Static is dead – and it’s high time we move to AI’s creative beat, and revolutionise the multimedAI landscape.
That famous line ‘Are we human or are we dancers’ from The Killers’ song Human, is taken from a Hunter S. Thompson quote that refers to the dichotomy between raw-realness and existing in a templated, structured way of being.
There is infinite debate around the AI revolution and what it means for humanity and the functional impact – will the machines render us redundant?
At the time of publishing, OpenAI has been posting on X about the impending public launch of Sora, its text to video AI capability. If the samples are anything to go by, 2024 will offer us an industry-defining moment of articulating our ideas at the initial pitch level.
Considering most ideas are terminated at zygote stage, we can now show and sell better ‘prototypes’ of thought to offer clients more comfort than ever before about the executional opportunities. By defining the idea more holistically, communicators will now be able to obsess more about the dissemination component. We are proponents of ‘earned virality’.
‘Earned virality’ is Retroviral’s notion that virality stems from a place of earned media thinking – every, single, time.
If an idea is ‘traditional media newsworthy’, it will do better than an idea that trends on a social platform, achieves 15 minutes of fame and disappears into the ether.
Secret sauce
What’s the secret sauce? I think the reality is that we start out really looking at ideas, and start questioning: can this thing break the news? Can it cut through the clutter of mainstream media?
If that is something that we can guarantee ourselves – and the gut has all the feels – then this is going to be a success.
Our job is to create remarkable content that authentically generates an emotional connection with an audience and then it rationally drives the potential to create a sale, or a download, or some form of action.
We’re not just in the business of entertainment and awareness, we’re in the business of commercial transactions. If the idea is remarkable enough to make it onto the news, we’re onto something that is potentially viral generating, award-winning and emotion moving.
The death of the still image? AI has turned that thinking on its head
Static is dead! Industry experts wax lyrical about the importance of video content: reels, TikTok and how we need to feed the various social algorithms with moving picture because that’s what performs best.
What I’m excited about is that AI gives us an opportunity to really lean into the reinvention and the reinvigoration of static. Instead of there being multimedia it’s multimedAI – with an AI-focus.
If we use Barbie Mania as example – it basically stormed the entire world, and South Africa wasn’t immune.
We wondered: ‘What if we take one of South Africa’s most iconic brands such as Ouma Rusks and we pair it with AI to showcase what Barbie x Ouma would look like?’
Human intervention coupled with Generative dAIncing delivered this beautiful great-grandmother on the left.
She’s not real. She’s a Midjourney creation, crafted with humanity to add the brand and the nuance of South African–ess. The most fantastic part of this was that this was being used as an experiment to ascertain how the inhabitants of local social platforms would take to this figure.
Spoiler: many South Africans were positively excited when they saw her appear on their timelines.
Jokes popped up, such as: ‘Is that Elon Musk’s mom?’
Our response: ‘No she’s actually not May Musk, she’s May Rusk!’
Off the back of this single image, we generated more than R1 million in PR talkability. The conversation in both the social and earned media space resulted in record-breaking engagements for the brand, and news headlines in various tier one news and consumer sites.
‘May Rusk’ even became a topic of interest on JacarandaFM.
My tweet alone garnered 130 000 views.
Something as basic as a still image with a remarkable insight stood out from the crowd, and elevated the brand to a national talking point; it piqued joy from a cross-section of audiences and various backgrounds, shapes and sizes.
AI enables a brand to be remarkable and to show up in even more creative ways than ever imagined.
From tea and rusks to beers and Boks (grans)
We like to zag against brand zigging. The Rugby World Cup 2023 and the Springboks, in particular, had more than 50 different brands invested in the team. We all know that brands love to support winners. Success for a team ultimately translates into a collective, customer high – and conversion of customers wanting to be associated with, and to emotionally invest in, the brand associated with victory.
Castle Lager is the longest-serving sponsor of the Springboks – but the landscape has become so cluttered with a plethora of partners all vying for their pound of rugby player flesh, that we needed to refresh this relationship.
Our AI Ouma inspired us.
A key insight is the number of South Africans raised by their grandmothers – approximately 11% – and the fact that players like Mapimpi and Kolisi reference their grandmothers in interviews, ad nauseam.
None of them have been given a platform to be celebrated, however.
So we raised a glass to the women who raised our heroes.
We traversed the country and found various grandmothers/gogos/ and oumas of Springboks, created a three-part branded series in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, brought their stories to life and released them into the world before each of the Green and Gold’s Rugby World Cup pool matches.
AI inspired, certifiably viral.
Once again, our ideas commence with content, we then take that content and pitch it to the various news’ stations.
Too many brands will try to create an opportunity to have their brand manager or CMO be the hero in the earned media space.
For effective PR opportunities, we love deploying the stars of our branded content as spokespeople – from an authentic point of view, to be on the news, be on radio, be on TV and – as seen in the case study – Melody became our cult hero spokesperson for all the various above the line media opportunities.
Just AI it!
It’s easier than ever to experiment, fail, create, pitch, get approval and execute. 2024 is an opportunity for brands and their agency partners – from entry level to chief creatives – to have fun again.
Humour is back – Cannes Lions confirmed it with the introduction of a ‘humour’ category – Lol!
As agencies it’s our mandate to create tomorrow what didn’t exist today. Now more than ever – from analytical thinkers to creative savants – we have the tools to make, remarkable.
Just AI it!
Mike Sharman is chief creative officer of Retroviral, which has made more brands ‘go viral, globally’ than any other agency in Africa. Sharman was a finalist in SA’s Entrepreneur of the Year (2018), and a Mail & Guardian Top 200 young (under 35) South Africans (2013). He is the co-founder of influencer marketing platform webfluential.co, retroactive.digital, and athlete ecosystem MatchKit.co. He is also a co-founder of the Put Foot Foundation – a charity that has raised substantial funding and secured 100,000+ school shoes for children across the SADC region.
