How Our Events Team Saved Thousands using AI for INBOUND ’24

When HubSpot’s International Occasions Staff had its first kickoff planning session for INBOUND 2024, they weren’t positive in regards to the artistic path they’d take.

One factor was clear although: Given how big AI has change into in the previous couple of years, they knew they’d incorporate it one way or the other.

I related with the crew to study extra in regards to the essential function 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 crew saved the onsite interstitials fairly constant year-over-year, sticking to static visible imagery and lightweight animation.

It was time for a change.

As a substitute of graphics that will disappear into the background, they wished to create interstitals attendees would need to interact with.

“This 12 months, AI has been huge, and we received 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 folks 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 crew tapped Eduardo Garcia-Lopez, a lead designer on HubSpot’s Visible Design crew, to supervise the manufacturing of contemporary interstitials with AI – leveraging Midjourney, Topaz and Runway.

They weren’t making an attempt to create one thing internet new, he says, however they wished 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’d count on,’” Garcia-Lopez mentioned. “We wished to discover, as a result of AI provides us these potentialities – you may take it anyplace you need however nonetheless keep the identical model of the model.”

After some brainstorming, they settled on three themes:

• An umbrella theme for INBOUND, which was very summary and carefully 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 crew roughly a month and a half to generate 28 closing movies, with 14 minutes of run time tailored for seven display screen varieties on the venue.

Beginning with a baseline of shapes, gradients and colours which have all the time been the inspiration for INBOUND graphics, Garcia-Lopez fed these preliminary photos to Midjourney.

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

With AI, the individual 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 case you examine that to a crew, you continue to want any individual to drive the imaginative and prescient.”

As soon as each groups agreed on the ultimate 2D photos for every stage and placement, 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 photos 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 modifying software program that enhances the standard of AI movies. 

I puzzled, how a lot wouldn’t it price if the crew labored with a vendor to create these property the quaint approach. 

Garcia-Lopez estimates requesting a 30-second clip would take no less than two weeks and 1000’s of {dollars}.

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

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

What took lots of time was figuring out the very best 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’d’ve wanted a giant crew to ship all of those property, even an illustration for all of the variation of types.”

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

“You want a giant crew with particular abilities to perform a selected model,” he says, “and we have been in a position to go wild and select what we wished.”

AI isn’t with out its limitations.

After I requested Garcia-Lopez in regards to the design challenges that include leveraging AI, he mentioned there’s a giant one folks usually neglect.

“Modifying one thing is definitely fairly laborious. 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 is not that straightforward.”

It’s a fantasy that modifying with AI is fast, he says. For instance, colour sensible, you won’t all the time get the very same colours you’d obtain from a colour 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 are able to and may‘t give suggestions on, what’s a simple change, what’s not really easy.”

As well as, AI isn’t doing the majority of the work, opposite to standard perception. There’s lots 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 lots with a small crew, however you want abilities in different software program and a great background to unravel lots of these points,” he provides.

Creating Customized Agendas for Attendees

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

“We wished to think about security and we love Claude as a result of it does not practice on the info you enter,”mentioned Matt Diaz, the crew lead on HubSpot’s International Occasions crew. “It has a big context window so we may add lots of data for it to coach on and provides us the output with out maintaining that knowledge for its system.”

They wished to develop attendee personas and create focused agendas, which might then be used to advertise the occasion in an interactive “Choose Your Own INBOUND Adventure” quiz.

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

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

Their subsequent step was instructing Claude to verify 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 generally hallucinate, creating periods or audio system that didn’t exist.

The entire course of took lower than a full day, in keeping with the crew.

“If you happen to have been to rent a crew 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 and marketing 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 venture concerned making a persona quiz that attendees may take to match their persona to a focused agenda.

“We have been working beneath the belief that, particularly on social media, folks do not need to go and discover out who they’re,” mentioned Sarah Hughes, the social media lead on the International Occasions crew. “They prefer to be advised who they’re via these quizzes or persona checks.”

The largest problem was guaranteeing 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 received us roughly 85% of the way in which, 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 and marketing Supervisor Lanna Nguyen.

They revealed it on the INBOUND blog, driving site visitors through 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 when it comes to impressions behind one other submit that we put lots of paid spend behind,” mentioned Lanna.

This quiz grew to become a useful useful resource for leads, prospects, and attendees, she provides.

With so many ‘AI gone unsuitable’ tales floating round, it is a small case research into AI getting it proper.