BBDO is using AI to write better briefs
Agencies big and small are wrestling with the implications and embracing the opportunities presented by generative AI. Most of the conversations we’ve been privy to seem to indicate that the technology can help in different ways throughout the entire campaign development lifecycle, but that it can be especially useful in strategy/planning/inspiration. Case in point, the Drum reports that BBDO has been cautiously using genAI to help employees uncover strategic insights and inspire clients.
BBDO sees generative AI models like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard as capable of ushering in a new paradigm when it comes to drafting briefs.
The agency is currently integrating these text-generating generative AI tools at multiple stages of the brief development process. The first is the early analysis stage: researching to discover a new commercial opportunity. For example, says BBDO New York’s chief strategy officer Nicole Granese, rather than spending hours poring over the annual reports of a client and its competitors, the agency “could easily take those annual reports, put them into a generative AI tool, ask for a comparison of the different brands and it’ll deliver it in five seconds … that helps accelerate our strategy analysis; we’re able to get to something interesting, faster.”
The technology is also helping the agency identify some of the common tropes associated with a particular brand or demographic – so that they can be avoided and serve as guardrails for a more original route. Granese says that ChatGPT, prompted to enumerate some personality quirks among “millennial DIYers,” might respond by writing that this demographic is “‘really into personalization – they want to personalize everything to reflect their unique tastes and perspective.’” At this point, Granese says, her team can respond by asking: "‘Okay, great, but why?’ Or, ‘Well, if everybody else in the category is going to be talking to millennials about personalization, is that really the right approach? How do we get to something different?’”
Tired clichés, in other words, can point the way to exciting originality. “From a strategy perspective, uncovering the expected is actually the opposite of finding a real insight,” Granese says. “The best creativity isn’t about the expected, it’s about breaking [past] that expected. That’s what makes you stand out.”
