🤖 We Made Ads With Zero Human Content. Here’s What Happened.

Table of Contents

• Story of the Week: Icon.me is coming for Konstant …

• Our Internal AI Ad Challenge: What We Learned Abou …

• Are You Not Entertained?

Hey all, Happy Friday!

Coming at you live from the West Village, where my desk is finally ready to roll.

Let’s go. Though… there’s potentially a serious mouth-breather next to me. Fingers crossed he’s either a homie or at least packs Altoids (do people still use those? I always really vibed with the sour ones. The real ones know).

Anyway, it’s been a wild week in performance creative and AI. But honestly, which weeks aren’t? This one felt different, though: we dove headfirst into AI video generation, creating an entire set of ads without a single non-AI asset. Zero. Zilch. More on that below.

But first, let’s start with the talk of the town:

Story of the Week: Icon.me is coming for Konstant Kreative

Konstant Kreative, heads up… there’s a new game in town. Icon is making the jump from content tool to full-on creative agency. And the chatter? It’s chattering.

It’s a classic case of going too horizontal, too fast: trying to become the “everything app” before nailing one thing. An inch deep and a mile wide.

Why rush to market with such a broad offering instead of going deep vertically and absolutely owning that lane? Specialization has its merits.

But hey, when you’re racking up likes and comments on LinkedIn and Twitter, it feels inevitable, right? (Below is an actual screenshot of his website.)

Gotta respect the game. Man’s a GTM genius. Can’t deny that.

Our Internal AI Ad Challenge: What We Learned About Generating Video Ads ENTIRELY with AI (wowza!)

Over the past month, we ran an internal competition to answer one question: what’s actually possible when you combine the best AI tools on the market into a single ad-making workflow?

We pulled out everything in the toolkit… Flux Kontext, Midjourney, ChatGPT, Kling, Freepik, and more… and challenged our team to create the best overall AI-generated ad. The goal wasn’t just to make something that looked cool. It was to see how far we could push quality, consistency, and storytelling using AI, and what it really takes to get production-ready outputs.

Here’s what we learned (and how you can apply it):

1. Storyboard first, prompt second.
   Spend 30 minutes outlining 6–8 key shots (e.g., wide opener, close-up product moment, lifestyle scene). This gives your AI generation a clear visual narrative to follow.

2. Use AI for mood-setting.
   Tools like Midjourney (for stills) or Kling (for motion) are excellent for creating cinematic, atmospheric shots. Start with broad creative directions like “soft natural light, handheld aesthetic, cinematic depth of field” before layering in product details. LESS IS MORE!

3. Generate in batches, not one-offs.
   Instead of hoping for a perfect single output, create 10–20 variations per scene. You’ll find that one or two are usable and iteration compounds quality quickly.

Where AI still needs a human hand (and how to fix it):

1. Lock in continuity with image references.
   When you generate characters or props, upload reference images (e.g., same actor face, same outfit) and reuse those prompts across scenes to keep visuals consistent.

2. Plan for label and prop clean-up.
   Product labels are rarely perfect out of the box. Use compositing in After Effects (or even Canva for static frames) to swap in high-res brand assets over AI-generated placeholders.

3. Edit like a filmmaker, not an AI operator.
   The magic isn’t in the generation it’s in the assembly. Sequence your shots, add pacing with cuts, and overlay sound/music to make the video feel intentional and human-made.

Here are a few of our favorite examples from the competition:

Are You Not Entertained?

Brands that are afraid to use AI are missing massive opportunities not just to cut costs, but to lean into the absurdity of it all. AI gives you permission to move fast, try weird, and volume-test creative angles at a speed (and cost) that simply wasn’t humanly possible before.

That’s why I love this ad by Phil Kiel for Baby Elegance. It doesn’t hide the fact that it’s AI-generated. In fact, it does the opposite it calls it out. And in doing so, it feels fresh, self-aware, and perfectly tuned to the internet’s “don’t take yourself too seriously” attention economy.

If you’re not experimenting like this, you’re leaving creative reach and real performance insights on the table.

That’s it for this week. Between Icon’s big swing at Konstant Kreative, our team’s AI ad cage match, and some truly unhinged (and brilliant) work like Phil Kiel’s Baby Elegance ad, one thing is clear: this industry is moving at warp speed, and the brands willing to experiment (and laugh at themselves a little) are going to win.

So go try something weird. Make an ad that makes you nervous. Call it AI. Hell, call it out for being AI. But don’t sit still.

Catch you next week hopefully with fewer mouth-breathers and even wilder ideas.

Have a great weekend!

Will