As the pace of the AI revolution gathers momentum, the race for businesses to gain market share is well underway. It was key to establish EY as a leader in the AI space quickly, with scale and impact. The insight showed there is both excitement and concern about AI and its impact on people, business and society.

The brief was to land EY's key strategic message: Humans must be at the center of AI to build confidence in its potential and create exponential value for our clients.

Objectives:

1) Introduce and drive awareness of the new EY.ai platform; an AI-driven platform, that brings together people, ecosystem partners and technology.

2) Communicate how EY can help build confidence and create exponential value through AI, for positive human impact.

The idea was simple: To 'Face the Future' with confidence, humans must be at the heart of the AI revolution.

To bring this idea to life, the creative literally and figuratively puts EY people front and center. The hero film features over 200 EY people globally, combined and animated into one ever-evolving face, augmented by AI, to create a new spokesperson for EY: The Face of the Future

Each EY contributor was photographed, then animated using an advanced, bespoke-developed AI model to mimic each micro-expression and produce a constantly changing face made up of EY people, telling the story of how EY.ai can help build confidence and help organizations harness the power of AI.

Finally, advanced AI voice technology was used to generate numerous new voices generating different regional accents and intonations synchronized with the moving faces, delivering one script in identical cadence.

Market insight and research showed that whilst the target audience is excited about the potential of AI and know it needs to be a priority, this is tempered by concerns about AI - ranging from where to begin, through to the impact on workforce and uncertainty of future regulation. Further, the research showed there is significant opportunity for EY to help ensure clients and prospects gain the confidence they need to invest in the endless possibilities that AI brings.

In the approach, it was therefore essential to be laser focused conveying our strategic message around building confidence in AI and the value it can bring.

"'Building confidence' is good as it will reassure the customer that when you deal with EY you build confidence." (Quote from market research)

The target audience of the global brand campaign is the global C-suite, VPs and executives in large and medium sized companies.

The ‘Face of the Future’ is an extension of EY’s commitment to AI, launching the new platform EY.ai. The campaign exemplifies how EY is putting people at the center of AI, to build confidence and create exponential value.

To produce the ‘Face of the Future’ EY enlisted 200+ of their staff across the world. Each participant was photographed, to create portraits which were then animated and combined, using an advanced, bespoke-developed StyleGAN AI model to create a mesmerizing, ever-evolving face.

From there, a single professional voice recording was transformed using leading AI voice-technology to develop a chorus of new voices that matched the film's moving faces precisely.

The EY.ai ‘Face of the Future’ brand campaign was launched in market in October 2023, through a large-scale, fully integrated paid, owned and earned media approach.

The creative implementation led with a captivating 60-second film, adapted and transformed into various compositions and languages to uplift across multiple media channels.

The campaign was activated across major television networks, connected TV, international airports, digital media partnerships, paid and organic social media, internal and external communications, and signature events around the globe – with these touchpoints working in harmony to amplify and tell the story of EY.ai.

All media channels drove awareness and traffic to EY.ai - the eponymous web-hub of all content and services related to EY’s AI offering – continuing a seamless user journey for the audience.

The campaign activation also included engaging EY’s 400,000 people internally and empowering them to amplify the story and build united brand advocacy. All employees were provided with customizable campaign assets and toolkits, to enable them to be part of the ‘Face of the Future’ and promote the campaign with their clients and networks.

Sales:

- Multi-million $$$ sales and pipeline generated (fastest ever in 8 months)

Engagement:

- 43% Share-of-Voice on LinkedIn within category at launch

- Film reached 300,000 LinkedIn feeds organically, achieving peak views of 200 views/minute

- PR engagement: 300+ media mentions and 600+ articles secured for EY.ai (est. 260m reach)

- Teads ads: 16-second dwell time (vs. average benchmark 6 seconds). Highest ever performing ad on platform

Reach:

- 30m+ OOH reach across airports and railways

- 50m+ reach across TV, OOH, digital & social

- 12.6m+ reach on CTV

Business targets:

- +116% increase in agreement that “EY is helping build confidence in AI”

- Share-of-Search for AI jumped to #1 position vs. ‘Big 4’ competitors

- +206% uplift in consideration for AI services

- 16x more likely to associate EY with AI consulting. 4x more likely to have a favorable opinion of EY