Marketing will never be the same

Hello again my friend,

You’ve seen me write about my day job at beehiiv, the fast-growing startup in the email industry. But I rarely talk about my side-hustle, Lumière. A fragrance brand. I started perfumery as a hobby almost three years ago, and started this brand selling candles last year.

The entire business has always been low-key. Friends, family, co-workers, and people I know. People try, like, and buy the products. If they really like them, they’ll share them with their friends. All my sales have come from word-of-mouth.

But now that I’m adding perfume to the product line, word-of-mouth’s not enough. It’s time for more (and better) marketing.

Enter AI.

AI is faster, cheaper, and (after a learning curve), more scalable. No big fancy camera, crew, models, none of that. Imagination wins, or so they say.

And that’s the point of this post. Not that I’m a year into my business and trying marketing. No.

It’s to put you on to what I’ve been seeing and studying on marketing with AI. A set of highlights to help you find something new, and apply it to your own business and career.

The objective (and everything I’ve studied) is to make the hard parts of marketing easier. The production value. The imagery, videos, and vibes that are otherwise so hard to create alone, and without equipment.

Let’s lock in.

I’ve looked at so many of the software products that make images (image generators). There is a clear winner that is far superior to the others.

It’s MidJourney.

A little hard to get started with at first (you need a Discord account). And slightly different than the others. It’s not a long conversation, it’s a series of prompts. Type /imagine, and then enter what image you want it to make for you. Once done, you can upscale it, make it bigger, adjust things, etc.

Just look at what this guy created:

And what’s interesting is that you can actually pre-set a lot of styles. So the image is still as you describe it, but the overall vibe is something you can find on the internet.

This, for example, is a pre-set to produce neo-noir animated films influenced by vampires.

I always knew it was there, but didn’t realize it had become so good. It’s not just for product shots. It’s for moodboards, graphics, ads, and anything you can think of, with quality so good it would have cost hundreds (if not thousands) for a single shot with a photographer and model.

Naturally, with Instagram and TikTok favouring video, still images (while great) aren’t enough.

Now, these things can literally generate entire videos for you in short, 2-3 seconds bursts, that can be stitched into absolute cinema.

There are a few apps that are good at this. Wan (Chinese), Sora, Seedream, Runway (great for turning images into videos), Veo, and so many more. I think they’re all good and there is no wrong choice here.

Just look at how far these videos have come (water was always very hard to get right).

Another example from Veo can deliver the same realism to water.

And it doesn’t stop there.

People are making full on commercials. I cannot believe how good they are.

Here’s another. Probably my favourite AI commercial so far.

I don’t know how else to say it. I finally understand why the movie industry is at risk. All of this was made with a computer, and prompts into an AI bot. It’s insane.

One of the challenges with AI is that every time you prompt it to create a “man in a suit” it generates a different man every time. It’s the same no matter what you create, never saving the face (for example) so you can reuse it.

It’s one of the main reasons people believed Hollywood still had a chance. Not anymore.

We have answers to this now. NanoBanana (the version made by Google, not the other one), Hailuo and Popcorn (from Higgsfield), are the answer to this long-standing issue.

It’s all coming together now.

Creating music videos like in the link above is not just about AI. There’s a certain level of taste required for something to really hit. This is called Art Direction. It’s as detailed oriented as deciding which items should be on the table when showcasing the product.

Is it a simple wooden table with porcelain dishes, and the Sunrise candle? Or a glass table that’s a complete mess, as if a table of twenty rich kids just ate.

This part is still up to you. Is Art Direction harder then learning these things? Maybe. But the good news is that so much of the work can be done with AI now. Just look at those commercials and videos from earlier. It’s unreal.

Someone had to know the colors, the lighting, the materials, and how everything would just fit together in the final product. AI will generate what you ask for. Knowing what’s a good or bad thing to ask for is the taste and art direction that’s becoming popular. There’s a lot AI can do for you. It can’t do this (at least not yet).

Thanks again for reading! Shorter this time, I know. I hope you like this style.

All the best,