Together with

Happy Tuesday, Collaborators,

When my uncle drove up in his new, 1999 Honda Civic, my five-year-old cousin was delighted.

“Slick!” he yelled.

Slick became the car’s name.

I kept his name when my uncle gave me that sheet of aluminum foil wrapped around a bicycle. Slick and I drove across the country together. Whether he was breaking down in rural Virginia or playing a mini moving van, he had main character energy.

We have a strong attachment to our vehicles. 56% of people even name them.

While it is often seen as impersonal, AI is most effective when it taps into deeply human emotions. This week, we’re looking at how Carvana combined emotion and AI to personify our cars.

-Mariah

This newsletter was entirely written by anthropomorphizing humans.

Delighting Customers with 1.3 Million Unique Videos

@gocarvana

Buckle up for an AI Joyride! We're celebrating our customers with 1.3M+ unique AI-generated videos that take you on their car buying journey! 🎥🌐 #AI

Do you remember the day you bought your car?

Carvana’s AI Joyride campaign reminded 1.3 million customers of that unique moment. The company sent users emails with a unique video memory of the day they got their car—and encouraged them to share on social media.

It’s a masterclass in delighting your customers with hyperpersonalized content.

Here’s how Carvana did it, step-by-step:

1. Choose what to personalize

It is much easier to create custom AI content when you personalize a template, instead of creating each video from scratch.

Carvana started their work by selecting the custom details they wanted to add to their videos. They picked:

• The customer’s name

• The car make and model

• When and where the customer bought the car

• What was going on in the world

2. Create a common framework

Once you choose the details you will personalize, it’s time to create a template.

Carvana worked with animators, artists, and 3D modelers to build a framework for the videos.

They also hired a voice actor, but a single voice actor couldn’t read 1.3 million unique scripts. Instead, they recorded a variety of lines for the video. Then, they brought in AI.

3. Customize with AI

Re-voicing and text-to-speech AI did the heavy lifting on the narration. The Carvana team was able to create custom audio for each video that sounded similar to the voice actor.

Then, the team used tools like MidJourney, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion to customize animate unique sections of the narration with AI art. 

4. Connect the two parts seamlessly

Once you have all your human and AI campaign assets, it’s time to weave them together as seamlessly as possible.

Carvana’s team put the assets together in a cloud-based system. The final system could render 300,000 videos per hour.

The Final Result?

The company created so many unique videos that it would take over 5 years to watch them all.

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