How AI Augments Advertising Storytellers: The Impossible Ad

The rise of generative AI has sparked existential dread among the creative side of advertising, while at the same time unlocking tremendous exploration of the possible.  Luxury fashion house Moncler, in partnership with agency R/GA (I worked there in the 90s), used AI to produce their entirely generated brand film, "From the Mountains to the City." The team didn't delegate their vision to an AI model, treating the machine like a fancy slot machine—pull the lever enough and you end up with something interesting.

The advertising team—creatives, producers—used their experience and judgement to get the most out of a new set of tools, some of which they built themselves along the way.

This case study is the clearest evidence yet that AI doesn't diminish creative roles—it acts as an egalitarian, high-speed collaborator, transforming a core team into an engine capable of generating thousands of scene variations and achieving a level of aesthetic sophistication previously unattainable within traditional production timelines. The next peak in advertising may lie not in human or machine, but in the amplified power of the creative team plus AI.

The New Creative Toolkit: Democratizing Execution

The Moncler project’s success was rooted in a shift from traditional agency process to a digitally augmented workflow. R/GA didn't simply use off-the-shelf software. They used tools like Gemini Code Assist to build a custom AI workspace they dubbed ShotFlow. This new creative environment, powered by multimodal models like Imagen and Veo, immediately democratized the production process.

According to R/GA’s Chief Creative Officer, Nick Pringle, their team structure became "completely flat." This meant that anyone—from the CCO down to the producers—could contribute to the creative output by generating scenes. The only requirement was curiosity. This low-friction prototyping eliminated the dependency on specialized technicians to interpret a vision, allowing creatives and non-creatives to instantly materialize the ideas in their heads. AI didn't replace specialized roles. It gave every member of the team the power of execution, making creativity everyone’s job.

Scaling the Creative Volume: The 7,000-Scene Difference

Perhaps the most compelling metric of AI’s augmentative power is the dramatic increase in creative volume. In four weeks, a core team of about five contributors generated 7,000 scenes for the Moncler film. This level of iteration is simply unattainable through conventional production methods. In the pre-AI era, generating 7,000 visual options would require months of costly pre-production, mood boards, physical shooting days, and time-consuming iteration. With AI, R/GA could iterate thousands of times to find the best shot that matched the brand’s high standards.

This acceleration provides a significant competitive advantage for marketers. It moves the conversation from logistical feasibility to pure creative exploration. The technology acted as a high-speed pre-production engine, allowing team members, such as their producer, to conduct "location scouting" by generating nuanced changes to landscapes on demand. This ability to instantly test, refine, and produce vast libraries of assets ensures that the final result reflects the creative team's vision, demonstrating that speed is not the enemy of quality; it's the enabler of new possibilities.

Precision and Craft: Perfecting the Unimaginable

In high-stakes industries like luxury fashion, aesthetic quality is non-negotiable. R/GA's Executive Creative Director, Eli Mavros, noted that to maintain the brand integrity of Moncler, they had to "get the product just right"—a challenging requirement for generative AI. Replicating the distinct sheen, stitching, and texture of the iconic Maya puffer jacket required a level of meticulous prompting and fine-tuning that speaks directly to the creative team’s crucial oversight.

Keeping a special place in the workflow to get the brand product right has been one of the “aha’s” in the work at KittyKat, an innovative startup I am involved with. Like R/GA, KittyKat is perfecting its specialized workflows to get the most out of the entire AI model landscape for brand marketers.

AI did not produce the final vision of the Moncler brand film autonomously—it executed the team’s precise, human-driven instructions. Using Google’s Imagen model, the team generated static images for each scene, ensuring the consistency, shot quality, and subtle details were perfect before importing them into the Veo Flow model for motion. The human eye served as quality control; the human mind provided high-fidelity prompts. At KittyKat, they call this “human-in-the-loop,” knowing that the best, most extraordinary work comes from AI augmenting human creativity and judgment.  

The result for Moncler and R/GA was a film that resonated profoundly with audiences, garnering overwhelmingly positive reception that appreciated the craft and storytelling. As Pringle pointed out, AI adds an “unimagined potential that can add a layer of quality and beauty to what you’re doing.” It’s a tool that elevates the art of advertising by removing the limitations of production.

A Path for Marketing Leaders

The Moncler case study is a pivotal moment for the marketing industry, offering a clear roadmap for embracing AI not as a cost-cutting measure, but as a creativity multiplier. The key lesson is that AI tools are only as effective as the human talent driving them. The success was not a function of the algorithm, but the result of the creative team's deep understanding of Moncler’s seventy-year heritage, their narrative instinct, and their willingness to master a new craft—workflow design and manipulation.

By adopting AI as an egalitarian co-pilot, agencies can fundamentally transform their business model—delivering higher-quality, more sophisticated creative output and greater iteration capacity—all within compressed timelines. This is how the modern creative team moves from simply delivering on a client brief to defining the future of brand advertising.

(NOTE: This post was a collaboration between me and Gemini. I trained the model on my style, provided direction, key points and a clear POV, rewrote some, and edited all.