Welcome to the Age of Vibe Marketing
When I started experimenting with generative AI about two years ago, I immediately recognised its immense potential and knew that the world of communications and marketing would look very different very soon. Since then, the abilities of text and image generators have impressed me again and again, and now I feel we’re entering a new phase in the development of this field that directly taps into the creative minds of marketers and materialises their ideas in seconds.
As soon as LLMs gained the ability to write functional code, the term ‘vibe coding’ entered the tech vocabulary of programmers and coding novices looking to venture into the software development world. With vibe coding, developers describe what they want in plain English, and the AI tool generates the actual code. This method shifts the focus from manual coding to guiding the AI, allowing even those with limited programming skills to create software. All you need is the idea - ChatGPT can cover the rest.
With the rapid improvement of image generation AI, vibe marketing has swiftly followed this phenomenon. It’s enough to just describe a feeling, provide a mood board, or describe a poster in only a few words, and you can have a promotional material that will go viral online. The only limit is your imagination.
I decided to put my imagination to work in order to test out the new ChatGPT image generation model and see what I could come up with. My work is in humanitarian communications, which I believe poses more limits on using AI from an ethics perspective, so I changed hats for a day to focus on commercial marketing. I also took some inspiration from users online who have been sharing their ideas on social media.
Jeans ad with an inspiration image
The first ad I tried making was a promotional image for a pair of graphic jeans using a cool image I found on Pinterest. Looking at the product, I thought immediately of scrapbooks and paper cutouts and overlays, so that’s what I searched for online. Finding something fitting took me around 2 minutes.
This took 5 minutes to make.
This was my very first try. It was impressive how ChatGPT immediately knew what I meant and executed it almost perfectly. With some additional fine-tuning in Photoshop, I would have a good ad. The SUPREME title under the model was a bit of improvisation on GPT’s side, but it’s easily fixable. We have a legitimate draft visual.
Sweater ad illustration
Next, I tried making an ad for a fleece sweater I found and decided to go a different route - this time, I would just describe in general terms what I wanted, and see if ChatGPT would understand and execute it as I imagined.
Cool detail: text overlap makes it look !
It was impressive that the floral details of the sweater were preserved in the generated image - something I would have thought to be very hard to achieve just a few months ago. Preserving the graphic and colours of the original is important when you’re advertising clothing and for a long while, I couldn’t get AI image generators to replicate them properly. But this one nails it - and the execution of the scenery and style of the image is on point. Again, first try!
Rolex ad: Using models and detailed instructions
I wanted to try a more detailed prompt to generate my next ad - I was looking for a specific feeling and environment that represents style and sophistication while still feeling organic and warm. This time I had to adjust with multiple prompts, but I was again impressed with how close the final product was to what I had in mind.
Reflecting back on these three examples, my mind races with more ideas. It feels like a powerful tool in my hands, and suddenly there are so many possibilities for experimentation and creativity. There are of course both limitations and concerns that come along with any new technical advancement: in this case, I can see potential issues with over-reliance on AI images and the atrophy of humanity’s creative muscles. There’s also a risk of visual homogenization as brands chase similar vibes, which will be based on human artists’ already existing work, raising concerns about copyright. There's also the matter of true brand differentiation—when everyone has access to the same tools, how do you ensure your marketing still stands out?
But like it or not, vibe marketing is here to stay - and the democratization of the tools means even your neighbor's coffee shop can jump on board. My own experiments taught me that you don't need years of graphic design experience to create compelling visuals anymore. However, there's still an art to this science. The marketers who really get it - who understand their brand's emotional core and can translate that feeling into guidance for these tools - will be the ones creating magic while others are just making more AI slop.
