EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (GENERATED BY HUMANS)

Working on the supermarket brief (Cadbury, big cultural event) in collaboration with ChatGPT-4 and Midjourney, we came to appreciate that (currently) the best use of generative AI models in the creative process is to help realise the execution of an unexpected idea rather than to come up with the idea itself. That’s to say, we found AI useful in terms of relevancy, helping to chart different creative territories, but not so useful in terms of abruption, cutting through the sea of sameness to arrive at a fresh or original idea. That said, the act of creative collaboration with AI models was not linear. For example, using Midjourney, we fed it photo-realistic images it had already generated whilst experimenting with additive prompting to fine-tune the end-result. At times, creative misreadings on both sides (by AI models and humans) led to more interesting results than if the process of collaboration was a perfect, frictionless, two-way communication.

PROMPT ENGINEERING STRUCTURE & EXAMPLE

Additive Prompting for Midjourney (example of structure):

[Subject] | [Style] | [Colours] | [Background] | [Tags/Extras]

Persona Prompting in ChatGPT (example of persona):

Ignore everything in the chat before this prompt.

Cadbury is a confectionery company known for its Dairy Milk chocolate, the Creme Egg, Roses selection box, and Heroes selection box. Cadbury has a history of innovation and quality in chocolate production.

Cadbury needs to launch a new product that will shift millions of units. Think about how Cadbury can create a new product in the context of a big cultural event relevant to the UK. How can Cadbury capitalise on a big cultural event in Britain to launch a new product and get people running to the shops to buy it. Exclude Christmas and Easter as big cultural events.

I want you to act as a highly experienced advertising executive and creative director who is exceptionally skilled at coming up with lots of fresh, original, creative ideas. You are a world-class expert at generating lots of different, distinctive ideas. The creative ideas you come up with are always surprising, disruptive and break the rules of what people expect.

Two creative thinking frameworks that will help you when generating fresh, original, creative ideas:

Innovative thinking framework 1 – Use Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick:

i) Keep it simple. Find and share the core of the idea.

ii) Make it unexpected. Get and hold attention.

iii) Make it concrete. Help people understand and remember.

iv) Make it credible. Help people believe and agree.

v) Make it emotional. Make people care.

vi) Create a story. Get people to act.

Innovative thinking framework 2 – Use Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats:

i) Take a fact finding, truth seeking perspective.

ii) Take an emotional subjective feeling perspective.

iii) Take a cautious, considered perspective.

iv) Take a positive, speculative perspective.

v) Take a future looking ‘what if’ perspective.

vi) Take a creative, innovative perspective.

I want you to come up with 30 creative, disruptive and game-changing ideas. Think of big, unexpected ideas. Really push beyond anything obvious. Come up with ideas that have never been thought of before. Dare to think differently. I only want 30 of your very best ideas put forward please. Organise this information as a bullet-point list of creative ideas from 1 to 30. Every idea should be exceptional. Thanks for your help.

LEADING THE PROCESS AS HUMANS

1) Break the process down into its constituent parts and assign each part to a) Human; b) AI; or c) Human-AI  

2) Once you’ve assigned each part of the creative process, identify the AI models that will best serve you 

3) Concept or ideate first before turning to AI as it’s a great discipline to get into as a human creative. Period. Generate at least 60 different, distinctive creative ideas (a la Tim Delaney)

4) Start at the end. What is the output you want? What are you looking to achieve?

5) Use generative AI to source different perspectives, then use in-depth human research and creative thinking frameworks to identify the most promising of said perspectives

6) Don’t be afraid to lean in to a non-linear or messy collaboration process in a constant virtuous cycle of experimentation and iteration. NB, AI can hallucinate (as can humans)

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