RUSAGRO’s oil and fat business is a modern company that uses the most advanced technologies and the latest scientific achievements. It is no surprise that this is where the industry’s first ‘oil man’ was born. And its birth was brilliant. It was developed by artificial intelligence. The first to see the new character of the oil and fat business were participants and guests of the largest industry conference of bakers and confectioners PISCHEVKA3 Dwhich was held in Sochi in May 2023. The well-built healthy ‘oil man’ showing the qualities of the SOLPROhigh-oleic sunflower oil immediately attracted the attention of consumers. We asked Irina Osokina, the leading brand manager of RUSAGRO’s oils and fats business, to tell us how this image was born.
– How did the idea to create a visual image of oil come about? Why did you decide to use artificial intelligence?
“Our main goal was to convey information about the advantages of Rusagro products to our partners: the largest producers of bakery and confectionery products and restaurant chefs. We can speak lengthily about healthy high-oleic oil, providing figures, statistics, indicators, but all this is mental food, and people often make emotional decisions! The first thing is to touch the hearts of decision-makers. What is the easiest way to do this? Visualization. Our mind is designed in such a way that it reads, interprets and remembers images much better than a story about the properties of a product. It is even more effective if you show a picture and give a verbal description – short and vivid. The human shape is the most understandable and simplest image for our mind, it is the easiest to interact with, so we decided to create an image of the ‘oil man’, which clearly reflects all the messages that we want to convey to the buyer.
If you look at what key visuals the world’s major brands use, you will see that the image of a person, one way or another, is present everywhere. This is the best way to convey information and promote your products. We used artificial intelligence because we can see its wide capabilities. It is not able to develop a ready-made version, but it very quickly creates a variety of ideas that designers can then refine.
– Reveal the creative process: how did the work proceed, how long did it take? What is it like when artificial intelligence works in a team?
We set the designer a task: to create an attractive, memorable image of oil. Humanize high-oleic oil using the power of AI. The image had to reflect the main properties of high-oleic oil: health, benefits, beauty in such a way that they can be remembered, literally recorded on the subconscious level. This image shows that the high-oleic oil is the best product on the market. The designer prepared a key visual and handed it over to us to elaborate. If you think that creating a key visual is easy, think again.
To find our style, we did at least 50 iterations, and then we stopped counting. Even more test prompts were written (text task for AI – ed.). We experimented with different styles and looks. We came up with solutions inspired by great artists (Rembrandt, Bosch) and cartoon characters. The neural network offered many funny images. All the employees involved in the project are very happy and enthusiastic about their work. Artificial intelligence has not yet become a routine and everyone who is now mastering it is happy to be creative.
We used Midjourney, the most advanced and popular neural network.
I think many people have already experimented with neural networks and created different images using smartphones, but the phone image and the image for high-quality professional content are two different things. A high-quality image is based on customer specifications, which must solve the assigned tasks, and AI very often offers options without specified parameters. It can be quite accurate, but sometimes it is an absolute cringe! A lot of routine designer work is still required to finalize the idea proposed by the AI to meet the required parameters. No matter how smart and creative artificial intelligence is, it cannot be done without humans. But what is important, and this is perhaps the crucial thing at the idea generation stage, is that AI actually comes up with original solutions, reducing time and costs. Note that it works best with English commands, in this case, images are more accurate and exciting.
– On the sidelines of the conference, people talked about your ‘oil man’. The image turned out to be attractive and memorable. – Do you plan to involve AI in other projects?
– In general, AI is an important tool for us. Its options are wide: writing texts, creating images, and analyzing data to offer interesting business solutions. The Fats for Food Industry Division considers all the potential options of artificial intelligence. On the top of that, it fits into the concept of our SOLPRO brand, which is based on three values – Quality-Service-Expertise. This brand is bright, dynamic, and modern. While artificial intelligence is a successful tool for using this image.
