Tool Launches AI-Powered Production 'TOOLKIT' for Brands and Agencies

This month the world-renowned content production partner and creative technology company Tool introduces a new way for brands and agencies to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) for their production needs - TOOLKIT. Led by Tool’s technical director Wim Vanhenden and creative director Tyler Cohen, this new offering provides creatives, producers and marketers with a solution trained on a brand’s visual data to speed up operations and productions, save time and investment, and delivers on the promise of personalisation in digital advertising.

Since being recognised as the most awarded integrated production company in the world at the Cannes Lions (2016), Tool has pioneered AI work with campaigns for Coca-Cola, Toyota, New Balance, Activision, Niantic and other major brands. In addition to leveraging AI for campaign work, Tool has created TOOLKIT to help brands and agencies modernise their content workflow and unlock the power of AI by training on a brand’s visual DNA and products.

TOOLKIT was designed from the ground up, leveraging Tool’s 15+ years of AI expertise to meet one of their clients’ most pressing needs - understanding how to navigate the emerging field of AI and applying it directly to their content pipeline.  

“Over the last year we’ve heard consistently from our agency and brand partners that the speed and breadth of AI’s growth is just overwhelming,” said Dustin Calif, president of Tool. “This is a watershed moment in the industry and TOOLKIT allows us to combine Tool’s core strengths of content and creative technology production to create custom solutions for our clients, without massive investment.” 

How it works

Tool collaborates with clients on a series of two-four week production sprints that focus on training on a brand’s visual DNA and products. The result is an ownable AI visual data set tailored to the brand. The process utilises advanced machine learning to create foundational models that are used to build product and stylistic data models. This serves as the foundation for applying a brand's visual style to different content use cases, such as  product photography, regionalisation, social media and other tasks. 

Key to this process is how Tool fine-tunes AI models to be trained on visual styles, guidelines and products for brands. From there, Tool builds atop their proprietary TOOLKIT, creating a web-interface that allows clients to create content bespoke to their workflow and marketing needs.  

TOOLKIT is already up and running with inaugural client Under Armour, which recently completed a sprint. On the production side, an upcoming Tool-produced spot for Johnsonville leveraged AI for one of the VFX scenes. Several other Fortune 250 clients are kicking off in 2024. 

For more information on TOOLKIT, please visit here.