OLIVER supercharges its AI content creation with help from Adobe Firefly Services

In 2004, OLIVER simultaneously opened its doors while, at the same time, stepping through the doors of its first client.

The company’s philosophy was simple: instead of being kept at arm’s length, OLIVER would embed itself into the client’s environment — becoming an extension of the creative marketing ecosystem or creating a new ecosystem altogether. With this, OLIVER pioneered the in-house agency model.

It was an original approach that drove massive success. Today, OLIVER has over 5000 marketing specialists globally working across 500+ brands.

Part of the Brandtech Group, OLIVER is again paving the way for creative innovation. By merging the Brandtech Group’s generative AI platform, Pencil (one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies 2024), Adobe’s Firefly Services and OLIVER’s team of brand-immersed marketers, the in-housing specialist can simplify end-to-end workflows while enabling fast, high-quality idea generation for clients – a concept that gives OLIVER’s creatives more time to be creative.

This collaboration has increased creative production, maximised efficiency gains, as well as helped the in-house teams to meet the growing demand for high-fidelity, commercially safe, on-brand and on-budget content that’s scalable. This is possible by Adobe’s training of Adobe Firefly to use only licensed or public domain content where copyright has expired to mitigate legal risk.

The result? OLIVER’s clients are using Pencil to double the return on their ad spend, creating content 10 times faster.

"Having Firefly Services is like a superpower,” says Brian Eagle, Group head of design at OLIVER. “Its integration with the Pencil platform helps our global in-house teams meet client ambitions and expectations quickly, no matter what size or location.”

Firefly also offers brands peace of mind, Eagle adds. “Its indemnity and commercial safety is unique when compared with other generative AI platforms.”

Generating a world’s-worth of cultural content in minutes

OLIVER used generative AI to develop variations of its own brand icon (what it calls its ‘Pizza Slice’), which shows how the company powers clients’ marketing ecosystems from the inside out. Using Firefly’s Composition Reference capability, designers quickly generated multiple variations of the icon set within culturally-rich environments from around the world. The localisation of the icon helped launch OLIVER’s model across EMEA — and stretch its creative team’s imagination.

“Firefly enables us to work through more iterations and come up with more compelling ideas,” Eagle said. “For instance, Firefly suggested using a wicker chair to illustrate the icon. The prompt created a compelling shot that evoked the image of a Parisian sidewalk café, which helped launch our French office’s social presence. It’s easy to create an image that matches or exceeds the one in their mind.”

Working with generative AI helps creatives prove the strength of their idea while maintaining brand consistency and reducing waste duplication, thanks to Adobe Creative Cloud APIs integrated into the Pencil platform.

Bringing storyboards to life

Not so long ago, when creative teams pitched a video campaign, illustrators would be enlisted to bring each shot to life. Today, creatives prompt Firefly to generate photoreal images of their planned shots.

Eagle, whose client teams have embraced this innovation, said: “There’s less information lost in translation using generated images. With Firefly, designers can show clients different options for shots and angles, colour grading and tone, and various props. In turn, clients can confidently sign off on projects or provide specific feedback so that the final piece matches the storyboard more closely, reducing the need for expensive edits or reshoots. This frees up time for OLIVER’s in-house teams to experiment, delivering more creative ideas — and ultimately more value — to its clients.”

For creatives, the priority has always been to take on purposeful work that drives impact for brands. Firefly gives creative teams the time to focus on more strategic elements to projects, and in doing so elevate their worth.

Learn more about Adobe Firefly Services here.