In May, Conair Corporation’s e-commerce team ran an A/B test of Amazon’s Creative Agent, a new AI tool that produces end-to-end ad campaigns. The resulting 15-second video promoting subsidiary Cuisinart’s food processor boosted engagement among e-commerce shoppers, securing 18% higher detailed page views and a 14% reduction in cost per detail page view compared to a traditional brand-produced video, said Justin Swenson, senior vice president of e-commerce at Conair.
Human labor was still needed to complete the test video to the Cuisinart brand’s standards, per Swenson. But the AI tool still produced the video in roughly four weeks — significantly faster than the three to six months it typically takes to complete such videos without it, potentially an important advantage as video engagement grows.
“We're moving faster than some of our peers on this,” said Swenson. “I think this test probably put us in an advantageous position in the category.”
A reason to scale up
Conair is among a growing number of companies that have used AI tools to create digital ad videos — a trend that has cut down production time but has also come with criticism, backlash and even mockery by companies including Blue Diamond’s Almond Breeze.
The Cuisinart test was carried out with an agency called Global Overview over 30 days in April and May with the aim of cutting down the backlog of ad videos the company was trying to produce, said Swenson.
The results showed “there is definitely something pretty compelling here,” said Swenson. “Now it's on us to figure out how to take this and scale it.”
The ad itself is fairly straightforward. “Last minute dinner party?” the ad’s voiceover asks as the video shows a smiling AI-generated family working together in a kitchen and chopping up carrots to feed into the appliance.
The food processor with a 14-cup capacity can handle “everything from pesto to pie crust” the voiceover states as viewers see different and ingredients being blended in the device while upbeat music plays in the background.
The words “Easy, Peasy, Lemon, Squeezy” appear on the screen, followed by a screen showing the food processor and letting viewers know the product is from Cuisinart and available on Amazon.
Testing an AI tool that addresses brand needs
The Conair e-commerce team decided to test the AI tool after seeing it on display at Amazon Ad’s unBoxed conference in Nashville, Tennessee last November, said Swenson.
The team wanted to “bring our brands to life, our products to life on Amazon” in a way its brands wouldn’t necessarily be able to do so on their own, said Swenson.
They also faced a bottleneck in producing advanced digital creation assets, as it could take months to complete a video that entered the queue, Swenson said.
Conair chose the Cuisinart food processor as the test subject given it is a core product that lacked a video that demonstrated its capabilities in action and communicated its key benefits to consumers, he said..
During the test, Conair’s e-commerce team provided Global Overview, an early adopter of Creative Agent, with detailed creative briefs. The agency used the briefs to create multiple prompts for Amazon’s AI creative agent and handled the asset development of the videos throughout the tests.
In the end, Creative Agent produced 80% of the food processor video concept at a much faster speed than the marketers would have been able to complete themselves, said Swenson. The remaining 20% of the work was completed through Global Overview, which made manual fixes to the AI-generated video — correcting areas that were not properly executed, such as adding in logos and adjusting colors to match brand guidelines, he said.
The next steps for expanding use
Conair has seen much stronger engagement with video content in general in recent years, and more competitors are entering the video space — increasing the importance of AI tools to help with production, said Kelsey Smithuysen, Conair’s director of Amazon advertising.
Amazon’s AI technology was not just faster, it produced content that better connected with e-commerce shoppers — as the video leaned into the ease of using Cuisinart’s food processor and how it's not just for chefs or true cooks, said Smithuysen.
Creative Agent’s effectiveness in showing how Cuisinart’s product worked likely helped the video’s performance, said Swenson.
Given the success of the test, Cuisinart plans to accelerate its use of the Creative Agent AI technology, Swenson added. It just needs to figure out the workflow and prioritization details surrounding how it will be used.
Cuisinart didn’t receive any pushback from its internal marketing organization during the test, as the teams work closely together to ensure the content they produce maintains the brand’s tone, voice and visual DNA, said Swenson.
And, as of now, humans are still needed to guide the creation of the videos, given the state of the technology, which at times alters brand logos, numbers or letters, noted Smithuysen.
