What happens when two phones stop being rivals and start being friends? You get the world’s friendliest competitive campaign: Best Phones Forever.
And what happens when you let fans decide where those phones will go on their next adventure? You get a first-of-its kind experiment that showcases how brands can use Google AI to engage directly with fans.
With a one-day campaign on Instagram Reels that used generative AI tools like Gemini, the Pixel and Creative Lab teams piloted a new model for user-driven content that points toward an exciting future for marketers building fan communities on social platforms.
1 day, 300 fan-inspired episodes
The “Best Phones Forever: AI Roadtrip” launched with a short episode that established that the Google Pixel and the iPhone were headed on a road trip powered by generative AI. We then invited viewers to decide where the two characters would go next. As people added location ideas in the comments, our team used a purpose-built tool to generate custom video responses, or “mini-episodes,” within minutes.
Over the course of the experiment, we sent Pixel and iPhone on 306 unique adventures, each inspired by a real user suggestion. The phones visited 74 countries across all seven continents. They crashed a wedding, explored the rings of Saturn, and ventured into imaginary realms. Ultimately, the activation gave our audience a glimpse of what’s possible with Google AI — and led to the highest-performing Google Pixel U.S. Instagram post ever.
As suggested by fans, the “AI Roadtrip” took on
Use AI to build community, not just content
Engaging directly with commenters has always been part of the “Best Phones Forever” playbook. From the beginning of this series, viewers have been active in the comments section, suggesting episode ideas and plot twists. For last year’s series launch, our team trained a large language model (LLM) on the tone of the campaign to help generate friendship-themed responses to thousands of comments. Just two days after the initial launch, the phones responded directly to top comments in a YouTube comment-response video.
Since then, generative AI has allowed us to take that participatory strategy to a whole new level. Instead of just replying to select comments with, “Thanks, friend!” or sharing a cutdown GIF from an existing asset, we were able to reward fan engagement with a chance to actually direct the story.
This new community-building dimension of the campaign had a global impact. We sent the phones to destinations on every continent, from Himachal Pradesh, India, to Medellín, Colombia, to Tillamook, Oregon. Pixel users around the world were delighted to see their hometowns represented — something we could have never achieved with traditional production tools alone.
The videos created for “AI Roadtrip” are different from traditional “Best Phones Forever” episodes: shorter, sillier, and directly inspired by viewers. That’s because the “AI Roadtrip” videos were created to foster a sense of community at a previously impossible scale, making viewers around the world feel like a part of the Pixel story.
Leverage human creativity at every step
To pull this off, we worked with our partners The Mill and Left Field Labs to design a generative content engine powered by a stack of AI models.
Gemini 1.5 Pro generated multiple script options for each location, incorporating specific references and humor, as prompted by our writing team. Imagen 2 used an adaptable prompt developed by our art directors to create a gallery of potential background images drawn from each script, setting the scene for each adventure. Cloud Text-to-Speech AI created the dialogue from the chosen script, giving voice to our phone besties. With all the pieces in place, we could adapt, render, and complete a short video in just a few minutes.
While it was exciting to be able to create content so quickly, the production team oversaw and intervened at every step of the process. Our creatives were always in the loop, selecting, editing, and reviewing outputs, occasionally re-prompting to make sure every video felt like it was truly part of the “Best Phones Forever” world.
With Gemini and Imagen 2 generating a first round of copy and visuals, our writers and art directors were able to focus on creative builds and necessary revisions. In other areas, like nailing a specific sense of humor or vocal timbre, creatives needed to lean in with prompt tuning or manual tweaks. We designed our engine with that in mind, allowing us to scale without compromising quality.
A signal for the future of AI and creativity
This isn’t the first time that the “Best Phones Forever” characters have gone on an adventure together, and it’s not the first time that Gemini or Imagen have been used for creative development. But, by bringing so many separate models together and putting them in the hands of creatives, “AI Roadtrip” unlocked a totally new experience for fans of the series.
For our team, this is the first of many forays into applying AI to the work we do. The engine we built is just a pilot, but we think it represents what’s next for social marketing: content that’s more personalized, more engaging, and ultimately, more effective. When you put your brand’s fans in the driver’s seat, they will take it places you never thought possible.
