Beyond the Brief: Reimagining Lead Generation Ads With AI
Want to generate AI images for your ad campaigns and keep your ideas fresh? Discover how Superside’s AI-enhanced creative team is helping Boomi scale stunning, breakthrough creative using ChatGPT with Midjourney and other design tools. Plus get five key takeaways you can apply to your own image creation.
When it comes to lead generation, first impressions matter.
The door-to-door salesperson of digital marketing, lead generation ads have one sole purpose: Capturing someone’s attention so well that they’ll share their contact information, opening the door to future communication.
The way to your tech audience’s heart? Innovation. Boomi, a leading integration platform, wanted to apply elevated AI-enhanced imagery to its lead generation assets, creating sparks to break the ice and ignite conversations.
How do you push boundaries and scale ad production, without running out of ideas? Go beyond the brief with Superside’s AI-enhanced creative team as they share their process for AI image ideation and generation.
The Brief: Pushing Creativity for Lead Generation Ads
What’s great about working with Boomi is that they already have an aesthetic to follow. You also have a lot of freedom because many of the visual concepts are abstract. Then, you add the layer of being a high-tech brand. This gives you so many possibilities to explore.
Refreshing any ad campaign involves replacing imagery. Boomi’s lead generation ads were no exception. Boomi wanted to push past lifestyle images and stock illustrations for a more modern, distinctive and compelling presence.
A before and after of a Boomi lead generation ad refreshed with AI imagery
As Boomi had already begun using AI-generated, 3D images to scale campaigns, for this project, the key to providing more dynamic, eye-catching images lay in the brainstorming and exploration stage.
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Beyond the Brief: Brainstorming Ad Images With ChatGPT
When you’re one person, there are only so many ideas you can come up with on your own. With ChatGPT, I can ask if there’s anything different. It’s like brainstorming with another person.
Using a lead generation ad featuring Boomi’s aptly named blog article, The Secret Path to Practical AI, Bianca Takahash, Superside generative AI creative, explained how she prompted ChatGPT to brainstorm visual ideas.
With the word path in the title and implied by the article's header image, Takahash naturally explored different types of paths, asking ChatGPT, “What are some ways to visually represent the word pathway?” Of course, the AI replied with various types of pathways.
Pushing creativity further, Takahash also explored roads less traveled, asking ChatGPT to be a little less literal and use visual metaphors and symbols instead.
Takahash's straightforward and more symbolic ChatGPT prompts for visual ideas.
AI is so fast. It's easier to suggest new things to the clients, like little by little, you do something a little different.
With a wide range of concepts and ideas in hand, Takahash prompted Midjourney to create minimalistic illustrations based on these themes.
Takahash's Midjourney prompts for a range of pathways. Because the illustration style was key, it was the first part of the prompt.
The AI-enhanced creative team's main tip for Midjourney prompts: Know the most important part of the image. For Boomi’s lead generation images, this meant putting the 3D illustration style first.
If you want a box with stars coming out, you have to put that first, then the other stylistic elements, like the colors of the image. It's like stairs. The most important thing goes first and the others go below.
Takahash then took the strongest images from Midjourney, refined them in Photoshop and presented them to the client for approval in Figma.
Takahash's finalized 3D illustrations
The winners: Boomi chose the undulating line representing a timeline and the illuminated hallway leading to an open door to feature in its LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook lead generation ads.
The final lead generation campaign assets
After turning heads with AI-fueled social media ads, Boomi couldn’t wait to launch its reimagined lead generation campaign.
We're so excited to use these and see how they perform! Thanks so much!
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Takeaways for Exploring Image Ideas With AI
Talking to the machine is like having a back-and-forth conversation with yourself. It’s really helpful to the creative flow and stepping outside your own box. The only way to be fully creative is to explore all the options.
Whether for lead generation campaigns or any other iterative assets, using a combination of ChatGPT and Midjourney not only spurs further creativity, it saves time and resources. What used to take hours and hours can now be done in a single afternoon. There’s more freedom to experiment and less fear of wasting hours on a concept that ultimately gets rejected.
As you explore the possibilities of AI for your creative workflows, remember:
- Using AI isn’t cheating. It actually lets you explore and test more ideas more efficiently and cost-effectively.
- ChatGPT makes a great brainstorming partner. You can start with basic, straightforward requests and build from there.
- You don’t have to be linear. You can start in ChatGPT or with Midjourney, vice versa or go back and forth. All roads lead to ideation.
- Bad ideas are part of the process. They also help you find your way to new and unexpected directions. One thought leads to another and another…
- Know your AI design tools. Midjourney is best for photography and scenes with people, DALL-E is ideal for objects and illustrations and Firefly is good for realistic images of people.
With the help of Superside’s AI-enhanced creative team, Boomi’s building a robust library of brand images for use in lead generation or almost any kind of marketing or advertising application.
Wanna do the same? Get in touch.
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Ex-copywriter turned content strategist with two decades of creative chaos under her belt. She's helped scale content, brands and frozen pies—yes, really. Now? She empowers creatives to work smarter, not smaller.
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