eight&four nominated for Best AI Innovation for ‘Coach’

We’re thrilled to share that eight&four has been nominated for Best AI Innovation for Coach, an AI-driven image generator tool for brands. Coach gives clients access to a fresh approach to content creation without compromising on quality. 

eight&four Overview

We’re a full-service social and content agency and have been building power for brands since 2008. We continuously adapt capabilities to solve the social & content challenges of the world’s most ambitious brands. As the landscape of social & content continues to become more fragmented, our role is to offer the skills and expertise to unlock the latest trend; with the experience and professionalism to always ask the ‘why’.

Coach

As an agency, we’re exploring how AI tools can maximise our creative output and unlock new possibilities for our clients. For this, we have a dedicated, in-house Creative Technology team who have been building a range of proprietary AI tools over the last 18 months.

Our flagship product is Coach, a powerful hyper-realistic image generator, which sits on our core technology Platform12.

The idea for Coach stemmed from issues our luxury automotive client, Genesis, was experiencing with costly and logistically difficult shoots. Transporting a specifically configured car, to an international location, for a handful of shots, represents poor ROI. As their lead social agency for Europe for three years, we have large libraries of owned, brand images for every model of car. We wanted to leverage these as a training set to generate new, bespoke content.

In Coach, we’ve developed a game-changing tool that can be trained specifically on a client’s branded content or brand world to generate new, ownable product content – without the need for a costly, on-location photoshoot. Coach can now create high-quality, high-volume content at a fraction of the cost, delivered faster than ever – providing Genesis with a shortcut to a full content pipeline.

How does Coach work?

It’s like directing shoots from your desk, with the freedom to take your product anywhere in the world.

·  First step is to agree a shot list – this defines the training program for Coach – specifying products, features and environments (from Parisian streets to Alpine slopes)

·  This creates our stills-only shot list

·  Shot list then defines the budget for the ‘shoot’ – typically 60%-70% less than cost of a typical product photoshoot as logistics and location costs fall away

·  Client and eight&four collect all required brand assets, ready to be securely uploaded to Coach

·  Once training is complete, the stills are generated (2-3 options per shot for client review), once agreed, final artworking to client sign-off

·  Typical projects 2-4 weeks from sign-off – allowing rapid turnarounds

To date, we’ve deployed Coach-made assets across Genesis social channels, as part of our content retainer, driving efficiencies in our BAU work. For our creatives, it’s inspired a new, unrestricted way of thinking about the content. The process saves time, taking out the guesswork of painstakingly patching together carefully chosen images to create the perfect image in Photoshop. Moreover, it means we can be truly reactive for our clients, with quick turnaround times, from that initial spark of inspiration to creating a client-ready asset.

With this new AI-enhanced approach, we’re able to mobilise catch-all creative thinking that fuels our client’s content requirements for 2024 across pan-European marketing channels.

In an industry where the big networks are throwing hundreds of millions at their in-house GenAI technology, our ability to deliver cutting-edge technology, before the big players – at a fraction of the investment – deserves recognition. For us to build this tool in-house, and take it to the stages of Adweek, and the homepage of The Drum, is testament to the talent and agility of the eight&four team.