Nivea’s AI-Powered Ad Creates a Poignant Moment

Have you ever written a letter to your past self?  How would it feel to talk to your younger self?

That’s exactly the experience Nivea offered Eliana in its new film created by Publicis.

Advertising is constantly wrestling with new technologies. Sometimes they steal the spotlight entirely, becoming an end in themselves rather than a means to tell a story. With artificial intelligence, it’s no different.

AI is extraordinary in many ways, but it also bumps up against ethical risks. What Nivea’s new ad with Eliana shows us, however, is a more meaningful path: when technology is placed in service of emotion, the result is powerful.

Putting today’s Eliana face-to-face with her 30-years-younger self is, of course, made possible by AI. But what gives the film its heartbeat isn’t the avatar. It’s Eliana’s genuine emotions as she revisits her own story. Nostalgia, tenderness, reflection on the journey, all of it creates a deeply human moment. And that’s what resonates with the audience.

The choice of Eliana was no accident. System1 has studied the impact of celebrities on creative effectiveness and found that, when used authentically, they act as emotional shortcuts. That’s exactly what happens here. The avatar may be digital, but Eliana’s reactions are unmistakably real. She reportedly only discovered on set that she would be meeting her younger self, a ‘detail’ that adds authenticity the audience can feel. And importantly, she isn’t being asked to step outside the role everyone knows her for: host, interviewer. She’s in her natural habitat, which allows the communication to compress decades of cultural memory into seconds of familiarity and empathy.

The results speak for themselves. The film scored 3.8 stars in System1’s Star Rating and well above the Brazilian TV average achieving 98% Brand Fluency. That means people didn’t just feel something; they instantly connected that feeling to the brand. And that’s what turns advertising into long-term growth. In fact, as often happens, long-term brand building also delivered in the short term, with an Strong Spike (a metric that captures the intensity of emotional response combined with rapid brand recognition).

This alignment between emotion and brand recognition is precisely what we highlight in our latest global study with Effie Worldwide, The Creative Dividend.

• Highly emotional campaigns with clear brand codes can drive up to 8% incremental profit when kept on air for at least six months.
• Keep them running longer than six months, and that impact can climb to 20% incremental profit.

In Nivea’s case, results shows that the public didn’t just feel deeply moved, they knew exactly who was behind the moment: the brand that has been part of Eliana’s life, and the lives of millions of Brazilians, for three decades.

When emotion and brand fluency work together, the effect multiplies. Creativity turns directly into competitive advantage. So to those who sat in Nivea’s marketing seat all those years ago, and to everyone who has consistently protected the brand with discipline and care: congratulations. That advantage is as much for the Nivea of today as it is for the Nivea of tomorrow.