London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Sep 29, 2025

Why artificial intelligence is being used to write adverts

Why artificial intelligence is being used to write adverts

What springs to mind when you think of advertising? Don Draper in the TV show Mad Men sipping a cocktail? Or perhaps trendy people swapping catch phrases in a converted warehouse?'

Well, more of the creative work these days is not being done by humans at all.

When Dixons Carphone wanted to push shoppers towards its Black Friday sale, the company turned to Artificial Intelligence (AI) software and got the winning line "The time is now".

Saul Lopes, head of customer marketing at Dixons Carphone, thinks it worked because it didn't have the words Black Friday in it.

His human copywriters had produced dozens of potentially successful sentences but they all mentioned Black Friday. It was technology that broke this chain of thought.

Parry Malm wanted to add some science to the art of advertising

The software in question is from Phrasee, whose boss is Parry Malm, a Canadian who moved to the UK in 2006. Working in marketing he assumed the technology existed to boost human creativity. He describes himself as "flummoxed" that this wasn't available.
Phrasee, the company he set up in 2015, is the product of Mr Malm's perplexed reaction.

"Getting the right message had been left to the Mad Men type characters. But I wanted to apply scientific rigour to those messages," he explains.

Standard copywriting takes place through a process of editing, argument and approval. Mr Malm says Phrasee does the same thing using a technique called Deep Learning, a vast network of parameters and pre-set limits that guide the programme in the right direction.

This allows it to bounce a slogan around, ranking its impact against raw data gleaned from many sources.

How many of these adverts in Time Square, New York, will eventually be generated thanks to AI?

At Rapp, an agency that packages products and services into messages and videos that appeal to the public, Phrasee absorbs a million emails that have been fired off over the years. Then it reassembles those sentences into new messages while adding guidance from Rapp's own writers, technologists and social media experts.

Phrasee builds up models that generate words appropriate to each product and the target audience of consumers. Language that has featured in previous campaigns is poured into the Deep Learning model which applies values based on factors such as the look, feel or taste of a product.

Mr Lopes knows that in an age of information overload consumers are becoming harder to reach as online sales patter diminishes their appetite for any message. As Phrasee comes armed with a terrific linguistic arsenal and is divorced from the individual points of view that shape the words of human copywriters he thinks it suits our jaded eyes.

Dixons Carphone still employs agencies and copywriters, but they come up with an idea which Phrasee then adapts, finessing the human perspective.

For a recent Dixons Carphone campaign Mr Lopes used Phrasee to create variations on messages derived from a decade of sales campaigns. "What surprises me is that we still see wild cards leaping out from the list of messages it generates."

The human brain can't process thousands of options says Saul Lopes, head of customer marketing at Dixons Carphone

That Black Friday message was one such wild card. Working online, Dixons Carphone gets rapid consumer feedback and quickly saw how well "The time is now" was going down with the public.

Copywriters shouldn't fear that AI is about to take their job, says Mr Lopes, because they are still needed to get the ball rolling. "But the human brain can't look at thousands of options. Our writing team sets out the strategy for the messages, we haven't replaced them."

He's convinced about this AI future. "Combining creative people with AI is the next step for the agencies. It's not AI versus the human, it generates creative thought."

This might come as a relief to Ogilvy, the agency founded by advertising legend David Ogilvy. His name invokes brilliant and witty campaigns that inspired generations of copywriters, and today Ogilvy bills itself as the "teaching hospital of advertising".

It boasts a behavioural science practice ran by its vice-chairman and veteran copywriter Rory Sutherland. He's a fan of new thinking, but only if it doesn't dampen the spark of creativity that sets consumers' desires alight.

"AI can't hurt if it generates interesting suggestions," Mr Sutherland concedes, "but it's like satnav in a car. Great for directions but you don't allow it to drive the car!"

He worries that AI will be steered into agencies by "bean counters" and has railed against an "alliance between technology and finance" that uses innovation as a cost-cutting tool regardless of the opportunities that get lost in the process. "These things tend to be viewed through an efficiency lens."

Ogilvy vice-chairman and veteran copywriter Rory Sutherland

Advertising, Mr Sutherland declares, "is about producing something distinctive. It's not a production line." Programmes like Phrasee can mirror a copywriter's work on an industrial scale. This, a digital factory for ads, is Mr Sutherland's worst nightmare.

"My only reservation about using AI is that people will afford it more power and influence than it deserves in an attempt to automate things, to realise the Fordist dream of multiple copies rolling off an assembly line."

In support of the creative human element he cites great advertising slogans that have been fine-tuned by critical voices from beyond the copywriter's desk. After 30 years as a copywriter Mr Sutherland is always ready to listen to someone who spots that a word or image may have the wrong connotation in another culture.

If AI can be that third party source of constructive criticism it has a home in his world. But he definitely won't allow it a deciding vote. "As a stimulus, suggesting ideas, it has a great future. As a source of judgement it's dubious."

Back at Dixons Carphone, Mr Lopes and his team keep trying to outsmart the software. They hold competitions to see who can guess what the winning line from Phrasee will be. "It's an internal game, we do it just before we push every new message out," he says.

"And we always lose to the computer!"

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
Nvidia Pledges Up to $100 Billion Investment in OpenAI to Power Massive AI Data Center Build-Out
U.S. Signals ‘Large and Forceful’ Support for Argentina Amid Market Turmoil
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
Vietnam Faces Up to $25 Billion Export Loss as U.S. Tariffs Bite
Europe Signals Stronger Support for Taiwan at Major Taipei Defence Show
Indonesia Court Upholds Military Law Amid Concerns Over Expanded Civilian Role
Larry Ellison, Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch Join Trump-Backed Bid to Take Over TikTok
Trump and Musk Reunite Publicly for First Time Since Fallout at Kirk Memorial
Vietnam Closes 86 Million Untouched Bank Accounts Over Biometric ID Rules
Explosive Email Shows Sarah Ferguson Begged Forgiveness from Jeffrey Epstein After Taking His Money
Corrupt UK Politician Ed Davey Demands Elon Musk’s Arrest for Supporting Democracy
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
Alibaba Debuts Open-Source Deep Research Agent with Benchmarks Rivaling OpenAI
Marcos Faces Legacy-Defining Crisis as Flood Projects Scandal Sparks Massive Tide of Protests
China’s Micro-Drama Boom Turns Stalled Real Estate Projects into Lavish Film Sets
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
'Company Got 5,189 H-1B Visas, Then Laid Off 16,000 Americans': US Defends New $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee
Golf legend tells Omar she should be 'sent back to Somalia' after her Kirk comments
EU Set to Bar Big Tech from New Financial Data Access Scheme
China Bans Livestreaming and AI in Religion Amid Crackdown on Shaolin Temple Scandal
×