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Ammunition crafts a unique holiday gift to share with clients and partners each year. With this, we intend to showcase the agency’s creative muscle while ideally generating some buzz through PR and trade coverage. In terms of guidelines, it needed to be executable in a matter of a few weeks, evoke general holiday vibes without being tied to a specific holiday, be lightweight and suitable for mailing, and be cost-effective enough for mass production. At the same time, the gift should be something that everybody can enjoy. Not just our clients. Culturally, we had spent much of the year leaning into AI to make better work. This gift felt like the perfect chance to punctuate precisely how much we can do with these new tools, so we decided to produce the agency’s first-ever cheeky, yet polished AI-generated holiday album, “Out of Office, In the Spirit" powered by Jammunition Records.
Ammunition needed a standout holiday gift that used AI innovation to make recipients feel special and generated PR buzz—all while being cost-effective and easy to mail. The solution? "Out of Office, In the Spirit"— the first holiday album about the ups/downs of advertising.
The joys of pitching, Zoom call mishaps, absurd industry jargon, holiday office parties, and focus groups. All of these topics (and more) are now memorialized in song. All were written with a wry smile, pointing out the unvarnished truths that make our business the beautiful mess it is.
This annual agency gift for clients became a full-scale creative campaign, complete with:
- An 8-song album with a music video for each
- Full lyric sheet
- Album covers for each song
- A microsite ft. a custom radio station playing the album
- Wheatpaste postings
- A week-long social media rollout
- Influencer support
- Coverage in Adweek (https://www.adweek.com/agencies/agencies-flex-their-creativity-with-2024-holiday-cards/)
We produced 100 records at a fraction of the typical cost— approximately 86% less—while cutting production time significantly. We accomplished what would typically take 6 months to a year in just two weeks. “Out of Office, In the Spirit” wasn’t just a holiday gift—it sparked buzz on social media, resulting in 891 total organic engagements and 13,275 impressions across platforms, within the industry—featured in Adweek, drawing over 1.1M impressions—and with clients. The campaign proved that big ideas don’t require big budgets—just bold vision, tech innovation, and audacity. This album showcases how we took a simple concept, powered it with AI, and turned it into a creative force.
"Out of Office, In the Spirit" taps into the shared experiences of agency life—pitching highs/lows, Zoom call mishaps, industry jargon, chaotic holiday parties, and focus groups gone wrong. These themes resonate with marketing professionals, making the album both humorous and relatable. From the absurdity of ‘circling back’ to the struggle of muting on Zoom, the campaign leaned into industry quirks. By transforming these moments into catchy music, Ammunition delivered a culturally relevant, buzzworthy, AI-powered holiday gift infused with human creativity, reinforcing its innovative reputation.
All the initial rounds of song topics and lyrics were created using ChatGPT, which churned out endless iterations and allowed us to pick and choose the best pieces to expand. Once the lyrics were picked apart and polished into complete songs, we fed the lyrics to Suno. From there, we experimented with various musical genres, styles, and tempo prompts to generate hundreds of song versions. This process allowed us to pick the best versions of each song and then iterate them heavily, changing the instrumentation, vocals, pacing, style, mood, etc., until we nailed something that worked. These songs were then fed into Kits to master the components exactly how we sonically wanted them, including changing the length, individual lyric recordings, and levels and adding SFX. Ultimately, what should have taken months and thousands in session and talent fees took two weeks and minimal costs in subscriptions. We finished with an eight-song album, pressing over 100 records and publishing on Spotify and Apple Music.
Atlanta/American Advertising Awards - "Out of Office, In the Spirit" was submitted, and won Gold, for Direct Marketing & Specialty Advertising, Silver for Advertising Industry Self-Promotion Film, Video & Sound, and another Silver for Music With/Without Lyrics
Also entered in D&AD in the Sound Design & Use of Music category
The One Show in the Creative Use of AI; AI Craft - Sound category
