How AI video generators are transforming product marketing for retail brands
An image of a product does have certain limitations - it cannot show the way in which the item would be used by people. That's where video comes in, but creating videos for all kinds of purposes used to be too costly and complicated for most retail companies. Fortunately, the situation is changing rapidly, and more companies can afford video generation with AI help.
Why Retail Marketing Outgrew Traditional Video Production
Consider a mid-sized company, selling twenty products each season. It could create a video of one or two products, but not all of them, because video production costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time. On the other hand, it was not cost-effective to make videos of all the items sold by a company.
And now, AI generated videos offer another way out for retail marketing teams. The creation of videos with AI assistance has become possible to the point where it may be considered as a regular production technique. Moreover, the number of videos that should be made by the marketing team exceeds the number that could be made traditionally, as videos should be produced for different products, campaigns, and platforms.
What This Looks Like in Practice
At this moment, there appears to be a certain workflow, common for all retail marketing teams. One writes the prompt about the product to be featured in a video, then the video itself is generated, and after that, it is edited and published.
The software that allows generating the video from the prompt is becoming available even within the platforms that are used by the marketing team. For instance, CapCut incorporates ByteDance's video generator directly into its editor. As a result, one can choose a product reference or a text prompt and immediately start working on the video with the help of the editor. Seedance 2.5 AI video maker is an example of such a generator.
Integration is an important factor. Retail marketers do not need the latest AI models for videos; they need software that can fit into the existing workflow without forcing them to change anything.
Where AI Video Actually Helps in Retail
There are several kinds of videos for which AI generated videos might prove to be extremely helpful:
• Different variations of the demonstration videos for A/B testing various angles and settings.
• The versions of the campaign for different seasons or regions, adapted for the local audience, yet without having to invite new actors.
• Social media videos which require quantity rather than quality.
• The early versions of the campaign to check how it looks before investing a lot of money into production.
The category of videos that cannot be done with AI yet is videos that require a lot of control and attention to detail. Human-directed production is still better when it comes to flagship campaigns. What the marketing team has to learn now is how to use AI generators to produce lots of videos and then concentrate on the ones that really matter.
The Skill That Is Becoming More Valuable, Not Less
There is a certain skill that becomes more and more important due to the development of video generation technology. Namely, the ability to write a good prompt. Generic prompts produce generic and forgettable videos; however, if one describes the way the light, the camera movements, and product positioning, it becomes possible to create a great video with AI assistance.
Thus, it is not the technical skills that allow the team members to profit from the technology. Those are the marketers who know how to create a good video and can transfer their knowledge into a prompt. The creativity of the marketer just moves to the beginning of the process.
What Retail Teams Should Watch Next
The AI video generation for retail marketing is a relatively new phenomenon, so it is not clear yet how to use it most effectively. Those who are working with this technology now can understand how exactly the product categories can be described in prompts, how much editing is required for a good video, and what the line is between a prompt and the finished video.
Those who treat the technology seriously can now create a significant competitive advantage by producing videos that were not able to be produced with a usual budget.
The question is not about using AI for video generation, but rather how fast the team learns to use the technology effectively.
