Newly independent creative shop R/GA has created a dedicated global AI Products team to help brands realise the creative benefits—rather than simply the reductive speed and efficiency gains to be hand—of generative AI.
Spearheading the new team is Ben Cooper, formerly the group innovation director at M&C Saatchi, now global executive director, AI Products. Michael Titshall is supporting Cooper in the role, adding global head of AI products to his existing APAC CEO remit.
Most agencies are making significant plays in AI. In just the last week or so, WPP Media (formerly GroupM) has announced its significant repositioning with AI featuring at the core. TBWA has also launched Rise, a new strategic service aimed at ensuring brands remain discoverable and recommended within AI-driven platforms.
But R/GA is plotting something slightly more root-and-branch with its new offering—hence the product name.
“There are four key areas we’re focusing on at the moment,” explained Cooper, who has been in the role merely a fortnight.
“One is AI search optimisation, there’s the storytelling engine… we’ve also got generative user interface design—off the fact that there’s a changing relationship with websites that have always pretended to be personalised but really aren’t—then the final part is that we’re leaning into brand operating systems and brand bots.
“We’re doubling down on those four areas, and we’ll expand, but importantly we’ve already got evidence and work happening, particularly with the storytelling engine space. We’re starting to unearth how brands are turning up in this very sort of fluid moment when they need to be part of the answer not just to link to their site.”
Cooper continued that R/GA is building its team to focus on these areas and that its long experience with interface design (2007’s Nike+ anyone?) is giving it a solid grounding. Its work with a variety of different LLMs to illustrate, create voices and more is also exciting Cooper.
“We’re getting to places where you’ve never seen creativity like this before. But more importantly, the person next to you hasn’t either because we’re creating 53,000 different versions for every single user. It’s allowing us to do things that were previously not possible,” he added.
Emblematic of those new, unique experiences is its quite bonkers but brilliant work for Mexican delivery service TaDa.
“This was all based on the fact that people abandon their cart and there might be some alcohol in there they haven’t purchased. So this was about getting them to come back through the concept of ‘abandoned nights’ and the night you could have had,” said Titshall.
“We used ChatGPT for script generation, image generation with Flux, ElevanLabs for the VO and imposing for the video composition. Tens of thousands of people got a unique video that’s relevant to them and the night they missed out on.
“Most people are focused on efficiency, doing the same stuff faster and cheaper,” he continued.
“What we’re trying to do is create products that enable creativity and impact that wasn’t possible. We could never have done ‘Abandoned Nights’ because it wouldn’t have made sense from an investment perspective. You would have needed something like 11,000 hours of video recording. We think that’s going to generate new growth opportunity, not just efficiencey opportunities. They are important but they bottom-out at some point. We need to find these new opportunities for growth.”
“Ultimately, creativity is about craft. It’s about taste, judgement, the human part,” added Cooper.
AI-generated creative is all well and good. But TaDa’s ‘Abandoned Nights’ is indicative of a shift in the way R/GA is rethinking its own business.
“We can then go and take that engine and train it on a different brand and a different concept that’s relevant to different clients. We have these products that we can reuse for our clients but we’re really customising them in ways that relevant to their business challenges, brand etc.” said Titshall.
“We’re enhancing creativity because we’ve managed to make tens of thousands different, really engaging videos that are quite funny. You’re not just doing retargeting or personalisation for the sake of it.”
For Cooper, this is the start of the culmination of many years work.
“I’ve worked in so many different creative shops and we’ve always tried to build products. ‘Tricky Jigsaw’ [the innovation arm of M+C Saatchi] was very much looking to do that but the business model would fail us, you build a ‘Clever Buoy’ and everyone thinks that was just a campaign but it wasn’t, it had its own business model. But the problem was that we charged by hours and minutes and therefore that meant as soon as you finished something, you need to move to the next thing otherwise your team’s not being covered. You’re actually doing yourself a disservice,” he explained.
“We’re actually being set up in a way that allows us to create resuable products. What’s really powerful about it is that we can help clients leap. We’re also the ones who are furiously curious about how this works.”
Abandoning the traditional head hour billing model for agencies has become a hot topic in adland of late, with many hoping to move to output-based models. However, it’s rare to see agencies actually taking the steps to make it happen. That said, R/GA considers itself a creative innovation company, not an agency.
“We’re looking at a number of different models with regard to value-based pricing whether it’s licence fees, subscriptions. We’re defining that. But ultimately we’re very fortunate that our new independence has given us an investment fund that allows us to concentrate in areas we want to invest in,” said Cooper.
“We’re talking about that product [the storytelling engine] will being the base of it and there’s going to be a fee, whether it’s a subscription fee, or whether it’s a one-off fee. That is not head-hour based,” said Titshall.
“The customisation of it is likely going to be head-hour based, that’s more your traditional service revenue. And part of the motivation to do this is that we think we need to do it for our clients to thrive in the future but also for our business to thrive in the future. The industry is under massive pressures at the moment, we’re all aware of that and this helps change that commercial model.
“That’s why I took on this role. It isn’t a role that’s separate to my existing gig. It’s fundamental to us driving the business moving forward.”
“Creativity is IP,” added Cooper.
“But the previous model has seen it get thrown out the door every time, right? Now we’ve actually got this incredible technology that can be trained and represent the brands we’re working for but you need experts to do that. We’re in a great position to be those experts.”
The future is potentially bright for R/GA with its newfound independence. Let’s just hope AI doesn’t go the way of the Metaverse—though as Titshall reckons “people are actually using it,” we should be safe.
