Ferrero
A GOLIN NEW BUSINESS PITCH
3-DAY TURNAROUND | 4 CONCEPT FILMS | SUCCESSFUL NEW BUSINESS PITCH
OVERVIEW
As part of Golin’s new-business pitch for Ferrero, our team needed to bring a creative campaign concept to life in a way that felt tangible, cinematic, and ready to scale.
Rather than relying on traditional production, I developed a GenAI-driven workflow that combined image and video generation with traditional editorial and post-production.
In just three days, the work grew into four distinct films—a :30 hero and three :15 executions—with American English, UK English, and French voiceover versions, resulting in 12 finished deliverables. The films became part of Golin’s successful pitch, helping demonstrate how the proposed creative direction could work across formats and international audiences.
THE CHALLENGE
As part of Golin’s new-business pitch for Ferrero, we wanted the client to experience the concept as finished creative—not simply imagine it from a presentation.
The biggest constraint was time: from kickoff call to final delivery, we had just three days. Within that window, we needed to turn the concept into four distinct films—a :30 hero piece and three :15 executions—then create American English, UK English, and French voiceover versions of each.
A traditional production approach simply wasn’t practical within that timeline. Generative AI gave us a new path, but producing polished films required much more than generating individual shots.
We needed to create consistent characters, environments, compositions, and movement while making everything feel like part of the same campaign world.
The challenge became not simply how to make four films quickly, but how to build a repeatable creative workflow capable of delivering 12 finished versions in three days without allowing speed to dictate the quality of the storytelling.
MY ROLE
I led the GenAI production and post-production process across all four films, from prompt development and visual generation through video generation, editing, motion design, localization, and final finishing.
My role involved translating the creative concept into prompts and visual direction, evaluating and refining generated imagery, determining how individual frames could become usable moving shots, and iterating until the material supported the story we were trying to tell.
I also supervised another editor on some of the work, guiding them through the GenAI workflow and helping them build hands-on experience with the tools in a live production environment. I provided creative direction and feedback throughout the process while sharing the techniques and lessons I had developed across the broader campaign.
Once the generated footage was created, I shifted into a traditional editorial workflow—selecting shots, shaping pacing and continuity, integrating voiceover and sound, and manually creating the final end cards.
Across the campaign, my focus was making the technology invisible enough that the idea and storytelling remained the focus.
THE APPROACH
The process began with still imagery. I developed prompts to establish the characters, environments, compositions, lighting, and overall visual language for each concept before translating those images into motion through AI video generation.
Each shot required another round of creative direction and iteration—determining movement, performance, camera behavior, and timing while working around the inconsistencies and limitations inherent to generative tools.
AI accelerated the production process, but it didn’t make the creative decisions. Concept interpretation, visual direction, prompt development, shot selection, continuity, pacing, editorial rhythm, and ultimately deciding what did or didn’t serve the story still required human judgment.
Once the strongest material was selected, I manually edited and finished each film using traditional post-production techniques. The :30 hero established the broader campaign language, while the three :15 executions demonstrated how the creative world could extend into concise, short-form content.
Each of the four films was then adapted with American English, UK English, and French voiceovers—turning four original creative executions into 12 finished deliverables.
THE OUTCOME
The finished films gave Golin something more powerful than a written pitch concept: they allowed the client to experience what the proposed creative could become.
In just three days from kickoff to delivery, we produced four distinct campaign films and 12 localized versions—demonstrating how GenAI and traditional post-production could dramatically compress a production timeline without sacrificing creative judgment or storytelling.
The work also proved that the concept could scale across a :30 hero film, shorter :15 executions, and multiple international audiences while maintaining a consistent visual and narrative language.
Most importantly, the films became part of Golin’s successful Ferrero pitch, helping bring the proposed creative direction to life and contributing to the agency winning the business.