Why marketers should be excited about Midjourney 5.2 🙌

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AI Marketing School Newsletter #34

Midjourney 5.2 has gone live—here’s why marketers should be excited

Midjourney 5.2, the latest iteration of the text-to-image AI model, has just been released.

One of the most significant updates is the Zoom Out tool, which rivals Photoshop’s new Generative Fill feature. The tool allows users to expand an image, mimicking zooming out while maintaining the original image's details.

But that’s not all—there are several new features that will also benefit marketers. 

What marketers need to know

• Zoom Out: Expand the scope of an image while preserving its original details. Ideal for marketers creating content for different platforms with varying dimension requirements.
  
  

• Make Square: Expand a non-square image vertically or horizontally. This is perfect for platforms like Instagram that favor square images.

  
  

• Variation Mode: Introduce greater visual variations, such as different colors, styles, and settings. Marketers can use this to create visually diverse versions of the same image, which is especially useful for A/B testing ad campaigns.
  
  

• Shorten Command: Automatically shorten prompts down to the key essentials. This helps marketers avoid overly verbose prompts that dilute the impact of each word.

  
  

• Stylize Function: Add an artistic touch to your images. If your brand has a particular style or aesthetic, you can use the Stylize function to ensure that all images conform to this style, guaranteeing visual consistency across all marketing materials.

Using AI to identify (and improve) your brand’s persona

Matt Perry, Co-founder & CEO of The Future Collective, shared this brilliant tip for helping marketers map out and refine their brand’s persona with ChatGPT.

Here’s the prompt:

Using Jung theory and [a link to your website], conduct a review of the brand persona and rank it against the 12 archetypes, review using a scoring criteria of 1-10 1 being the lowest. The results should be presented in a table format.

How this helps marketers

• Brand persona evaluation: Use AI to validate your brand persona. Ensure your brand's copy and tone are consistent with your brand's identity.
  
  

• Benchmarking: Review and understand your competitors’ brand personas. Identify what each company’s personas represent and work out what industry leaders are doing differently than the rest.

  
  

• Assessing marketing materials: Apply this prompt to new pieces of content that you create and double check that it represents your brand persona. This will help you maintain a consistent identity as your brand grows.

We put Stable Diffusion XL 0.9 to the test

Those following Stability AI head-honcho Emad Mostaque on Twitter will know he’s been posting some pretty breathtaking images on his feed.

These have been generated by Stable Diffusion XL 0.9 (SDXL 0.9), which launched on the 22nd June.

It’s the most advanced development yet in the suite of Stable Diffusion text-to-image models. However, this will soon change when Stability AI releases the full Stable Diffusion XL version in mid-July.

Test it out for yourself here.

How Stable Diffusion XL 0.9 compares to Stable Diffusion 2.1

We entered the following prompt into Stable Diffusion 2.1 (the old model) and Stable Diffusion XL.

Generate a realistic fashion product shot featuring an attractive 20-year-old male model donning khaki trousers and a white t-shirt. The model should be wearing headphones, holding a neon green can, and set against the backdrop of a vibrant music festival.

Here’s what Stable Diffusion 2.1 produced.

And here’s the far better version that Stable Diffusion XL gave us.

As you can see, it’s still not perfect—we asked for the model to be holding a green can, not wearing green headphones. However, the quality of the image is far superior to the one produced by Stable Diffusion 2.1.

We certainly look forward to testing out the full Stable Diffusion XL version in mid-July…

Recommended resources and tools📚 🛠️

1. The Ad Industry Has No Intention of Letting AI Ruin the Party

Ad agencies are incredibly excited about the possibility of using generative AI. That said, they understand that even if AI can generate compelling ads on its own, the algorithms will still need the creativity of advertising professionals.

2. Opus Clip

An AI-powered tool that lets users repurpose long-form videos into short clips in just one click.

3. Google DeepMind’s CEO Says Its Next Algorithm Will Eclipse ChatGPT

Google is working on an AI large language model (LLM) called Gemini that could rival ChatGPT, according to CEO Demis Hassabis.

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Thanks so much for reading. With the abundance of content on the internet, your attention means a lot. If you have any suggestions or feedback on how we can improve the newsletter, please shoot us a reply. We'd love to hear from you!

Until next time. Happy marketing.

Tom and Charlie