Agriculture tech leader Syngenta needed a fresh approach to spotlight soil and water conservation. Could an internal animated explainer video inspire an entire AI-powered ad campaign? Discover how a creative leap—from 3D animation to hyper-realistic visuals—planted the seeds for a stunning campaign that bridged borders, languages and expectations.
The generative artificial intelligence (AI) revolution over the last two years has done more than change how we work. It is redefining roles and careers in ways we never imagined. This might be a LinkedIn thought leader cliche, but nothing comes close to explaining our brave new world better than “AI won’t replace you. You’ll be replaced by someone who uses AI.”
We were thinking about this and how AI has changed our approach to work after looking back at an AI-powered ads project we delivered for Syngenta. Their team came to us with a brief for digital and print ads, which we always love sinking our teeth into.
The challenge? The brief's reference piece was an internal animated explainer video. Could that inspire our AI-enhanced creative team enough to create an AI-powered ads campaign?
Spoiler alert: it was, but not in the way you’d expect. Let’s go beyond the brief!
The Brief: Sustain Attention for Sustainability
Syngenta is a global agricultural technology company specializing in crop protection and seed development while promoting sustainable farming practices. With operations in over 90 countries, Syngenta collaborates with farmers to provide innovative solutions that ensure a safe and sustainable food supply.
We’ve previously supported the Syngenta team with internal creative assets, but this would be the first external marketing piece. The brief was for a new campaign to drive soil and water conservation awareness.
I was a bit nervous at first. My initial reaction to the brief was, ‘How am I going to manage this? How will I guide the team?’ But things started to come together once I started reviewing the materials and talking to the team.
Since Syngenta has offices in so many different countries around the world, we needed to develop visuals that highlighted sustainable practices while being able to connect with an international audience of farmers, industry stakeholders and everyday people who care about food quality and costs.
Aldo Vidrio, Creative Project Manager at Superside, says Syngenta provided clear messaging guidelines and left the image direction up to the creative team. After reviewing the brief and watching the reference video, Aldo’s next call was to Andrea Montelongo, a Creative on our Generative AI team.
Beyond the Brief: Capturing the Moment and the Message
Our global team of creatives isn’t spooked by AI. They’ve embraced it, and this project is a great example of how creative talent paired with cutting-edge AI tools can unlock new levels of creativity.
Farm-to-table meets farm-to-frame
Aldo and Andrea looked at the video and decided to recreate frames using AI to create branded custom images. The video included abstract representations of elements related to pollination, such as bees and flowers, and served as the jumping-off point for developing the creative assets.
Going from 3D graphics to assets with a hyper-realistic look was ambitious, but they knew it would deliver the message Syngenta needed to communicate.
It was a creative leap from 3D graphics to something that looked like realistic photography. The end result captured Syngenta’s vision even better than they could articulate themselves.
Pollinating ideas with AI-powered insights
The assets also needed marketing copy to connect with the audience. Andrea, a creative designer by trade, asked if she could try doing both. Being a global team has its perks, but it also means we work at different hours. Andrea used ChatGPT as a sounding board as she worked on the concepts and copy for the campaign assets.
If you work in an office, you have someone next to you to discuss ideas. That's more difficult when you’re working remotely. I love the Socratic method, so I gave the brief to ChatGPT and had it ask me questions to make me think in ways that I wouldn't have thought about.
Andrea is a native Spanish speaker. She says ChatGPT helps her with everything from getting the right tone and intention in English to using ChatGPT's voice mode to translate her ideas into English faster than manually translating the copy.
There are nuances and grammar rules in English that I don't know sometimes. I couldn't be a copywriter without AI. It’s giving me this superpower of writing scripts and copy—anything!
Cultivating creativity with AI
The concept work produced two themes presented to Syngenta: "Beneath the Surface" and “Roots and Routes.” The idea was to showcase the unseen world of pollination and the interconnected paths created by pollinators, including bees and butterflies.
Andrea used ChatGPT to transcribe specific video sections, capturing the text to generate initial ideas and concepts using Midjourney. Aldo says the process moved quickly because of their experience writing generative AI prompts. The workflow allowed the team to stay true to Syngenta’s brand and colors while creating the custom images.
Even if the scene includes something like a spider web or a volcano in the background—things that might not make sense—it still can look real. That’s the distinction for me between illustration and photorealism. Illustration feels like something created by hand, while this project was about making things look as real as possible, even if they weren’t.
After creating the images using Midjourney, Andrea used Adobe Photoshop for post-production cleanup. She says AI doesn’t replace existing methods; it just helps her bring ideas to life in ways that weren’t possible before.
The team loved it! It felt great to deliver something that exceeded their expectations. Working with Andrea made all the difference—she essentially did everything, and I supported her with art direction and coordination. We worked together seamlessly to bring the project to life.
Takeaways for AI-Powered Ads
AI continues to transform our creative workflows, turning time-consuming tasks into supercharged processes. Beyond just delivering stunning (if we do say so ourselves) visuals, AI tools like ChatGPT are helping our team communicate across languages and borders.
AI lets you take ideas from your mind that you couldn't realize before. It’s amazing and has really opened up the creative possibilities.
What did we learn this time around?
- Bringing great ideas to life. This project was another example of how AI makes the impossible possible. From an animated explainer video, Aldo and Andrea generated two concepts and entire creative assets that exceeded Syngenta’s expectations.
- AI bridges borders. ChatGPT and other AI tools are doing more than helping non-illustrators give their ideas life. They also help creatives bridge language barriers to create content that resonates with audiences around the world.
- Storing seeds for the next crop. Every workflow and image our team creates can be used for future projects. For example, the library of images created for this campaign could be used to train a custom model that can generate further iterations.
- Faster creative yields. The team used AI to accelerate idea generation, refine copy and create visuals. AI lets us offer our customers capabilities that would have been time-intensive or cost-prohibitive with traditional methods.
Ready to see what AI can help you grow? Book a call with our team today!
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