CPG · Smarters
Scaling campaigns for MNCs with 586K unique users
Smarters ran a personalized generative AI campaign for Unilever's Knorr brand in Mexico, built on real-time celebrity inpainting. 586,000 unique users generated their own image and opted in at nearly three times the market average.
- 586,000
- Unique users
- 68%
- Opt-in rate
- 3×
- The market average
The Challenge
Mass reach without losing the personal connection
Mass-market campaigns need scale, and scale is usually what kills personalization. Generic creative builds awareness; personal creative drives conversion. Smarters needed both at once: individual-level output for hundreds of thousands of people at the same time.
- Standard campaign assets gave users little reason to opt in to ongoing communication
- Celebrity campaigns normally ship one identical asset to everyone, which removes personalization entirely
- High-volume activations need infrastructure that holds up under concurrent load without degrading output
- Regional opt-in rates for comparable activations sat well below the 68% this campaign reached
The Approach
Real-time personalization at consumer scale
The mechanic was real-time generative inpainting. A user uploaded a portrait, which was merged with pre-selected imagery of the rapper and singer Malilla to produce a unique, shareable visual on the spot.
- Portrait inpainting merged user selfies with celebrity imagery in real time, so every asset was unique to the person who made it
- High-concurrency infrastructure served 586,000 users without latency spikes or a drop in output quality
- The personalized result was the opt-in incentive, wiring the creative directly into the lead funnel
- Users sharing their own asset extended reach organically, beyond what paid media bought
The Results
A campaign that converted at scale
- Unique users engaged
- 586,000
- Personalized images created
- 222,000+
- Opt-in rate
- 68%
- Active interaction with secondary content
- 89%
The opt-in rate landed at nearly three times the regional market average, which is the clearest signal that personalized output is worth consenting to ongoing contact for. An 89% interaction rate with secondary content showed engagement went well past the moment of generation.
