When HubSpot’s International Occasions Staff had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren’t positive concerning the artistic course they’d take.
One factor was clear although: Given how big AI has change into in the previous few years, they knew they’d incorporate it someway.
I related with the staff to be taught extra concerning the necessary position AI performed in pre-production – from creating eye-catching visuals with Midjourney to focused agendas with Claude.
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Creating Contemporary Interstitials
Previous to INBOUND 2024, the staff saved the onsite interstitials fairly constant year-over-year, sticking to static visible imagery and lightweight animation.
It was time for a change.
As an alternative of graphics that may disappear into the background, they needed to create interstitals attendees would need to have interaction with.
“This yr, AI has been massive, and we bought an intro to Midjourney and the work that Eduardo had been doing with the instrument,” mentioned Sav Aaver, former HubSpot manufacturing supervisor who led the collaboration. “We determined to look into that so as to add extra curiosity to our screens, create a brand new ingredient so folks have one thing to have a look at that sparks dialog, in the event that they’re sitting and ready and dealing between classes.”
The International Occasions staff tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez, who leads HubSpot’s Visible Design staff, to supervise the manufacturing of contemporary interstitials with AI – leveraging Midjourney to generate flat, 2D photos and Runway for video and animation.
They weren’t attempting to create one thing web new, he says, however they needed to push their branding.
“We didn‘t need it to really feel like, ‘Oh yeah, that is very on the model. It’s precisely what we might count on,’” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “We needed to discover, as a result of AI provides us these potentialities – you possibly can take it anyplace you need however nonetheless keep the identical fashion of the model.”
After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:
- An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very summary and intently tied to the HubSpot model.
- An prolonged model for every stage.
- A 3rd, surreal, summary metropolis theme
The Inventive Course of with AI
From begin to end, it took the staff roughly a month and a half to generate 28 last movies, with 14 minutes of run time tailored for seven display screen sorts on the venue.
Beginning with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colours which have at all times been the inspiration for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed these preliminary photos to Midjourney.
That allowed him to generate preliminary concepts and choices to current to the International Occasions staff.
With AI, the individual doing the prompting turns into the director, he says.
“You‘re telling the AI. ‘Right here’s my imaginative and prescient. Now, exit and do this,’” he says, “It takes some time, however in the event you evaluate that to a staff, you continue to want anyone to drive the imaginative and prescient.”
As soon as each groups agreed on the ultimate 2D photos for every stage and placement, Garcia-Lopez headed to Runway for mini video shorts and animation.
“It took me roughly two days to create the Boston mini paper metropolis, producing all of the flat photos and making a storyboard, going into Runway and animating all of them,” he says. “Then, I went into Adobe Premiere to edit the entire thing.”
He additionally used Topaz, an AI enhancing software program that enhances the standard of AI movies.
I questioned, how a lot would it not price if the staff labored with a vendor to create these belongings the quaint method.
Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take not less than two weeks and hundreds of {dollars}.
That mentioned, Midjourney wasn’t exempt from the eccentricities that occur whenever you use AI to imitate actuality.
“What I offered to the staff was essentially the most presentable, the cleanest choices, however behind the curtains, there have been many generations that weren’t popping out nicely,” Garcia-Lopez says. “It was very uneven. You’d have one thing bizarre occur – buses going into one another, buses working into folks, like all these bizarre issues.”
What took loads of time was figuring out the very best takes and cleansing up inconsistencies, he says. Fortunately, AI works quick.
“We had been iterating in a matter of days. We’d have new choices in a pair hours, so it was very, very quick,” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “As a designer, we might’ve wanted a giant staff to ship all of those belongings, even an illustration for all of the variation of types.”
With Midjourney’s help, he was in a position to create 25 distinct types – a outcome he calls “virtually unthinkable” within the time they’d.
“You want a giant staff with particular expertise to perform a selected fashion,” he says, “and we had been in a position to go wild and select what we needed.”
AI isn’t with out its limitations.
Once I requested Garcia-Lopez concerning the design challenges that include leveraging AI, he mentioned there’s a giant one folks usually overlook.
“Modifying one thing is definitely fairly exhausting. With an editable file, like a vector-based design in Adobe Illustrator, you possibly can change each little element,” he says. “With Midjourney and these AI instruments, it is not that straightforward.”
It’s a fable that enhancing with AI is fast, he says. For instance, shade clever, you won’t at all times get the very same colours you’d obtain from a shade palette. However you will get one thing fairly shut.
Aaver echoes that sentiment.
“It was a giant studying expertise for us, because the approvers and reviewers,” she mentioned, “studying what we are able to and may‘t give suggestions on, what’s a simple change, what’s not really easy.”
As well as, AI isn’t doing the majority of the work, opposite to in style perception. There’s loads of bringing it again to Adobe after which feeding it again into the AI mannequin to get the outcomes that you really want., Garcia-Lopez says.
“You are able to do loads with a small staff, however you want expertise in different software program and background to resolve loads of these points,” he provides.
Creating Customized Agendas for Attendees
Along with interstitials, the International Occasions staff additionally turned to Anthropic’s Claude to create belongings.
“We needed to think about security and we love Claude as a result of it does not practice on the information you enter,”mentioned Matt Diaz, the staff lead on HubSpot’s International Occasions staff. “It has a big context window so we may add loads of data for it to coach on and provides us the output with out conserving that information for its system.”
They needed to develop attendee personas and create focused agendas, which might then be used to advertise the occasion in an interactive “Choose Your Own INBOUND Adventure” quiz.
The staff’s first step was asking Claude to create focused agendas, primarily based on INBOUND’s classes and audio system, their purchaser personas, and their targets and goals.
“It was ready to do this inside a minute,” Diaz says, “It was actually detailed, it was unimaginable.”
Their subsequent step was instructing Claude to ensure every agenda was distinctive, with out overlapping classes, ensuring so as to add the chatbot for context and reasoning behind its selections.
The method took two to a few rounds of critiques, as Claude would typically hallucinate, creating classes or audio system that didn’t exist.
The entire course of took lower than a full day, in line with the staff.
“Should you had been to rent a staff to do this, you‘re speaking a number of days,” Diaz says, “they usually’re going to hit you over the pinnacle with some huge cash to do this. And this was the worth of a Claude professional subscription.”
As soon as their focused agenda was constructed, they created devoted personas for every agenda. This included marketing-focused ones just like the AI-Pushed Chief and the Advertising and marketing Technologist, sales-ones just like the Go-To-Market Strategist, and founder-inspired ones just like the Information-Pushed Chief.
The second half of this undertaking concerned making a persona quiz that attendees may take to match their persona to a focused agenda.
“We had been working beneath the idea that, particularly on social media, folks do not need to go and discover out who they’re,” mentioned Sarah Hughes, the social media lead on the International Occasions staff. “They wish to be informed who they’re by these quizzes or persona checks.”
The largest problem was guaranteeing that the quiz’s scoring system had even odds for every agenda, i.e. ensuring all quiz takers weren’t getting matched to the identical focused agena.
“Claude bought us roughly 85% of the way in which, after which it got here to determining that scoring rubric and ensuring that it made sense for all of the personas,” mentioned Senior Content material Advertising and marketing Supervisor Lanna Nguyen.
They revealed it on the INBOUND blog, driving site visitors through electronic mail and social channels. To say it was profitable is a little bit of an understatement.
“In all of our 2024 weblog posts, it was the third ranked when it comes to impressions behind one other put up that we put loads of paid spend behind,” mentioned Lanna.
This quiz grew to become a beneficial useful resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she provides.
With so many ‘AI gone mistaken’ tales floating round, it is a small case examine into AI getting it proper.
