As technology continues to evolve and new trends emerge, it's becoming increasingly important for businesses to leverage the latest tools and techniques to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge. One such tool that has become increasingly popular in recent years is creative automation. 

This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses create and distribute digital assets, from graphics and videos to social media content and email marketing campaigns. 

In this article, we'll explore why creative automation is an essential tool for businesses in 2023 and how it can help drive growth, efficiency, and success in today's rapidly changing business landscape.

What is creative automation?

Creative automation is a relatively new approach to asset creation that uses technology to streamline and automate the content creation process. 

It involves using software tools and other technologies to automate tasks that were previously done manually, such as graphic design, video editing, and copywriting. 

Creative automation tools can help organizations create digital assets more efficiently, reduce costs, and ensure brand consistency. They can also enable organizations to create personalized content at scale, tailoring messaging to individual customers based on their interests and behavior.

As the volume and complexity of digital creatives continue to grow, creative automation is becoming an increasingly important tool for organizations looking to stay competitive.

The current state of creative automation 

Creative automation has come a long way in recent years, thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning. 

Today, there are many tools and platforms available that can help automate certain aspects of creative work, such as generating content, designing graphics, and even writing code. Let’s look at a few types of tools. 

Most of them use GANs or Generative adversarial networks (GANs) which are a type of deep learning algorithm that has gained a lot of attention in the creative industry for their ability to generate new, high-quality images and videos.

The way GANs work is by having two neural networks compete against each other. One network, called the generator, creates new images or videos, while the other network, called the discriminator, tries to distinguish between the generated images and real images from a training set. 

Over time, the generator learns to create increasingly realistic images or videos in order to fool the discriminator.

In creative automation, GANs are being used to generate everything from realistic portraits to synthetic landscapes. Brands are using them to create personalized content for users. Here’s how:

Text 

GANs can also be used to generate text through a technique called text generation or language modeling. In text generation, GANs are trained on a large dataset of text, such as books, articles, or social media posts, and learn to generate new, original text based on that dataset.

Brands can use GAN-generated text for various applications, such as generating product descriptions, social media posts, and marketing copy. 

For example, a brand may train a GAN model on a large dataset of their own product descriptions and use the model to generate new descriptions for new products. This can save time and resources compared to manually writing descriptions for each new product.

GANs can also be used to generate personalized content for customers, such as personalized email newsletters or chatbot conversations. By training a GAN model on customer data, such as purchase history, search history, and other behavioral data, a brand can generate personalized content that is tailored to each customer's preferences.

Videos and images

GANs can be used to generate personalized posts for customers. For example, a brand could use a GAN model to generate personalized image-based carousel ads for individual customers based on their browsing history, purchase history, and other behavioral data. 

This increases engagement and conversion rates by providing a more personalized and relevant experience for each customer.

GANs can also be used to generate video content for social media marketing campaigns. For example, a brand could use a GAN model to generate short, visually striking videos for use on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. 

These videos could be optimized for specific demographics, interests, and behaviors, allowing the brand to reach a wider audience and drive more engagement.

Benefits of creative automation

Here are some of the major benefits of creative automation:

Increases efficiency

Traditionally, creating marketing content can be a time-consuming and resource-intensive task, often involving multiple team members with different skill sets. 

Creative automation, on the other hand, allows brands to streamline this process and automate many of the more repetitive tasks, such as resizing images, formatting content, or video editing. 

This, in turn, frees up staff to focus on more strategic tasks such as developing creative concepts, reviewing content quality, and optimizing campaigns.

Moreover, creative automation tools have become more sophisticated, enabling brands to produce high-quality content quickly and efficiently. 

For instance, AI-powered content creation platforms allow brands to create engaging visuals and graphics quickly, without needing extensive design experience.

Additionally, video creation tools enable brands to create professional-looking videos without the need for extensive video editing experience.

Improves brand consistency 

One of the ways creative automation helps brands ensure consistency is by providing pre-defined templates for marketing materials. 

These templates can include branding elements such as colors, fonts, and logos, ensuring that all marketing materials created are consistent with the brand's visual identity. 

Additionally, templates can be created for specific channels such as social media, email marketing, or advertising, ensuring that messaging is tailored to the specific platform.

Another way creative automation helps ensure consistency is by providing access to brand guidelines. These guidelines can include information on the brand's values, tone of voice, and other important messaging elements, and ensures that all marketing materials created are aligned with the brand's overall messaging strategy. 

With creative automation, these guidelines can be stored in a centralized location and easily accessed by all team members involved in creating marketing materials.

Furthermore, creative automation platforms allow brands to manage their content production process in a centralized way, ensuring that all materials go through the necessary approval process before being published. 

By creating workflows and approvals within the platform, brands can ensure that all materials are reviewed and approved before being released, ensuring that all messaging is consistent and on-brand.

Helps create personalized content 

One way to personalize content at scale with creative automation is by using data to segment customers into specific groups based on their interests and behavior. 

By analyzing customer data such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and engagement with marketing materials, brands can identify patterns that allow them to segment their audience into groups with similar interests and behaviors. 

Once these segments have been identified, brands can create customized messaging and marketing materials for each group.

Another way to personalize content at scale is by using automation tools to create dynamic content that changes based on individual customer behavior. Think of it as having a digital assistant that tailors content to each customer's preferences, making your communication more personalized and engaging with the help of workflow automation.

For example, an e-commerce brand could use automation tools to show customers personalized product recommendations based on their browsing history and purchase behavior. Similarly, a travel brand could use automation tools to show customers personalized travel recommendations based on their location and past travel behavior.

Reduces content production costs

Creative automation tools reduce content production costs by automating repetitive tasks such as image resizing, formatting, and video editing. 

Additionally, automation tools can reduce errors that can occur during manual tasks, ensuring that the content is produced accurately and efficiently.

Another way that creative automation can reduce content production costs is by reducing the need for human intervention. With automation tools, brands can create marketing materials quickly and easily without requiring extensive knowledge or experience in design or video editing, thereby improving the overall efficiency of the workflow system.

This means that brands can reduce their reliance on specialized staff and freelancers, thereby reducing their overall production costs.

Assists in launching new products quickly

With automation tools, brands can quickly create and publish marketing materials that highlight the key features and benefits of their new products or services. That means that brands can launch their new products or services faster and start generating revenue more quickly.

Creative automation can also help brands respond more quickly to changing market conditions by providing a flexible and scalable content production process. For example, if a new trend or development emerges in the market, brands can create and publish new marketing materials quickly and efficiently, making it easier to respond to changing market conditions.

Another way that creative automation can help brands bring new products and services to market faster is by allowing them to test and optimize their marketing materials in real time. With automation tools, brands can easily track the performance of their marketing materials, making it easier to identify areas that need improvement.A Creative management tool further streamlines the process, optimizing creative assets for more effective marketing.

This means that brands can quickly make changes to their marketing materials, optimizing them for better performance, and ultimately generating more revenue.

How Artwork Flow’s creative automation helps brands

• Publish everything, everywhere, all at once: Artwork Flow's creative automation tool makes it easy to meet campaign requirements by scaling designs and publishing them across multiple channels simultaneously. This saves time and effort, allowing you to focus on big-picture creativity.

• Build on-brand designs with ease: With Artwork Flow, you can ensure that every design reflects your brand guidelines by using shapes, colors, text, and other elements that are modeled after your brand. You can evaluate finished creatives for guideline implementation and proofing to identify areas of improvement with a comprehensive brand score for every creative stored in your library.

• Enhance creatives with templates: When you need a quick start on your next project, Artwork Flow offers a vast collection of templates that you can choose from and edit instantly. You can also introduce brand colors and elements for a personalized touch, making it easy to scale your latest design.

• Create limitless variations in minutes: With Artwork Flow's AI engine, you can go from one design to thousands in a small fraction of the time it would take to create a single variation manually. Simply upload data on the variations you need in a spreadsheet and let the software do the rest.

• Personalize messaging on a global scale: Connect with your audience in their own voice by adding localized context to your variations, enabling you to scale your creatives with a sharp, personal focus. This helps you build your brand reputation across borders and connect with customers on a more personal level.

How to implement creative automation at an organization?

Implementing creative automation in an organization requires a strategic approach and a clear understanding of the organization's needs and goals. Here are some steps to follow when implementing creative automation:

Assess your organization’s needs

Assessing the organization's needs is a crucial step in implementing creative automation. It involves identifying areas where automation can provide the most value and address pain points or inefficiencies in the content production process. 

This might include identifying repetitive tasks that can be automated to save time and reduce the risk of errors. It could also involve looking for areas where the content production process can be streamlined, such as automating the approval process for marketing materials or using templates to ensure consistency across different channels. 

Additionally, assessing the organization's needs might involve identifying opportunities to improve the quality and consistency of marketing materials, such as using automation tools to personalize content for individual customers or segmenting audiences for targeted messaging. 

This helps identify areas where automation can provide the most value and ensure that the implementation of creative automation software is tailored to the specific needs and goals of the organization.

Identify the right automation tools

After assessing the organization's needs, the next step in implementing creative automation is identifying the right automation tools that can help address those needs. There are many different automation tools available, and it's important to choose the ones that are most relevant to the organization's specific needs and goals. 

For example, if the organization produces a lot of visual content, it might be beneficial to invest in a graphic design tool that can help automate the design process and ensure consistent branding. 

Similarly, if the organization has a strong social media presence, it might be useful to invest in a social media management tool that can help automate the posting process and provide analytics to track engagement.

 Other automation tools that might be relevant include email marketing tools to automate email campaigns, content management systems to automate content creation and distribution, and video editing tools to automate the creation of video content. 

By identifying the right automation tools, organizations can streamline their content production process, improve efficiency, and produce high-quality marketing materials that are tailored to their specific needs and goals.

Develop a training plan

Developing a training plan can help ensure that team members feel confident and competent in using the automation tools, which can ultimately lead to more efficient and effective content production. 

It also demonstrates a commitment to investing in employees' professional development, which can improve morale and retention rates.

When developing a training plan for creative automation tools, it's important to consider the complexity of the tools and the existing skill set of the team members who will be using them. For example, if the tools are relatively straightforward and the team has some experience with similar tools, online resources, tutorials, or videos might be sufficient to provide the necessary training. 

However, if the tools are more complex or if team members have limited experience with similar tools, in-person training sessions might be more effective. This might involve bringing in experts or designated trainers from the automation tool provider or working with internal subject matter experts to develop customized training materials. 

Measure results

Measuring the results of creative automation is an important step in the implementation process because it allows organizations to track the effectiveness of their efforts and identify areas for improvement. 

Metrics such as production time, cost savings, and the quality and consistency of marketing materials can provide valuable insights into the impact of creative automation on the organization's overall marketing strategy. 

By tracking these metrics over time, organizations can identify areas where further improvements can be made and refine their automation process accordingly. 

For example, if the organization is not seeing the expected cost savings, it might need to reevaluate its automation strategy or identify additional areas where automation could be implemented to reduce costs further. 

Similarly, if the quality or consistency of marketing materials is not meeting expectations, it might be necessary to provide additional training or refine the automation process to ensure that all materials adhere to brand guidelines.

Wrapping up

Creative automation is no longer just a buzzword in 2023, it has become an essential tool for organizations to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. 

With the increasing demand for personalized and high-quality digital content, creative automation can help organizations scale their digital assets without sacrificing quality, efficiency, or brand consistency. 

By leveraging creative automation tools, organizations can streamline their content creation process, reduce costs, and create personalized content at scale. 

As we continue to see advancements in technology, it's clear that creative automation is here to stay and will become even more important in the years to come.

About Artwork Flow

Artwork Flow is an end-to-end project management tool that manages your workflow and simplifies creative collaboration and brand asset management. 

It helps you create templates, workflows, and checklists to collaborate with team members and go to market on time. 

For more information on how Artwork Flow can help your team, contact us now for a quick demo or get started with a free trial today.

‍