The Challenge

Lancel has been creating iconic leather goods since 1876. Almost 150 years later, they’re still at the forefront of what they do - and it’s apparent in their marketing campaigns as much as in their iconic designs. This week, Lancel launched a new campaign to advertise their new Neo Partance travel line. The campaign is one of the first to fully embrace Generative AI as a medium. 

Rather than trying to edit the AI to make it look as realistic as possible, Lancel chose to lean into the surrealist aspect of AI. They wanted to create something that surprised people - something that stood out from other advertising styles. Lancel wanted to create a modern and dynamic shot, whilst retaining the elegance of their brand. They wanted to make sure that the core DNA of Lancel came through - Parisian elegance, colour and joy - but with a twist that could only be pulled off with the use of Generative AI.

The Creative

Lancel used Pencil Pro, a Brandtech Group company, which helps brands and enterprises make ads from scratch using Generative AI. The Pencil Pro platform allowed the team to generate potential concepts for the campaign, and experiment to see what worked best. The team generated imagery for eight different concepts in a matter of hours. Without GenAI, it would have been impossible to experiment with that many different shots, simply because it would have been too costly and too time consuming. With the help of those experiments, the team were able to narrow down the route: the most promising imagery revolved around the Neo Partance luggage being shown in iconic locations around the world.

The team placed the luggage among iconic travel destinations to spark excitement around holidays. The porter traveling on the bicycle added a whimsical element to the scene, which felt reminiscent of wanderlust. The porter’s red suit shown around the world reminds audiences that they can take Parisian elegance along with them on their travels. Lancel’s new range makes traveling graceful.

The team experimented with hundreds of iterations of the shots, drawing up scenes across continents - which would be all but impossible without GenAI.

The Result

As a result of their experimentation and openness to GenAI, the Lancel team were able to produce a stunning creative that wouldn’t have been possible to shoot in real life. The team have shown that perhaps the best way to harness AI is to embrace its quirks, its surrealist styles and its ability to create otherworldly scenes. AI is a new form of art, and Lancel is one of the first brands to reach that realisation.