New year, new energy! As Inviso Marketing evolves, so does the way we share ideas. This updated Friday Five reflects how we see the world today: marketing that’s thoughtful, human, and grounded in real experience.
Each issue curates five stories genuinely worth your time – from emerging tools to timeless truths. Insight with a side of humor, delivered monthly. Think ideas you can carry into your next dinner conversation – or campaign.
Today in marketing school
Art Director Mikiehl Kofoed has been coming up with fresh, boundary-pushing designs for Inviso’s clients for years. But lately he’s got a new moniker to add to his impressive portfolio: master of AI video.
Mikiehl’s been spearheading a whole new AI video offer at Inviso, and has gotten up close and personal with several AI tools in the process.
Tools in the mix:
- GPT – for copywriting, ideation, and prompt creation
- Veo 3 -for video creation
- Nano Banana – for image generation; especially useful for creating consistent first frames for clips
- Suno – for music generation
- ElevenLabs – for voiceover work and sometimes sound effects
- Midjourney – occasionally for concepting and exploration
- Gemini – for coding support
- Adobe Premiere & After Effects – now incorporating a growing set of AI-assisted features
What he’s loving:
“Over the past year, the design team and I have been experimenting with a lot of new creative tools, but the one that’s impressed me most is Veo.
They’ve been releasing updates monthly, and each one pushes the quality a bit further. We’re quickly reaching a point where it’s genuinely hard to distinguish between real video and AI-generated video.”
What flopped:
“I thought Sora 2 was going to be the next big thing, especially with its built-in social platform, but the hype seemed to fade faster than expected.”
A designer’s outlook on AI
“AI gives us an exciting new toolkit, but it’s important that the creative idea still starts and ends with the designer. The human element matters. The journey to get to the final result is changing, but the core of creativity shouldn’t.”
Bread, ketchup and the power of story
As the world started turning ideas into images with the rise of generative AI, Heinz ketchup beat us all to the punch. Or rather, the ketchup. This bit of visionary comedy was their response to the wonky images of a moment. With it they made one crystal clear point:
Iconic brand imagery survives, even when everything else is gibberish.
The takeaways
Consistency matters. We saw this at scale with the change-it/change-it back controversy for iconic food chain, Cracker Barrel.
For growing brands, focus should be on looking and sounding like yourself, everywhere you show up until no one—including AI—can overlook you. If you don’t have brand guidelines, including strong tone of voice parameters: time to get on that.
This bread might make you cry
With #TheBreadExam, the folks at McCann Paris (along with the Lebanese Breast Cancer Foundation) created a campaign to teach Lebanese women how to do a breast self-exam, without the shame. The result was a hyperlocal, deeply respectful, and genuinely compelling series of ads. (And let’s all just acknowledge the elephant in the room: bread as boobs is… genius.)
The takeaways
Look to your audience for inspiration. We weren’t in the room where it happened, but our guess is that a lot of deep listening had to happen before this idea took “shape.”
Stay human. AI is going to take us a long way, but we can’t let it disconnect us from one another.
Obstacles are your friends. When you’re up against a creative challenge—teaching a group of people about a thing they’re not supposed to talk about—don’t fold. Look for loopholes.
GenAI personas are evolving, but consumers have thoughts
They keep getting more lifelike. A coup for brands, but only if they’re handled correctly.
Meta was forced to quietly remove its AI-generated personas after audiences found them creepy, inauthentic, and manipulative.
Mia Zelu’s Wimbledon appearance sparked a wave of AI-generated influencers—but critics are troubled that many of these “young women of color” are created by… white men.
And the controversy around AI-generated actress, Tilly Norwood continues, even as talent agents line up to sign “her.”
When brands try to get sneaky about GenAI “substitutes” or brand them as relatable, audiences resist. Be transparent when you’re using an experimental tool. Let consumers in on the trick instead of making them feel tricked.
January’s word: Hyperlocal
Check out this fully AI-generated campaign we created for our clients at Microsoft Security to help them turn a data breach training into a richly realized game.
The result was a set of localized English, Spanish and Japanese videos produced in a third of the time and for a quarter of the cost.
Want to see how we can do the same for you? Reach out.
Marketing in the wild
Ignore the possible typo in this hyper-local campaign (we wish it said, “after bars close,” right??) The play on Buffalo the place and buffalo the wing-style is perfect for local OHH marketing. And who knows maybe “bar close” is a fun localism.
Any Buffalo bar-goers/wing-eaters in the house?
Got your own “marketing in the wild” find? We’d love to see it. Send a pic to max@invisomarketing.com with your favorite bits of IRL ad genius.
Stay human out there, everybody. Until next month.
The Inviso Marketing Team