5 Brands That Went Big on AI Marketing in 2024
Brands went bonkers for AI this past year, as they increasingly adopted the growing number of tools available to facilitate mundane tasks throughout the creative process and create new kinds of work.
While consumers still feel conflicted about brands use of the technology, some marketing departments have found savings by leaning on generative AI in particular.
In May, Klarna said it reduced its sales and marketing costs by 12% annually, and that AI accounted for 37%, or $10 million, of its annual cost savings. Similarly, snack giant Mondelez said in June that it has invested $100 million in AI in a bet that it could decrease its non-working media spend between 10% to 20%, or $30 million to $40 million.
But AI usage among brands hasn’t been all positive. Klarna’s investment comes at the expense of future job cuts, and brands like Coca-Cola and Toys ‘R Us have faced the wrath of creatives and cosumers who are anxious about what the rise of AI means for their jobs.
ADWEEK rounded up five brands that went big on AI marketing this year and the lessons they’ve learned along the way.
1. Klarna
The Big AI moment
The Swedish buy-now-pay-later company launched 30 campaigns this year around events like Mother’s Day, Black Friday, and Back to School that were entirely generated by AI.
AI came up with the ideas, wrote the copy, and created images to produce ads at a volume that was impossible without it. Without AI, the work would have been time-consuming or required external production and translation agencies to version ads for multiple markets.
Klarna has also partnered with AI platform Eleven Labs to use voiceovers for its global campaigns.
“We’ve removed a lot of the cumbersome, expensive, and mundane tasks of marketing,” chief marketing officer (CMO) David Sandstorm told ADWEEK in October. “Historically, we had to pay an agency or an artist to bring these ideas to life. We’ve saved millions on that ideation process alone.”
