Automated Alignment: Guiding Visual Generative AI for Brand Building and Customer Engagement

Generative AI is poised to transform the way in which brands market to consumers. Recent research has demonstrated the potential benefits of AI in producing text, but limited work has examined how marketers can leverage AI to create visual assets. Visual elements play a crucial role in communicating with and engaging consumers, and visual generative AI has shown impressive performance in generating objective image content. But is it possible to train generative AI directly on marketing objectives? Making use of open-source generative AI tools, we propose a flexible algorithm that is informed by consumer responses to create images for marketing communications that are designed to achieve particular objectives. We illustrate how marketers can use their own visual assets and those of their competitors to tailor a generative AI for their brand's use. Our results show that producing content in this way can be more effective at various stages of the purchase funnel than the brand's own marketing content. Beyond funnel metrics, we demonstrate that generative AI can be used to convey specific dimensions of brand personality without compromising on brand engagement. Taken together, we discuss the implications for brand marketers and their agencies.