Fresh Step used AI to turn consumer insights into advertising, faster
By Deb Crandall
It started with a playful hypothesis: If the internet runs on cats, could AI be home turf for a cat litter brand?
To find out, our Fresh Step team paired AI with human creativity to explore more ideas and turn consumer insights into three 15-second spots. Developed at a fraction of the typical time and cost, the campaign launches in December. The approach gave us more room to test creative directions, learn what resonated and focus our investment on the strongest ideas.
Why it matters
- Consumer needs and culture move quickly. Marketers need faster ways to turn consumer insights into timely, relevant work without sacrificing expertise and judgment.
- Our Fresh Step marketing team saw an opportunity to strengthen perceptions of our core odor-control benefit. Rather than rely on a traditional process that can take months to start a new campaign, the team explored whether AI could speed development while keeping consumers at the center.
Go deeper
It began with a clear business question: How could Fresh Step reinforce the odor-control performance at the heart of the brand and respond faster?
- AI helped bring existing consumer knowledge into the brief, synthesize insights and bring creative ideas to life earlier in development.
- From there, multiple creative territories and about 15 scripts were explored before a direction was chosen. Ideas that might have required significant time and investment to visualize through traditional production could be tested much earlier.
- Seeing the work sooner made it easier to identify what resonated, what didn’t and which unexpected ideas were worth pursuing. That made experimentation more practical and helped decisions focus on the strength of the idea.
We realized we weren’t just making creative faster — we were making room for more bets. Instead of spending months putting everything behind one idea, we could explore more directions, learn sooner and adapt.
The differentiator
AI accelerated the process, but people made the work effective. Marketers, strategists, writers, creative leaders and AI specialists brought the consumer understanding, creativity and judgment needed to decide what was right for Fresh Step.
By the numbers
The AI-enabled creative work cost approximately one-tenth of a traditional production and was developed on a four-week timeline. But the value goes beyond savings: Faster development gives teams more flexibility to respond to what consumers need today—not months from now.
The bottom line
Fresh Step’s experience shows what’s possible when human creativity and AI work together: better ideas, brought to consumers sooner, with more room to learn and invest in what works.
