AI Generates Ad Magic For Adobe

Is Generative AI a threat to civilisation or the most transformative new tech since the printing press? As doomsayers and hype merchants continue to battle over the implications of AI, software manufacturers have been ignoring the hot air, rolling up their sleeves and figuring out how to incorporate it into their tools.

Adobe, owners of the hugely popular graphics editor Photoshop, are one of the first to show off their new capabilities in an ad. “Let’s Create” puts the spotlight on how Photoshop can use generative AI to fill in backgrounds of pictures and instantly add or alter AI-generated images – working alongside more usual image editing tools like separating elements of an image out from their background.

The tools themselves are an impressive build on Photoshop’s capabilities. But tech on its own does not make for a 5-Star Ad. And yet that’s what “Let’s Create” is – it scored a mighty 5.2-Stars on Test Your Ad, putting it straight into the Top 3 Consumer Software ads on Test Your Ad and cementing Adobe’s rep as a category leader in emotional advertising.

How have Adobe done it? They’ve made the wise choice to make an ad that’s not just about the new generative AI tools, but about the people using it. Specifically, a little girl named Caroline, who is generating a Photoshop image for what we find out is her birthday. She takes a picture of herself and places it in a magic garden, which she fills with all her favorite things, from a cupcake castle to a bear – a real bear, she corrects the AI, not a teddy.

Caroline’s enthusiasm for her task is infectious and it means the ad stops being about technology and starts being about the human imagination and AI’s power to bring it to life. Making the protagonist an adorable kid helps stop any negative associations with AI – like issues around copyright or AI ethics – breaking through for viewers. The ad presents Generative AI as the ultimate toy – but it’s careful to show in context that Caroline’s actually made something she wants to use.

The ad also has an Exceptional Spike rating, showing its short-term potential is just as strong as its potential long-term brand benefit. The only cloud is a sub-par Brand Fluency score – shared by Adobe’s other 5-Star ad for Adobe Document Cloud. It’s likely that despite the ubiquity of its products and the excellence of its ads, Adobe (like many software brands) suffers a little in name recognition terms. If they keep making ads of this quality, that won’t stay a problem.