Dive Brief:
- Toyota used the artificial intelligence power of IBM’s Watson to support the creative premise behind the video spots for its latest Rav4 campaign, which is pairing people's favorite activities in fun and unpredictable ways.
- Watson took two user activities from a pool of 1,000 interests that seemed relatively unrelated to create 300 new, unexpected pairings to be used in ad creative and targeted to audiences by their more conventional interests. In one example, martial arts and barbecue are paired, urging reviewers to try a Tai Kwan Tenderizer recipe.
- The digital campaign will run on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and interactive banner ads.
Dive Insight:
The Rav4 campaign is an example of how artificial intelligence can be used to automate the process of building different creative elements for a campaign. In this case, agency Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles chose to leverage AI to personalize the creative. The use of technology is also featured prominently in the ads, reflecting the strong interest in AI at the moment.
Chris Pierantozzi, Executive Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, said in a press release that the agency believes the future of programmatic will incorporate a layer of artificial intelligence that will allow for more personalization at scale.
The videos ads inform the viewer the content is “powered by a.i." One example of combined activities is targeting viewers with an interest in “marathon” and merging that with “luge” to create a suggested activity of “win luge or draw” where the viewer is advised to play a nonsense game that combines those activities.
Phase two of the effort launches in February with a video featuring a famous influencer acting out one of the new and unlikely activities.
