Featured Image: The Blackpool Grand’s Frank, The Reindeer AI character
Blackpool Grand Theatre has unveiled a new AI-generated character as part of its Christmas marketing campaign, demonstrating the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in event marketing.
‘A Theatrical Christmas Tale’ features an AI-generated character called Frank, The Reindeer. Frank was created using AI and the Chat GPT language tool, alongside a team of marketers and animators.
Frank will be ‘seen’ gracing the streets of the UK town of Blackpool through large marketing displays and messages for both locals and tourists. He will be shown on life-size photo boards, through animated features on local transport TV screens and online, as well as through Christmas stories. His role is to not only promote events and productions during the festive season, but going into 2024 as well.
The reindeer character has been presented as a relative of the famous Rudolph, who has a passion for the theatre, love and friendship – as well as salted caramel ice cream. Frank was named after Blackpool Grand Theatre’s architect Frank Matcham.
The Grand’s AI campaign will also link to physical aspects and experiences throughout the festive season, including the introduction of Frank’s favourite salted caramel flavour ice cream exclusively during the Aladdin pantomime. Audiences may even be able to spot Frank popping up in the audience during Aladdin.
“We are thrilled to welcome Frank, the AI-generated Reindeer, to Blackpool,” said Blackpool Grand Theatre chief executive, Adam Knight.
“Frank’s passion for the theatre and of course, his favoured salted caramel ice cream perfectly aligns with the spirit of our beloved town. We believe this campaign will captivate the hearts of Blackpool residents and visitors and make for a truly unforgettable Christmas season at Blackpool Grand Theatre.”
Head of audiences, marketing and sales, Andrew Howard, added: “This campaign has been a huge team effort and a passion project which grew and grew as we all fell in love with ‘Frank, The Reindeer’. Our aim was to create a campaign that adds to the amazing work of our SEO writers, voiceover team, graphic designers, animators, digitals and many more creatives involved. We wanted to give them more expression and use the very latest in technology to show just what is possible with ‘great heart and love’ in the festive season! We know you’ll fall in love with Frank, and his stories as much as we have.”
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