Name it custom or behavior, however popular culture has a protracted observe file of both loving or hating promoting characters. From Progressive’s Flo to the Verizon man to Dos Equis’ Most Attention-grabbing Man In The World, many years of mascots have risen and fallen by the hands of audiences.
Fiverr’s newest marketing campaign casts an AI-generated character on the coronary heart of a brand new love-hate model dynamic. The freelancer market introduces Garry, who unwittingly finds himself in numerous calamities attributable to his AI skepticism.
Created with generative AI video platforms together with Google’s Veo3 and Runway, the 90-second spot depicts Garry in slapstick eventualities similar to a chicken pooping on his automotive, his spouse leaving him for a person dressed as a scorching canine, and caught waist-deep in cement. Different scenes reference current viral moments just like the misogynist memes plaguing WNBA video games and the Nicki Minaj stiletto problem on TikTok.
“We’re going to leverage Garry as a form of punching bag for the web,” Fiverr chief advertising and marketing officer (CMO) Matti Yahav instructed ADWEEK.
Past the hero advert, the model is inviting individuals to submit concepts for scenes through which Garry might seem–providing to generate a brand new one for each 5,000 feedback the video receives on every platform. For instance, after the Love Island USA reunion on Aug. 25, Garry will star in his personal villa-themed vignette.
The model’s objective is to point out off AI instruments in actual time and enter cultural conversations.
“We wished to convey on this video a really excessive velocity vitality, and to point out a number of scenes with the intention to create this sense that it’s unbelievable what we created with AI,” Yahav mentioned.
A problem to businesses
Made by Fiverr’s in-house artistic staff and two freelance administrators, Noam Sharon and Tal Rosenthal, the marketing campaign jabs at conventional advertising and marketing businesses to advertise Fiverr’s platform as a spot to seek out rising expertise who’re fluent with AI.
Sharon and Rosenthal are additionally the artistic brains behind the current viral AI-generated spec advert for Liquid Dying. Fiverr didn’t discover Sharon and Rosenthal on its platform, however the staff has since signed as much as it, Yahav mentioned.
Utilizing AI saved Fiverr cash, in keeping with Yahav, who mentioned the corporate spent about 10% of its typical manufacturing price range for such a marketing campaign.
“I might [typically] want to hitch forces with an company and a manufacturing home and to speculate a whole bunch of hundreds of {dollars},” Yahav mentioned. “I might be capable to do this as an enormous buyer going to the massive businesses, however most [small- and medium-sized businesses] clearly don’t have the flexibility to do this.”
“The method was actually eye opening to see how we will shortly flip round an idea right into a full-blown artistic marketing campaign,” he continued. “The gates have opened.”
However don’t ditch the people
Titled “Immediate and Punishment,” the advert follows different AI-related campaigns from Fiverr up to now few years. It comes a couple of weeks after one other, “A No-Code Love Story,” which tapped into the vibe-coding wave to warn of the implications if inexperienced engineers use AI to create web sites and apps.
One other that debuted in April, “Not Simply One other AI,” featured Stranger Issues star Brett Gelman.
Different AI-themed adverts from Fiverr, like final 12 months’s “No one Cares” musical, have poked enjoyable on the hype surrounding the expertise.
Fiverr’s new advert illustrates each AI’s prospects and its limits. Garry could also be synthetic, however the marketing campaign insists the magic nonetheless comes from people behind the scenes. Its tagline is, “Put the professional in prompts.”
Regardless of the velocity of AI instruments, an unlimited quantity of labor went into Fiverr’s advert, which required a whole bunch of prompts and frames, inflexible storyboarding, motion-capturing, and video layering.
Different unresolved challenges posed by AI embody ethics and economics. Whereas Fiverr claims the instruments can get monetary savings, businesses and freelancers nonetheless wrestle with issues about pricing, copyright infringement, and the commodification of artistic work.
When requested if freelancer pay on Fiverr has declined amid the rise of AI, Yahav mentioned they’ve elevated as a result of shoppers are in search of assist with extra difficult duties that take longer.
“I’m certain at businesses you may see costs taking place, however for us it’s really meant increased high quality expertise being on our platform and extra advanced initiatives,” Yahav mentioned.
