Myrtle Beach undergoes bizarre AI rebrand on Reddit

Myrtle Beach has undergone a significant rebrand, thanks to generative AI, in a cheeky campaign running on Reddit that features lots of bizarre imagery and even renames the famous South Carolina vacation destination as “Mitarry Best.” Visit Myrtle Beach, the city’s tourism organization, created the end-of-summer campaign, which is running as a Reddit article, with the agency MMGY Global. It used generative AI to design a new logo, imagine a Times Square billboard and come up with action shots of families enjoying the beach. The logo, images and ad copy were exactly what one would expect from AI—that is to say, uncanny and wacky. The logo looks like a retro-futuristic symbol and renamed Myrtle Beach to “Mitarry Best.” “To keep up with the latest tech trends, we’ve decided to fire our ad agency and go all-in on artificial intelligence,” Visit Myrtle Beach announced in its Reddit post. “The best design breaks the rules, and boy does AI know how to do that. Not only did it include classic Myrtle Beach visuals invoking its 60 miles of sunny, sandy beaches, gorgeous sunrises, the SkyWheel and some massive four-legged alien soon to doom us all, but it also rebranded us as Mitarry Best! It must know something we don’t, so we’re going to roll with it.” Also read: How major agencies are using AI The Mitarry Best website, linked from the Reddit article and housed within the Visit Myrtle Beach site, sticks with the AI-generated theme, declaring at the top of the page: “Greetings, human travelers.” The site has wonky AI travel tips, such as “Engage in systematic beach exploration.” Visit Myrtle Beach did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the campaign. The campaign appears to use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT for text and DALL-E for images. Myrtle Beach’s campaign is yet another example of how generative AI is being used to create buzz in advertising, but it’s also another reminder that AI is still not ready to assume all creative functions. The images and copy still need cleaning up. For instance, one image in the Reddit ad shows a family swimming in the ocean, but they’re fully clothed: “Now families can hop off the SkyWheel and rush right into the water—without worrying about swimwear,” reads the ad copy. AI is increasingly being used to assist in online ad creation, and ad agencies and internet platforms are building features that help brands make the AI transition. Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and others have put generative AI features into their ad platforms. The ad platforms have new AI chat features so media planners can talk directly to AI assistants, and they are using text-to-image generation to quickly create ads. Generative AI is a popular category within Reddit communities—there are subreddits devoted to generative AI, where members post images from tools such as Midjourney. Visit Myrtle Beach’s Reddit post was an open thread, meaning it allowed comments, which can be a risky move for brands on the site. In this case, Visit Myrtle Beach received 925 comments and 782 upvotes thus far, which is an indication more people gave the post a thumbs up than thumbs down. The ad links people to MitarryBest.com to “start planning your vacation.” The visitor’s bureau said in the Reddit article that it was too soon to know the results of the campaign. There have, however, been requests for Mitarry Best merchandise, so the visitor's bureau built an e-commerce site with apparel that uses the AI imagery. Products listed include “Tiny human singular apparel” (a baby onesie) and “Dude acquatic leg curtains” (a male bathing suit).

Myrtle Beach undergoes bizarre AI rebrand on Reddit

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