbury is among a growing list of brands that are tapping into the potential of AI, deepfakes and machine learning (ML) to come up with personalised advertisements for consumers.

Last week, food delivery major Zomato released its own hyperlocal ad campaign, leveraging deepfake technology to get endorser Hrithik Roshan to name dishes and restaurants in different cities based on the viewer’s GPS location.

Deepfake is a kind of AI used to create convincing images, audio and video hoaxes. Described by some experts as the 21st century’s answer to photoshopping, the technology has also invited criticism and been linked to the spread of misinformation on social media.

In advertising, however, deepfake has helped brands explore newer areas of communication. PepsiCo, for instance, used deepfake technology to bring alive a younger version of its brand ambassador, Salman Khan, in a Pepsi ad in March. And sustainable home-care brand Beco has just created a digital avatar of endorser Dia Mirza to send real-time messages to consumers.

“Brands are increasingly looking at personal communication in a cookie-less world. The idea is to humanise communication by relying on first-party data,” says Ashray Malhotra, co-founder and chief executive officer of Bengaluru-based Rephrase.ai.

Mondelez and its advertising agency Ogilvy utilised the technology provided by Rephrase to put the Shah Rukh-Cadbury campaign together. Wavemaker was the media partner that ensured the campaign reached the desired target audience — retailers and small business owners.

Sukesh Nayak, chief creative officer, Ogilvy India, says, “In 2020, we created hyperlocal ads for sellers by using the geo-location of viewers. So, the ads were different in different locations based on the viewers’ pin code.”

The next year, they went a step ahead and used superstar Shah Rukh Khan as a spokesperson for small shop owners, leveraging tech. “AI enabled this. It is helping brands get braver, to challenge the norm and create the impossible,” Nayak says.

In the case of Pepsi, for instance,  the company fused nostalgia and tech, bringing together the modern-day Salman Khan and his character of “Prem” from the 1994 runaway hit Hum Aapke Hain Koun…! in a face-to-face conversation. The ad was much appreciated for its innovative use of technology.  

More recently, Ageas Federal Life Insurance used the “child” avatar of its brand ambassador, Sachin Tendulkar, to record a message about being fearless in life. The 11-year-old version of Tendulkar was created using AI, 3D modelling and precision shooting, with the help of past photographs, voice samples and facial expressions of the master blaster.

The process was in no way easy, advertising experts say, since there was no existing video footage of Tendulkar at 11 years. Ad agency VMLY&R spent months working on the campaign and the commercial received 72.8 million impressions within weeks of its launch in March-April.

AI holds enormous promise and potential for advertisers looking to build recall and brand loyalty, says Beco Co-founder Aditya Ruia. The purchase cycle in particular is a critical period, Ruia says, when consumers may either slip away or stick, provided there is a trigger to keep them engaged constructively.

So, the digital avatar of Mirza, which Beco owns, sends personalised messages to consumers the moment they receive their order from the brand or when customers abandon their shopping cart on the brand’s website. The idea is to increase conversion rates through contextual messaging.

Beco worked with Rephrase and WebEngage, a digital marketing agency, to create a video and audio clone of Mirza. With the help of text-to-video capabilities of AI messaging, the avatar can generate individual messages for consumers, without Mirza having to record messages herself or set aside time to shoot for the brand.

“This creates new ways of engagement between celebrities and audiences,” Ruia says. “The celebrity is not just a part of the advertisement, but is also a crucial part of the customer’s journey.”

As brands seek more returns from every rupee spent on advertising, they are applying AI and analytical processes to better understand consumer behaviour and improve their personalisation strategies.

As Amit Gupta, practice head, integrated marketing effectiveness at Fractal, a Mumbai- and New York-headquartered AI firm, says, “Advertisers can understand what drives consumer action, refine their marketing and advertising campaigns, and optimise their return on investment.”

To cite an example, lubricant brand Castrol wished to increase stickiness with its community of dealers and mechanics during the festive period last year. To achieve this, the company turned to AI to create a digital avatar of its ambassador, Tiger Shroff, who sent over 100,000 personalised messages to the brand's target audience, making their Diwali special.