Computers Make Good Ad Execs 41
philg sent us linkage into a really amusing little story running over at Yahoo about
computers generating advertising. Its pretty amusing since
it showed that patterns could be used to generate commercials that were just as creative as ones that came from actual creative people.
I worked at an ad agency for a few years, so this one made me grin.
Creative Computers? (Score:1)
I dunno, it sounds more like this proves that the enginneers who wrote the program are more creative than Marketing people. Which seems obvious to me, of course... :)
Now to get computers to read all ads for us... (Score:1)
an infinate number of monkeys. (Score:2)
Duh (Score:1)
The really big thing missing is that humans evaluated the output to decide what was ``good'' - not the computers. It's no different from feeding words into an anagram generator and only choosing the anagrams that you like.
On the other hand, if they actually had something similar to a chess or backgammon playing program (generates possibilities and evaluates their merit), then we might be in trouble.
types of adds (Score:1)
If they can come up with a program that could produce some humourous adds on demand (i.e. I want an add for product X and it has to be funny), I'd be very impressed. Of course, this is, as the AI crowd has long babbled about, much more difficult that coding up a few rules.
As was posted earlier, it's much more impressive that these folks could figure out some of the "rules of creative advertisement creation" that the fact that they wrote some little program to prove the point.
Amazing display of artificial intelligence on web (Score:1)
http://www.forum2000.org/
I'm sure you will be amazed at what these computers can think up
Not creative, associative (Score:1)
However, that's not creativity. It's just concept association. Ultimately, it's the human filtering the results that applies creativity: creativity is not just coming up with unusual ideas, it's understanding how these ideas play out into a coherent result.
For instance, the ad about Dracula and cat food, well, sucked. The idea of Don Corleone is a bit cheezy, but it works. Taken together, these ideas don't show creativity. It's when someone recognises which is the good one and which is the bad one.
So, we're back to square one: computers are not creative in themselves, they're assistants to creativity. In this case, the ad execs were so empty of creativity (is that surprising?) that they thought the computer did all the work.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Re:2 comments (Score:1)
Or, again drawing an analogy from evolution: we're only seeing the successful selections, so we gravitate toward the idea that there must be a method to the madness that produced these ideas.
Think of all the ideas these programs spit out that didn't work, or, more likely, didn't really make sense. We don't hear about them, so we get the headline "computers as creative as ad agencies."
Bah! I say. It's just like looking at humans and saying "look how adapted they are! There must have been intelligent design!" without remembering that history is littered with the fossils of other of nature's blindly conducted experiments that didn't work. [take that, mush-minded creationists!]
Real Creativity? (Score:1)
Is this creativity? Hell, no. The creative part was done by the human who firsted used style of advertising.
Is this the Microsoft "Frontpage" of advertising?
I hope not.
Computers Make Good News Program Execs (Score:2)
The same could be applied to the predictability of
most network produced news programs. Instead of a product it would be a topic and instead of an image association it would be a spin factor.
Freedom != Creativity (Score:1)
Huh? Are there really people who believe that "creativity thrives on unlimited freedom"? Sorry, but it ain't so. I've always felt that the truly creative are those that are able to work within the rules, and still come up with something original and interesting.
There are many art forms that impose strict rules and structure including many forms of poetry (sonnets, haiku, etc.), most forms of music, dance and architecture. Without some sort of structure these become babbling, noise, convulsions and heaps of rubble. Structure is good. The truly creative can work within structure to create beuty. The non-creative wannabe's whine about being repressed.
Here's the real URL (Score:1)
http://michal.fiz.huji.ac.il/~project/list/
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be open to the public anymore. When I tried it yesterday it was still open.
Basically, it's a database of images, and what sort of emotions/ideas they evoke. And how they are connected to each other.
It was interesting, although I ended up creating an ad for hygenic pads that consisted of an elephant wearing a tennis skirt.
2 comments (Score:3)
Which brings me to my second comment: This type of "creativity" is exactly analogous to biological evolution. The ideas generated by the computer map to mutations in a genome. The humans doing the actual selecting (note the word!) of good from bad map to natural selection. I suspect the hit rate of the computer is probably on the same order of magnitude of the chances of a random mutation being beneficial.
It is well-known that mutations role in evolution is not all that big--selection does all the real work while mutation just provides (some of) the raw material. Conclusions to draw are left as an exercise for the reader.
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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Creative but not Innovative (Score:2)
But these computer generated ideas may be great for brainstorm sessions as well since you might be brain dead one day and decide to ask your computer. If you don't like to admit using the idea it gave you, you can still build on it if nothing else.
Computers, in the end, are still just tools and toys. But they are fun tools and toys. =)
Lateral Thinking? (Score:2)
Lateral thinking can be as simple as concept juxtaposition, or in this case, replacement of a concept with something else representing it. This is a pretty simple technique, as are most lateral thinking techniques. They don't seem too hard to do on a computer given some effort.
I think it's important to note that these are just ideas that come out of a lateral thinking session, and like all ideas, they then have to be filtered through a human's logical thinking processes, just the same as these computer-generated ideas do.
Of course, it doesn't necessarily bode too well for ad brainstormers.
/.'ed already (Score:1)
Re:B Ark? (Score:1)
They all died in an epidemic that originated from an unsanitised phone.
Poetry writing s/w "passes" Poetry Turing Test (Score:2)
creativity? (Score:1)
Re:These are creative ads? (Score:3)
The reason that "Intel Inside" is a marketing marvel is not the cheesy logo and four electronic twonk noises, its the way that OEMs are pushed into including it.
Intel provide a cashback deal (essentially large discounts) to OEMs who include the Intel Inside logo in their advertising. Part of this is that Intel get to review and approve the adverts before they go out. This lets them place the logo, but it also makes sure that the voiceover says "and its got a 400MHz Intel Celeron processor" as if that were a major selling point.
Viewers think that they are being sold a computer, so they discount what they see about the computer. But the fact that the computer company seemed to think that a Celeron is a major selling point sticks in their heads, and makes them more likely to pick a Celeron-based PC no matter which brand they buy.
It also lets Intel play fast and loose with the anti-monopoly laws. If you offer AMD processors as well, you might suddenly find all your ads being rejected by Intel, and having to pay the full list price for your Intel CPUs.
Paul.
In other news... (Score:2)
ideas? (Score:1)
Chris
It's like this: (Score:2)
My favorite ads are the ones that either make you laugh a LOT, or make you say "That is really clever". Substitution generally does neither. Car--Bullet? Mosque--Tennis Ball? So what?
My favorites are usually the super bowl ones, because they aren't so concerned with getting the point across that their product is "classy" or whatever as they are with making it stick in the viewer's mind. Let name recognition do the rest. I don't CARE what morphing effect you can do to make your car synonimous with a first class plane ticket or whatever. It won't make me buy the car. What just might make me buy the car is if the company has some very high name recognition (combined of course with a reputation for quality). Ads, no matter how clever, cannot create a reputation for quality, because they are coming from the company selling the product. But they can generate name recognition.
Word of mouth, baby. (Score:1)
What this really demonstrates (Score:1)
Rather, what they seem to have demonstrated is that a computer that is programmed with one method of creating advertisements can create better ads than some people who know absolutely nothing about writing ads.
Gee. Are we also shocked to discover that Microsoft Word's spell checker can spell better than someone who is completely illiterate?
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hum (Score:1)
sorry but i dont enjoy adds as is , i would realy hate to see a computer generating commicals for tv , inet , news papers , that is all i need is junk mail from a computer capable of shooting out 1million a second any way , now if this was ai or any thing i would still be agianst it this use is not good for paper or electrons, why make something that every one hate no one wants , but every one pays for . i mean seriouly i cant seem to figure why any one would make such a thing so annoying as this.
Re:an infinate number of monkeys. (Score:1)
Re:Did they really show anything? (Score:1)
It has to be said. (Score:1)
I'm sure, with a few more focus groups, anything over the IQ of a use tea bag could be more creative than mere "humans." A person is smart, people are not. This is just another affirmation of that
These are creative ads? (Score:1)
Other computer-generated ideas included an image of a bullet-shaped car, suggesting the car's speed, and a cuckoo shaped like a jet plane popping out of a cuckoo clock to show an airline's punctuality.
Are these judges on crack? A bullet-shaped car? A cuckoo clock? THESE are supposed to be creative? Those are some of the worst ideas I've ever heard. However, they're right on par with the mediocre I see from most ad agencies.
For example, "Intel Inside" was heralded as this marketing marvel, yet I see it and think: "Ok. Great. Thanks."
The issue isn't that the computers are that creative, is that the ad execs are not. I know. I've been in two many meetings where horrible ideas like this were well-received by managers.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
I've done it (Score:2)
matches emphasizing a shared quality, and have a
human create the final product?
there's at east a dozen such programs already out there. paramind does something like this, for
example. I've gotten even better results just
using emacs and dissociated press... generated
some damned cool surreal poetry.
the important step is the *filtering* process
after the phrase generation.
also used various random midi generators as part of my experimental music compositions: create
midi streams and mix them together to "paint" an aural picture.
pretty nifty. but nothing new.
Well no wonder. (Score:2)
The researchers found that 89 percent of award-winning ads match as few as six formulas, which they called "creativity templates"...
Could it be that the problem isn't supergood computers, it's that human designed-advertising is uncreative drivel? Kinda sounds like it.
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this has been done.. (Score:2)
Eventually that was inefficient so a plotting team took over and code warrior scripts were used to build books, place images, do everything but tweak the thing into final submission
When I left there was a project to get rid of the final human element which was designing the covers for these books. The script would match the school mascot randomly pick between fractal and other backgrounds, try and make a guess as to whether it was a religious school ie. if it saw st. anything it would drop some crosses and sacred hearts. They didn't have an astounding success rate and the amount of time you spent letting the maching do it then re-doing the job yourself 75% of the time made it unworthwhile but everything evolves..
I don't think this is the death kneel of the ad exec but i think in the near future it's gonna clear the field quite a bit..
Did they really show anything? (Score:1)