Emotive's 'Ultimate Indulgence' Used AI to Evoke Renaissance Art

Emotive’s latest work for Yoghurt brand Ultimate, ‘The Ultimate Indulgence’, is a large-format OOH execution evoking renaissance oil paintings with AI-generated imagery.

The branding positions Ultimate as extravagant and indulgent, and leans into the quirks and imperfections of AI art to feel like brushstrokes on canvas.

Emotive CEO Simon Joyce said the work isn’t meant to pass as real, but as artworks as elegant as Ultimate.

“We think it works because the audience doesn’t pause to question whether it’s real or not,” Simon said.

“It's an oil painting after all. That’s key. And it reinforces our approach: whenever possible, we use real humans. Not just for authenticity, but because they connect in ways AI can’t."

The brief came with a two week turnaround and a tight budget for creative, incentivising the AI-led approach to the creative. This meant an overhaul of the traditional workflow, led by Emotive’s AI team.

“Led by our AI task force, most days we’re buzzing about how it can supercharge creativity and take care of the grunt work, freeing us up to invest more in strategy and ideas,” Simon explained.

“One thing I’m loving is watching our talented creatives quite literally become creators. This Ultimate Yoghurt campaign is a great example. Using a new brand platform 'The Ultimate Indulgence', the idea is to position Ultimate as so indulgent, you'll want to eat it in a more elegant and extravagant way.

“For the OOH execution, we wanted consumers to feel like characters from Renaissance paintings. One problem: two weeks and a tight budget.

“So our creative and design team, led by Edward Macaulay and Christopher Cooper, became modern-day renaissance artists. They built and tested an AI-powered pipeline to bring this idea to life in a really unexpected way for the category, fast.”

The creative team didn’t just prompt an AI image generator -- it used the tool to enhance the creative work and speed up development.

Simon admitted as an indie agency owner, fear does occasionally creep in about the impact of AI on long term business fundamentals, but remained optimistic that campaigns like this can actually benefit from fast, AI-led approaches.

A full-scale OOH production of this nature would usually have taken between four and eight weeks, with the process including things like shooting and retouching.

“I think it’s fair to say most agencies are on a wild ride with AI, despite appearing to have it all under control.

“Big thanks to the team at Danone for backing this led by Xavier Gonzalez, and the broader Emotive crew [including] Liam Walker, Sophia Del, Darren Wright, [and] Rupert Taylor."