Inside agency OK Future’s AI ‘pressure cooker’ experiment with Goodwipes

The personal hygiene brand’s post drove more than 750,000 views on Reddit. The social campaign was proof of concept for future clients with Liquid Death among them, but the highs and lows of an AI-powered campaign came into focus.

“I really wouldn’t recommend that this be the norm of a project. It’s just an unsustainable pace,” Cartagena told Digiday, later adding, “It’s a total pressure cooker.”

Inside the pressure cooker

Cartagena comes from a creative background with stints at DDB New York, Deutsch and 360i before stepping into the role of CEO at MullenLowe U.S. But Goodwipes’ Asstra spot was the former CEO’s first time doing an AI-produced spot from start to finish.

While Goodwipes and OK Future handled the script, character building, storyboarding and edits, generative AI tools were used to visualize the characters, voice them and produce the location and other visual elements of the spot. The agency is platform agnostic, as Cartagena puts it, using a mix of programs like ArtCraft, Seedance and OpenAI’s Astra AI model for the work.

Typically, a minute-long produced commercial can take about six weeks, he said. The tight turnaround was to keep within the window of OpenAI’s own Astra ad spot, maintaining the cultural relevance of Goodwipes’ spoof. 

To get the spot done, OK Future worked in shifts around the clock on little sleep, Cartagena said. It’s unclear if team members were paid overtime. The team also questioned what the final product would look like — AI struggled with editing text, he said, and he was unsure if the project would finish on time and be well-received.

“It was sort of like a pressure cooker because you take what is normally the emotions of a month and a half shoot, and compress them into four days,” he said. At one point, someone from the team threatened to quit the project at 2 a.m. only to rejoin when tensions smoothed over at 7 a.m., Cartagena told Digiday.

‘The worst thing thing that could happen…’

Cartagena brought the idea to Goodwipes’ svp of marketing, Meredith Diehn, who he has worked on and off with for the past 20 years with Diehn entrusting the former MullenLowe exec to guide Goodwipes’ AI efforts.

“It’s not just about speed. It’s about trust, and I have a lot of trust in Frank,” Diehn said.

The company is just starting to experiment with AI-powered creative, relying on OK Future as well as its internal creative team for guidance. They’re still working through checkpoints like legal team approvals and comfort with AI usage among internal stakeholders.

Goodwipes hasn’t calculated exactly how much money they saved using AI to create the spoof, but Diehn estimates that it’s less than what they would have paid for a location scout, production team, director and post production editing.

The spot ran organically on social, including Reddit, and Goodwipes’ Instagram and YouTube page. In its first 48 hours of its posting last month, “Asstra” drove more than 750,000 views on Reddit. It has since reached almost 1.5 million views across subreddits, along with more than 800 shares, according to a company spokesperson.

Since the spoof was posted on Reddit and Instagram last month, Meet Asstra has met little critique for its AI use. Even if the spot had bombed in terms of views, it’s worth the risk as far as Meredith Diehn is concerned so the team could develop an ad with AI.

AI criticisms

Generative AI has faced criticism from the public. Criticisms, however, haven’t stopped brands from testing generative AI in creativity. 

But advertisers are using AI to curb costs, produce work faster and cheaper. At least 73% of marketers currently use generative AI for visual, image or video production, according to a May survey from WARC and TikTok, and reported by eMarketer.

The dollars follow a similar pattern. Gartner forecasted that spending on AI software will skyrocket from $143 billion in 2024 to $981 billion in 2029.

“We are laying the foundation for where AI driven creative production isn’t just an augmentation anymore,” said Nicole Greene, vp analyst at Gartner. She added, “It’s really a core strategic capability.”

The irony of being a career creative using AI to power OK Future creative shop isn’t lost on Cartagena. Creatives have bemoaned the advent of AI, worried about job security and the rise of so-called AI slop. Cartagena, however, is optimistic about how much weight AI will throw behind OK Future’s efforts to punch up. 

“First and foremost, we are an ideas agency, and then the backbone of that process will be: AI will help us get to those ideas faster,” he said.