Adrian Elton and AI dogs - inside Dash Dog Wash's latest campaign

Independent creative Adrian Elton has executed an AI campaign for Dash Dog Wash, as both graphic designer and art director.

The artwork was a collaboration with AI artist Brian Sykes from North Carolina.

Elton said he has been playing around with AI generated imagery from as early as August 2022.   

“Despite the rudimentary nature of those first crude images I could immediately sense its potential for one day creating fully fledged advertising imagery,” he said.  

The hero imagery of the humans and hounds was generated with MidJourney with image extensions (making them physically longer) using 'outpainting' in DallE, said Elton. 

In late 2022, Dash Dog Wash, a new client for Elton, approached him to develop a campaign - one that would whet the appetites of prospective franchisees who not only loved their dogs, but who were also looking for a career shift that offered the autonomy and flexibility that is part and parcel of owning a dog grooming business.

“Once the 'fur real' campaign concept had been developed and selected, and the discussions turned to production, I added a suggestion to the mix that I’d never been able to suggest before: AI,” said Elton. 

As commissioned photography was well beyond the production budget, and the available stock imagery was far too limiting, Elton said it was clear that AI would give the team the best of all scenarios. 

“While I had already incorporated AI generated imagery into rough project mock-ups as early as September 2022 - my AI skill levels were still very basic,” he said. 

“That being the case I knew we were going to have to wheel out the big guns if we were to produce campaign-grade imagery with the requisite level of visual complexity.” 

Elton had been in conversation with various AI artists whose work had impressed him, including Sykes. 

Elton had seen an image he'd generated of a greyhound that had an unbelievable level of fine 'photographic' detail, he said.  

“That pooch in mind, I reached out to Brian to see if he could bring that level of realism to the task of creating the key visuals for our campaign.” 

Throughout the project, Elton and Sykes discovered that in order to get the necessary facial expressions of surprised and delighted awe, the results were far stronger when prompting the humans and hounds separately. 

“So even though there was more overall realism by prompting them together, it was impossible to simultaneously get their expressions right, while also getting their poses sufficiently consistent,” said Elton. 

An early version of the concept that used stock shots (pictured right), didn't really cut it, said Elton.

"I also wanted to note how lucky we were to have a client (props to Janie Rose) who was so patient and supportive of the fact that we were experimenting with a new technology that was untested at this level," he said.

Elton said no one in the team had anticipated how difficult it was going to be to get consistent imagery and that they'd be running endless prompts before they got sufficiently strong images they could strip together.

The next issue to arise, said Elton, was that MidJourney 4.0 still gave everything a Marvel, 3D-like illustrative quality. 

“It was incredibly visually alluring on the one level, but was still fundamentally at odds with the photographic aesthetic that was the brief requirement from day one,” he said. 

“This was particularly noticeable with the prompted people."

The game-changing moment came when MidJourney 5.0 was released in March, said Elton, allowing the creative duo to re-run and refine all of the prompts.  

“This had the effect of transforming the images into something that for the first time felt truly photographic – at least relative to what had come before,” he said. 

“Along the way Brian very generously and patiently showed me the ropes as I had an irrepressible eagerness to get up to speed with these new fangled digital toys having seen what he was capable of producing at close range.” 

For Elton, the campaign turned out to be incredibly prescient given that the project had more than eclipsed Sykes’ availability in the midst of his hectic schedule.  

“With Brian's patient stewardship, I was able to complete the project while also adding the oh-so-contemporary skill set of  'AI Whispering' to my CV,” said Elton.  

“Given all that was learned, and the way that I’ve been able to incorporate my growing AI skillset into all of my subsequent projects, you could say that the ‘MidJourney’ was just as important as the destination.”