Google at Cannes Lions 2024: How to use AI in scaling advertising and content creation

Cannes: If 2023 was all about understanding AI, this year is about realising its power. Hosted by Google, the session titled “The AI Era: Supercharging Marketing and Creativity” brought together two Google executives to discuss how AI can enhance creativity, productivity, and performance, empowering people, businesses, and marketers.

At Cannes Lions 2024, Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s Ads Product Vice-President, and Alex Chen, Director of Creative Lab, held a discussion on how AI can enhance creativity, productivity, and performance, empowering people, businesses, and marketers.

Since the session was all about AI, Chen started with an AI-made visual. He took to the stage at Cannes Lions 2024 to share ways in which one can use AI to explore ideas.

Reflecting on the evolution of AI, Chen stated, “AI will never take the place of human creativity. In fact, it opens up amazing opportunities for everyone. I asked an AI model to break down this video for me, and it processed the entire video, giving detailed descriptions and exact time codes for each moment.”

Keeping creators in the driver's seat, AI can be used for compelling storytelling. Chen emphasised, “Projects like this aren’t about what AI can create; they’re about what you can create with AI.”

After Chen’s address, Srinivasan took charge of the session. Short-form content took centre stage in her address. Serving as a natural muse, short-form content inspires discovery and innovation, catching everyone’s eye. With more than 2 billion logged-in viewers every month, short-form content represents a huge opportunity for creators and marketers. Therefore, Google aims to help Shorts creators quickly transform their ideas into video backgrounds.

Speaking of ways AI could empower creators, Srinivasan demonstrated an AI tool that allows users to feature themselves in any background, such as a beach, from the comfort of their own room. Unlike a simple filter, AI can help create surprisingly realistic videos, offering a spectrum of opportunities for short-form content creation.

Shifting the focus to generative AI, which also remained a focal point of the session, Srinivasan presented a tool for video content creation. Harnessing the power of generative AI, this on-demand video creation tool can generate videos with specific cinematic techniques and visual effects.

Explaining its usage for content creators, Srinivasan said, “What’s powerful here is that you can test new things, fail faster, and get the inspiration you need to tell your story. You can connect with more consumers faster than ever before.”

In 2024, when Google launched its flagship phone across India and the world, the marketing team used AI to activate the campaign. Instead of manually creating hours of content for digital marketing, the campaign used generative AI to produce video content that scaled their creative efforts.

There are innumerable ways to scale a brand narrative, but the hard part for most brands is finding out which form of brand communication works best for them. 

The Google campaign used nine different themes, like lifestyle and product, and added various creative inputs like photography and videography to create 4,500 different ad variations. These were run across multiple platforms to find the most effective way to communicate directly with consumers. The campaign spent less, generated more clicks, and drove higher engagement.

Discussing the possibilities for scalability, Srinivasan said, “Play and scale with AI. It will become a commodity, but you will continue to be the difference maker. You will still be the one telling the amazing stories. You will determine the messaging strategy and ultimately build meaningful connections with consumers.”

The role of creative directors and creative strategists will become even more foundational as the world moves forward with AI. Agencies will also play a crucial role in guiding clients through this AI transformation. Concluding the session, Srinivasan said, “As we say at Cannes, this is your moment, but truly, it’s our moment to build this future together.”