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In this series, we challenge agencies to create the “impossible ad” using AI-powered tools. Here, we share how creative agency Within spun up a vivid sweepstakes campaign for Touchland’s new line of hair and body fragrance mists in a matter of weeks, with the help of Google AI.
Breaking into a new product category is daunting for any brand, requiring deep audience research, fresh insights and ideas, and a strong marketing strategy.
This was the challenge faced by Touchland as it prepared to build on its initial success with fragrance-forward hand sanitizers by making an adjacent leap into hair and body care. To make a splash at launch, the brand partnered with Within, a digital agency that prides itself on delivering measurable results through captivating experiences.
The timeline was compressed. Touchland’s new Power Essence All-over Body & Hair Fragrance Mists were scheduled to debut in February, and the agency had just six weeks to develop the campaign from idea to production to launch. Its audience strategy involved reaching both new audiences and customers already familiar with the brand.
Possible? Within’s creatives turned to Google AI to help accelerate their approach, using it to generate audience insights and ideas, speed up the workflow, and simplify production.
Branding persona-fied
As a first step, Within tapped Gemini to create personas in response to Touchland’s audience insights.
“We provided product scent notes and existing audience research, as well as the product’s mission to ‘move your mood and transport the senses,’” said Joe Yakuel, founder and CEO of Within.
In response, Gemini developed four key personas: the Conscious Cool, the Practical Pro, the Health-Conscious Individual, and the Gift Giver. Then it came up with a through line by identifying common interests across these personas, including a love of new experiences, spending time with loved ones, and travel. The last insight about travel became the gateway to the launch campaign’s winning concept.
These personas would prove critical to later phases of the campaign, according to Yakuel. “We referred back to them consistently when making decisions about messaging, tone, visual direction, and media placements,” he said.
Setting the mood
Within then used Imagen, Google’s text-to-image model, to visualize its ideas. This helped the team quickly decide which concepts to move forward and which to cut. It focused on one overarching framework: a “Move Your Mood” travel sweepstakes.
Within prompted Gemini to identify places that closely matched the fragrances.
The Within creative team connected each of Touchland’s eight new scents — from Golden Amber to Mango Mojo — to a unique travel destination suggested by Gemini.
Here’s how they did it: By entering the scent names, scent notes, and descriptions of each product, Within prompted Gemini to identify places that closely matched Touchland’s fragrances. From there, the agency provided an additional layer of 12 requests to narrow the list to eight locations. These factors included direct flight options, hotel availability, social sentiment, weather, “location vibe match,” and more.
The final list of destinations included Savannah, Georgia, where the Spanish moss evoked the brand’s “Peachy Lychee” scent; Honolulu, Hawaii, mirrored Touchland’s “Lush Tropicale” scent; and Napa Valley, California, represented “Rich Pistachio.” A winner and their guest would get to pick one of these vacation spots for a three-day trip.
Through this process, Within was able to move from brief to concepts within one week, including mock-ups for each territory.
Imagen that
Having partnered with Gemini to conceive the sweepstakes campaign and frame out travel destinations, Within then turned to Imagen 3 from Google DeepMind to come up with visual ideas that would immerse consumers in the world of each scent and its corresponding travel destination.
Within’s video artists began by asking Imagen to create eight unique 3D settings as a starting point for their production and video animation work.
Touchland partnered with agency Within to create an impossible ad campaign: the “Move Your Mood” sweepstakes, which paired eight scents with eight travel destinations in just four weeks.
This quickly led to a eureka moment as Within realized that Imagen’s outputs were of such high quality that they would allow the agency to quickly transcend its mood boards and mock-ups into campaign-ready imagery. From this moment, the remaining pieces quickly fell into place and the team was able to bring further life (and motion) to the visuals.
“Imagen is easily our favorite diffusion model we’ve encountered since adopting generative AI into our workflows,” according to Yakuel. “The outputs are simply stunning and do not require full mastery of prompting.”
Postproduction was equally swift. By using Google AI, Within’s creatives were able to articulate and refine their vision much faster, and multiple teams could prompt simultaneously while maintaining consistency.
“The campaign allowed us to bring the world of each scent to life, creating an immersive experience that went beyond just traditional scent notes,” said Andrea Lisbona, founder and CEO of Touchland.
The impossible made possible
The sweepstakes and 3D worlds Within built with Gemini have succeeded in building excitement and anticipation for Touchland’s Power Essence Body & Hair Fragrance Mists. Launched in mid-January, the sweepstakes campaign recently ended with over 46,500 entries, achieving a 34% web conversion rate and over 11 million impressions.
By selectively tapping into Gemini and Imagen, Within generated more than 70 assets at a significant savings of time and cost.
Not only that, Gemini helped Within achieve big efficiency gains. By selectively tapping into Gemini and Imagen, Within’s creatives generated more than 70 assets at a significant savings of time and cost. This approach led to a 90% reduction in the timeline for executing visual assets, 66% reduction in overall timeline, and 70% lower production costs.
Going forward, as Within continues to help Touchland evolve its brand strategy, it sees an opportunity to refine the prompts based on additional sales data and social listening.
“Gemini is the first true multimodal LLM we’ve used,” said Yakuel. “It’s clearly adept at solving some of the more complex and analytical problems we’ve encountered in launch campaigns, but [it] also possesses the strongest vision model to date.”
This efficient and agile creative development approach clearly demonstrated that putting AI into the hands of creative teams who are eager to dive in and explore its potential can make the impossible not just possible but also multiply its power.
