DTC company Shapermint’s AI influencer engine highlights how marketers are actually using the tech

Shapermint, a direct-to-consumer fashion brand, has harnessed AI technology to enhance its influencer marketing efforts. Their in-house AI tool, Altair, automates the creation of scripts and storyboards for platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, cutting production time by 70%, and freeing the marketer to allocate that budget on media and higher value efforts.

The AI tool, integrated with Meta's ad library, helps incorporate performance data into future content creation. Shapermint's reliance on AI has expanded their focus to platforms like YouTube and Pinterest, contributing to a projected 35% revenue growth, reaching $300 million.

We’re 20 months into the AI marketing revolution, and CMOs are more focused on scale and efficiency than on creating animated footage from whole cloth.

Consider the example of Shapermint, a direct-to-consumer fashion brand that has used generative AI to scale up its influencer program. The company’s in-house team developed an agent (dubbed “Altair,” after the star) that can generate scripts and storyboards for TikTok and Instagram Reels that are then distributed to influencers.

Though Massimiliano Tirocchi, CMO of Shapermint’s Uruguayan parent company Trafilea, has grand ambitions — he wants “to power our entire creative process” with AI — Altair is being used for everyday work that would previously have been done by the firm’s in-house marketing team. Nine months after launching the tool, it’s helped his team cut production time on influencer creative by around 70%, he said.

Though Shapermint’s setup was built by an in-house team using OpenAI and Meta API access, it’s relatively similar to projects and use cases coming out of digital and creative agencies.

Creators on the company’s roster don’t have to follow its scripts, storyboard or copy religiously, but Tirocchi estimates that 70% to 75% of Shapermint’s creator content is made using at least some of Altair’s outputs. The company began developing the tool in 2023 and started using it beginning with the run-in to last year’s Black Friday shopping weekend.

Across a standard working week, Tirocchi estimated that one staffer might have been able to plot out 15 campaigns, with between four and six videos in each one. “This will allow them to do the same thing in less than a day,” he said. Shapermint’s Altair tool is connected to the Meta ad library via the tech giant’s API, enabling staffers to incorporate data on content performance into future scripts. Though the team wrote draft scripts and analyzed Meta data previously, Altair has sped up both those processes.

Full story at Digiday.