How Our Occasions Crew Saved Hundreds utilizing AI for INBOUND ’24

When HubSpot’s International Occasions Crew had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren’t certain concerning the artistic path they’d take.

One factor was clear although: Given how big AI has turn out to be in the previous couple of years, they knew they’d incorporate it in some way.

I related with the staff to study extra concerning the necessary position AI performed in pre-production – from creating eye-catching visuals with Midjourney to focused agendas with Claude.

Creating Recent Interstitials

Previous to INBOUND 2024, the staff saved the onsite interstitials fairly constant year-over-year, sticking to static visible imagery and lightweight animation.

It was time for a change.

As an alternative of graphics that may disappear into the background, they needed to create interstitals attendees would need to have interaction with.

“This 12 months, AI has been huge, and we obtained an intro to Midjourney and the work that Eduardo had been doing with the instrument,” mentioned Sav Aaver, former HubSpot manufacturing supervisor who led the collaboration. “We determined to look into that so as to add extra curiosity to our screens, create a brand new ingredient so individuals have one thing to take a look at that sparks dialog, in the event that they’re sitting and ready and dealing between periods.”

The International Occasions staff tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez, a lead designer on HubSpot’s Visible Design staff, to supervise the manufacturing of contemporary interstitials with AI – leveraging Midjourney, Topaz and Runway.

They weren’t attempting to create one thing web new, he says, however they needed to push their branding.

“We didn‘t need it to really feel like, ‘Oh yeah, that is very on the model. It’s precisely what we might count on,’” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “We needed to discover, as a result of AI offers us these prospects – you may take it wherever you need however nonetheless preserve the identical type of the model.”

After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:

An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very summary and intently tied to the HubSpot model.
An prolonged model for every stage.
A 3rd, surreal, summary metropolis theme

The Artistic Course of with AI

From begin to end, it took the staff roughly a month and a half to generate 28 remaining movies, with 14 minutes of run time tailored for seven display varieties on the venue.

Beginning with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colours which have at all times been the muse for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed these preliminary pictures to Midjourney.

That allowed him to generate preliminary concepts and choices to current to the International Occasions staff.

With AI, the particular person doing the prompting turns into the director, he says.

“You‘re telling the AI. ‘Right here’s my imaginative and prescient. Now, exit and try this,’” he says, “It takes some time, however in the event you examine that to a staff, you continue to want any person to drive the imaginative and prescient.”

As soon as each groups agreed on the ultimate 2D pictures for every stage and site, Garcia-Lopez headed to Runway for mini video shorts and animation.

“It took me roughly two days to create the Boston mini paper metropolis, producing all of the flat pictures and making a storyboard, going into Runway and animating all of them,” he says. “Then, I went into Adobe Premiere to edit the entire thing.”

He additionally used Topaz, an AI enhancing software program that enhances the standard of AI movies. 

I puzzled, how a lot would it not value if the staff labored with a vendor to create these property the quaint method. 

Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take at the least two weeks and hundreds of {dollars}.

That mentioned, Midjourney wasn’t exempt from the eccentricities that occur while you use AI to imitate actuality.

“What I offered to the staff was essentially the most presentable, the cleanest choices, however behind the curtains, there have been many generations that weren’t popping out nicely,” Garcia-Lopez says. “It was very uneven. You’ll have one thing bizarre occur – buses going into one another, buses working into individuals, like all these bizarre issues.”

What took plenty of time was figuring out the most effective takes and cleansing up inconsistencies, he says. Fortunately, AI works quick.

“We have been iterating in a matter of days. We’d have new choices in a pair hours, so it was very, very quick,” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “As a designer, we might’ve wanted a giant staff to ship all of those property, even an illustration for all of the variation of kinds.”

With Midjourney’s help, he was in a position to create 25 distinct kinds – a outcome he calls “nearly unthinkable” within the time they’d.

“You want a giant staff with particular expertise to perform a particular type,” he says, “and we have been in a position to go wild and select what we needed.”

AI isn’t with out its limitations.

Once I requested Garcia-Lopez concerning the design challenges that include leveraging AI, he mentioned there’s a giant one individuals typically neglect.

“Enhancing one thing is definitely fairly exhausting. With an editable file, like a vector-based design in Adobe Illustrator, you may change each little element,” he says. “With Midjourney and these AI instruments, it isn’t that straightforward.”

It’s a delusion that enhancing with AI is fast, he says. For instance, coloration smart, you may not at all times get the very same colours you’d obtain from a coloration palette. However you will get one thing fairly shut.

Aaver echoes that sentiment.

“It was a giant studying expertise for us, because the approvers and reviewers,” she mentioned, “studying what we will and may‘t give suggestions on, what’s a straightforward change, what’s not really easy.”

As well as, AI isn’t doing the majority of the work, opposite to standard perception. There’s plenty of bringing it again to Adobe after which feeding it again into the AI mannequin to get the outcomes that you really want., Garcia-Lopez says.

“You are able to do so much with a small staff, however you want expertise in different software program and an excellent background to resolve plenty of these points,” he provides.

Creating Customized Agendas for Attendees

Along with interstitials, the International Occasions staff additionally turned to Anthropic’s Claude to create property.

“We needed to think about security and we love Claude as a result of it would not prepare on the information you enter,”mentioned Matt Diaz, the staff lead on HubSpot’s International Occasions staff. “It has a big context window so we might add plenty of info for it to coach on and provides us the output with out protecting that information for its system.”

They needed to develop attendee personas and create focused agendas, which might then be used to advertise the occasion in an interactive “Select Your Personal INBOUND Journey” quiz.

The staff’s first step was asking Claude to create focused agendas, based mostly on INBOUND’s periods and audio system, their purchaser personas, and their targets and aims.

“It was ready to try this inside a minute,” Diaz says, “It was actually detailed, it was unimaginable.”

Their subsequent step was instructing Claude to ensure every agenda was distinctive, with out overlapping periods, ensuring so as to add the chatbot for context and reasoning behind its decisions.

The method took two to 3 rounds of opinions, as Claude would typically hallucinate, creating periods or audio system that didn’t exist.

The entire course of took lower than a full day, in accordance with the staff.

“In the event you have been to rent a staff to try this, you‘re speaking a number of days,” Diaz says, “and so they’re going to hit you over the pinnacle with some huge cash to try this. And this was the worth of a Claude professional subscription.”

As soon as their focused agenda was constructed, they created devoted personas for every agenda. This included marketing-focused ones just like the AI-Pushed Chief and the Advertising Technologist, sales-ones just like the Go-To-Market Strategist, and founder-inspired ones just like the Information-Pushed Chief.

The second half of this mission concerned making a character quiz that attendees might take to match their persona to a focused agenda.

“We have been working below the idea that, particularly on social media, individuals do not need to go and discover out who they’re,” mentioned Sarah Hughes, the social media lead on the International Occasions staff. “They wish to be informed who they’re via these quizzes or character checks.”

The most important problem was making certain that the quiz’s scoring system had even odds for every agenda, i.e. ensuring all quiz takers weren’t getting matched to the identical focused agena.

“Claude obtained us roughly 85% of the best way, after which it got here to determining that scoring rubric and ensuring that it made sense for all of the personas,” mentioned Senior Content material Advertising Supervisor Lanna Nguyen.

They revealed it on the INBOUND weblog, driving site visitors by way of e mail and social channels. To say it was profitable is a little bit of an understatement.

“In all of our 2024 weblog posts, it was the third ranked by way of impressions behind one other publish that we put plenty of paid spend behind,” mentioned Lanna.

This quiz turned a worthwhile useful resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she provides.

With so many ‘AI gone improper’ tales floating round, this can be a small case research into AI getting it proper.