Generative AI technologies are transforming multiple industries. With new tools, functionalities, and capabilities coming up every week, the technology is set to become a major part of the upcoming global economic development.
In New Zealand, GenAI has taken the internet by storm. Bremworth, a carpet manufacturing company, just launched an AI-generated television commercial—and speculators can’t get enough of it. Experts suggest that the launch of this advertisement can set the scene for an AI-induced transformation in the wool and media industries. Let’s have a closer look at the scenario and understand what new possibilities this ad could open up for businesses.
The commercial is believed to be New Zealand’s first entirely AI-generated advertisement. It features a woman surrounded by floating bands of wool, which then traverses across landscapes to end up falling over a lounge floor as a carpet.
Rochelle Flint, Bremworth’s Chief Brand and Product Officer, explained that the use of AI in video production can help strengthen promotions while leading to significant cost savings. She described how the technology allowed them to seamlessly develop content that would have otherwise been highly time-consuming and expensive to produce.
The use of AI allowed the company to save production costs by 60%, which they ended up reinvesting into their media budget.
Experts believe that the technology holds the potential to transform the media and video production industry. It allows businesses to produce complex, imaginative video ads without real-life and logistical constraints. On top of that, the entire process is a lot faster and more cost-effective, freeing up more budget and time for larger-scale promotions.
Highlighting her experience, Flint said, “The development of creative content in this way has the potential to increase the accessibility of the New Zealand media industry – helping to retain more spend in this market rather than with multinational tech companies like Google and Meta. In this instance, it enabled us to promote on local media that we otherwise would not have been able to.”
For companies like Bremworth, batch production takes time and investment. It’s a long-drawn-out task to first physically manufacture inventories and then begin video production for promotions. This increased co-dependency between manufacturing and marketing impedes growth opportunities for the sector.
“When launching a new range of carpets in various colors, production often happens in large batches, which can take weeks. This delay creates a mismatch between product readiness and marketing needs, ultimately resulting in lost opportunities for the wool sector”, explained Flint.
However, using AI brings a whole other story. For instance, it allowed Bremwort to easily render carpet designs without the need for physical inventory. The technology’s creative and generative abilities helped them develop the carpet render from their creative vision while also allowing their customers to visualize the product.
Thus, AI is set to make things a lot simpler for the media industry. It’ll be exciting to see the new possibilities the technology further brings into the sector.
Flint has said on numerous occasions how AI has helped them experiment with more innovative and creative ideas for their campaigns. It’s clear that the technology has the power to make advertisements more creative, while also reducing costs. But it’s not without certain legal ethical considerations.
For example, Capterra pointed out a few creative and accurate drawbacks of AI-generated video production, highlighting how it cannot be used without human oversight. “Some generative AI video tools may operate within predefined templates or styles, which can limit creative flexibility, resulting in videos that look similar to each other”, Capterra said in a report.
New Zealand’s entry into the AI-generated TVC market brings a host of new possibilities for the sector. Experts speculate a rapid, yet controlled adoption of the technology into the media industry, as businesses attempt to cut marketing costs without losing the quality. In the near future, we could expect AI and humans working together to bring a new era of advertisements that’s bigger, quicker, and more imaginative.