ADdicted: An AI Ad for Liquid Death

Could you use AI to create an ad for your favourite brand in only seven days?

Noam Sharon, Tal Rosenthal, Amir Ariely, and Ilan Bouni decided to do just that, using AI to produce an unofficial ad for Liquid Death.

The ad below is the result of their efforts.

Now, you may not like this ad.

Perhaps you don't appreciate the dark humour and sheer ridiculousness that serve as the basis for this spot.

Maybe your keen eye could tell the AI-generated characters weren't human, and that ruined it for you.

Or perhaps you think it's stupid to pay upwards of $3 for a can of water, and thus aren't a target for the brand (or any of its advertising) in the first place... in which case, nobody cares if you like the ad or not because it's not for you anyway.

But whether or not you liked this ad, you have to appreciate how it was brought to life, and the impact that AI-produced ads might have on the future of advertising.

Noam Sharon, a Director/Writer at "Too Short for Modelling", posted the following on Facebook:

"This ad was created in about 7 days using nothing but [Google Gemini's] AI VEO3 and our love for this incredible brand. What used to take us months of production and a crushing budget now takes a week and costs almost nothing. Do we love this future? Not really. But here’s the upside: We finally get to make Super Bowl-style ads — the kind no brand would ever approve."

AI made it possible to produce this ad at a fraction of the time and cost it would have taken to make using traditional methods, which means "Super Bowl-style ads" are no longer reserved for big brands with the big budgets historically needed to produce them.

But, on its own, AI isn't enough to create a great ad.

A great ad begins with a great idea, which almost always comes from a great insight.

AI didn't create the idea for this ad or write the script; a human writer did.

AI just brought the idea to life... and that's how it should be.

Leveraging AI-powered technologies to make creative productions more efficient is good.

But trying to outsource our thinking and our creativity to machines is a terrible idea.

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P.S. Just after I finished writing this post, I saw that Andrew Tindall posted his summary of System One's analysis of this ad on LinkedIn. The short version: the ad beat "75% of all water ads [System 1] has ever tested." The long version? You can read the report here.