IPG Health’s Studio Rx supercharges campaign production with Adobe Firefly and Custom Models

Part of the highly awarded IPG Health network, Studio Rx is a global production company that partners with the world's biggest healthcare brands, helping them deliver impactful and innovative marketing content. When Studio Rx decided to embark on its own digital rebranding, they were determined to leverage their expertise in generative AI to make the campaigns truly come to life.

Studio Rx had access to Adobe Firefly and Custom Models, which their holding company Interpublic Group (IPG) had adopted and made available to agencies across their global network — powering both client work and internal marketing campaigns. In what would have taken months to plan and execute, Studio Rx used Firefly to implement an entirely new brand identity in just weeks.

The campaign was anchored around a family of characters named the “Rxies.” In a mere 10 days, over 20 new Rxie assets were delivered on their website. And while productivity and efficiency gains were the initial objective, the team was impressed by the level of creative control and quality delivered by Firefly. Studio Rx was able to significantly shorten a time-intensive process, while maintaining the same high standard of creative output. Here is how they did it.

Transforming sketches into digital art

When planning their new brand identity, Studio Rx set out to showcase its AI production chops while embodying the agency's unyielding positive spirit. The process began with a series of hand-drawn illustrations by the studio’s digital arts team, which showcased the Rxies, a whimsical cast of characters representing the studio's capabilities and offerings. In one example, a heart shaped character was shown running on a treadmill, while another character was seen working with objects that mimicked a human molecule.

Once the sketches were approved, the team put Adobe Firefly to work. Using Structure Reference and Style Reference, which use a reference image’s style and structure to create multiple variations, the ideas on paper were quickly transformed into final digital art. With a retouching pass in Creative Cloud apps to make the images consistent, over 20 final assets were delivered and showcased on the website in just 10 days, speeding up the previous process by 5x. In short order, the Rxies were born.

“When we used Adobe Firefly for this campaign, we knew we had trusted technology that could provide the efficiency gains we were looking for, while enabling us to maintain creative control over the content,” said Matt Hall, Executive Creative director, Studio Rx. “What made it really special was how Firefly allowed us to retain the personality and style of our artist's work in the finished images, a critical aspect of how we wanted to portray our brand.”

Rxie multiplied

Of course, a new brand identity requires more than 20 images, and the team needed fresh content for both the website and other digital marketing channels. This is expected to span a high volume of variations across everything from email campaigns to social media posts. And while Studio Rx had already delivered the Rxies onto its website, this was taken a step further with Adobe Firefly’s Custom Models.

The team trained Firefly with the initial set of Rxie images (20 in total), creating a customized solution for the agency that could instantly create new backgrounds, subjects and foregrounds for the characters — all while maintaining brand consistency. By fine-tuning Firefly in this way, the team could scale content creation for a wide variety of use cases, without too much retouching. Working directly from text prompts, they can place Rxies in new environments, poses and styles that suit the future needs of the agency — something they continue to do today.

“AI tools like Adobe Firefly enable Studio Rx to deliver high-quality content with remarkable efficiency, and are scalable to manage the content needs of our healthcare clients” said Graham Johnson, Chief Production officer, IPG Health. “But it also opens up new possibilities of what can be created, such as hyper personalized content for patients or healthcare providers, and that’s something our clients are really intrigued by.”

The role of AI in creativity

Studio Rx is just one example of how IPG Health is harnessing the power of generative AI. Teams can now access generative AI models that are designed to be safe for commercial use, trained on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock, and public domain content.

Agencies like Studio Rx have a great story to tell around the impact of generative AI on the creative process, with human hands at the helm. In Studio Rx’s case, the efficiency gains and time savings complemented efforts to drive new creative expression. Firefly translated the creatives' ideas onto digital paper instantly, creating a family of characters that now anchors a brand identity for the agency, while also demonstrating their innovative capabilities.

Studio Rx is part of the IPG Health network, a global collective of the world’s most celebrated and awarded healthcare marketing agencies. With over 6,500 people across six continents driven by a healthy obsession with creating novel marketing solutions, the network harnesses creativity, technology, science and data to inspire behaviors that fuel better health. IPG Health companies have earned coveted accolades in 2024 and 2023 including “Healthcare Network of the Year” at Cannes Lions, Ad Age A-List, New York Festivals Health Awards and the Manny Awards. IPG Health was also recognized as “Healthcare Network of the Year” at the 2023 Clio Health Awards, London International Awards and MM+M Awards.