Even the smallest acts of help add up to change the world.
We needed to storytell the true power of community for GoFundMe’s “Year In Help” campaign. But they were seeking an idea that would not only thank its donors and stir emotion, but also cut through the noise of typical year-in-review creative from other brands. All on a limited film budget.
AI generative art had just started becoming a thing. And amongst all the early days frenzy, an opportunity arose to portray all the GoFundMe donors who helped their communities, in a scalable yet artful way.
Human kindness depicted by machine learning.
We took inspiration from a wide diversity of public mural aesthetics found in neighborhood streets across America. Then used AI to aggregated a single, universal community aesthetic that would represent all the different real GoFundMe stories from throughout the year. It was as if Diego Rivera and Edward Hopper had a baby, who learnt DALLE-2 prompts at an impressively young age.
To take things to the next level, these static GoFundMe murals were transformed into an emotive film, where very single frame of the film was created using a unique combination of AI technologies. Our tech team pinky swear this was a world first in film innovation, being released several months before now available Ai tools.
In collaboration with both visual finishing artists, as well as musical recording artists, the real stories of hope in each scene were seamlessly woven together. All while a flurry of UI tiles, representing donations made on GoFundMe’s platform, demonstrated the real world impact that kindness has on communities.
The story extended through digital and social, where the audience could explore one level deeper to discover the fundraiser behind the scene, and even contribute their own donation directly.
A groundbreaking combination of art and science tells the power of community.
GoFundMe made a significant impact on its own community of donors, by thanking and inspiring them like never before. Immediately at launch, there was a universally positive response to the story’s message, and a gratitude for GoFundMe bringing some magic and hope into a world that needs it more than ever.
Meanwhile, the unique approach to GoFundMe’s pioneering production gives a glimpse of AI as a collaborative tool that can supercharge creativity and unlock new ways of working. More important than any of the industry media attention or accolades it received, the word “wow” was clocked hundreds of times on GoFundMe’s channels during social listening.