How Gravity Road is using its AI tool to perform not impress
The agency’s co-founder Mark Eaves on the real creative impact of the agency’s AI platform Pencil
How Gravity Road is using its AI tool to perform not impress
The agency’s co-founder Mark Eaves on the real creative impact of the agency’s AI platform Pencil
Like shoppers once storming stores on the Black Fridays of old, agencies over the past three years have been racing to buy and use the newest and shiniest generative AI platforms out there, (maybe that metaphor was slightly too aggressive). All purchases have been made with a view to increasing efficiency, but it would be remiss not to suggest that the hype around AI has contributed.
Mark Eaves, co-founder of Gravity Road, admitted,
in the height of the AI acquisitions that the industry was “awash with paper-thin Gen AI announcements”.
His agency, along with its parent company Brandtech, wanted to stand apart from the crowd when it acquired Pencil AI Pro in 2023, with the clear goal of enhancing both effectiveness and creativity for its client partners.
We caught up with Eaves not only to explore how Pencil works, but also to discuss the impact AI has had on Gravity Road and what the future holds for creativity in the age of generative AI.
How did Pencil AI come about within The Brandtech Group, and what was the vision behind it?
Mark Eaves: Brandtech has been investing in AI since it was founded in 2015.
The vision for the group has always been that all marketing can be done better, faster and cheaper using technology.
Ten years ago not many people understood that machine-generated content would be a thing but it was one of the founding pillars of the business. The Group has invested in multiple companies in the AI space. So Founder and CEO David Jones and the Brandtech team were always looking for companies that were using AI to do marketing - and they found Pencil which has been using Gen AI to make ads since 2018.
How does Pencil AI actually work in practice, and how is it different from other generative AI tools?
Mark Eaves: Pencil has now made more than five million ads, so that is one major difference. It’s real and is delivering Gen AI at scale for some of the world’s biggest brands. But the major differences are that it is an aggregator of all the major generative AI models, including Google’s Veo 3, Midjourney, Sora etc, so brands don’t have to commit to one tool and regret that later. They are all available under one set of terms so having to make separate deals with multiple platforms can be avoided.
Clients retain copyright and we also have a strict ‘no train’ policy with their data.
It uses predictive AI as well as generative AI; it does this by deploying the $3.5 billion media spend that has flowed through it to make performance predictions on content. It connects directly to brands’ ad accounts and is the only real end-to-end platform that can go from insight to media placement.
And finally, it has been creating ads using Gen AI since 2018, and it has therefore been through the learning curve that everyone else is now going through. Its big recent move has been the integrations to build and integrate agents for specific tasks.
How has integrating Pencil into Gravity Road’s workflow changed the way your teams create and collaborate?
Mark Eaves: There's a lot of granular stuff that I won't go into, but at a higher order level, it has changed the way ideas are developed.
Often we find teams are now iterating in reverse: instead of building up to an idea, you pare down from a generated possibility.
Can you share an example of a campaign where Pencil played a big role?
Mark Eaves: There’s lots, from end-to-end digital creative for clients like Unilever and Smart Energy, through to using it for the latest global Reuters campaign. Pencil allowed the team to roll out the creative idea rapidly, and iterate different executions - even extending to a 3D video billboard execution in Times Square NY, which is the first time the tech has been used in this way. In an irony I love, the campaign highlighted the dangers of AI when it comes to the news.
Also it’s not binary - teams are very often shooting original content for a campaign and then integrating it into an AI workflow for speed and flexibility.
Has AI changed what “great creative work” means for you and your clients?
Mark Eaves: No. In fact, it reinforces and highlights the need for a strong idea. It’s too easy to move into "production" (whatever that means these days) without having scrutinised the quality and validity of the idea. In some ways the ease of making can undermine the rigour of distilled thinking, so it needs extra vigilance. But the balance will return.
You’ve said “mediocrity is free now” - how do you see AI improving the quality and originality of ideas, not just productivity?
Mark Eaves: I like to frame the state of play like this: you can now do quite unexceptional things in very exceptional ways. What I mean is, I could show you a perfectly crafted product film and it would look great, but it wouldn’t in itself be exceptional. It’s only when I tell you how it was made - that no product shoot took place, and the whole thing was rendered through a complicated workflow of four or five of the latest Gen AI tools - that you would see the exceptional nature of its existence: the speed, the fact that you can get to top level, luxury brand outputs faster and in infinite iterations. That’s probably 95% of the application of Gen AI right now, and it is rewriting our industry.
But there’s this 5% which is about exceptional new things done in exceptional new ways: how can Gen AI tools allow us to realise original ideas in ways we couldn’t even conceive of before.
It’s broader than just moving images too. This is what’s creatively exciting. In the same way the arrival of the open web fired an era of digital creativity around what could be imagined and built.
What are some of the biggest pitfalls or misconceptions about using AI in marketing?
To capitalise on it at a scaled, operationalised level, it requires organisational change and transformation. The tech is often the easier bit; it’s more about how an advertiser needs to evolve their marketing teams to seize the moment.
How are clients responding to AI-led creativity - are they excited, cautious or still testing the waters?
Excited at the possibility. Cautious around whether they have a trusted partner to embark on the journey with. And it varies depending on sector and size. If you’re a small brand with tiny budgets, the competitive opportunity to punch above your weight is huge. Similarly if you’re a global brand with volume there’s a scaled, transformational play for your marketing.
There’s public skepticism around AI and authenticity - how do you address that?
Mark Eaves: People like to see evidence of craft and care. I think we need to bring the same craft and care to AI generated work as we might to CGI, etc. And it’s not surprising that a lot of Gen AI work today either doesn’t feature people, or uses animals instead - right now I'd say the depiction of humans is the cultural danger zone and any argument for it needs to be carefully considered.
Separately, I do think there’s going to be a big growth of IRL to counterbalance AI - experiential; live; big moments in time where the uncopyable experience of it will have disproportionate value for a brand. As will the continued growth of genuine, authored creator content.
How do you see the wider industry adapting - are most agencies genuinely innovating with AI or just talking about it?
Mark Eaves: There’s a lot of press releases and vapourware and big commitments to spend money on building AI tools. I think if you’re a client, the best thing to do is interrogate. If you can’t be given a login to a platform and start generating yourself immediately, there’s probably some smoke and mirrors going on.
What excites you the most about the evolving world of AI?
Mark Eaves: I’ve been heavily involved in founding the newly launched Centre for Creative AI, in partnership with UCL Centre for AI and the Royal College of Art. We have an amazing group of partners on board, including Snap, The Design Museum, Unilever, Royal Ballet and Opera, Runway, etc. And Alex Mahon is chairing it. It’s a commitment to driving and accelerating the application of AI technology to ensure the UK’s creative industry remains world-leading. And we’ll do this by bringing together post-grad students from the worlds of creative arts and tech in more intentional ways to develop new creative ventures.
That’s what excites me - how this technology, applied imaginatively, can reinforce the UK as a global economic and cultural powerhouse in creativity.
What excites you the most about the evolving world of AI?
Mark Eaves: I’ve been heavily involved in founding the newly launched Centre for Creative AI, in partnership with UCL Centre for AI and the Royal College of Art. We have an amazing group of partners on board, including Snap, The Design Museum, Unilever, Royal Ballet and Opera, Runway, etc. And Alex Mahon is chairing it. It’s a commitment to driving and accelerating the application of AI technology to ensure the UK’s creative industry remains world-leading. And we’ll do this by bringing together post-grad students from the worlds of creative arts and tech in more intentional ways to develop new creative ventures.
That’s what excites me - how this technology, applied imaginatively, can reinforce the UK as a global economic and cultural powerhouse in creativity.
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