Believe it or not, advertising is held to an idea of “truth in advertising” both ethically and legally. We don’t make claims that are false, nor are we trying to deceive anyone. Those who might do that are not my friends and colleagues. Visuals can be created by photography, illustration (which can be digital or encompass a lot of different physical media), CGI, or AI. Each of these techniques present their own considerations for whether or not you’re depicting an accurate representation of the object for sale.
📷 Photography
The actual object is present in front of the camera. Now, you can light it, choose an angle, retouch a scratch off of it, or adjust the color later. You are presenting the object in the best light possible. The context can be literal, aspirational, or conceptual. But the object you see is the object that you’re buying.
I’m using the word “object” but you can think of that as anything from a pan to a salad to a travel destination.
Food photography is a great example. No, your Whopper will never look quite as golden and warm as the one on TV. They are going to pick the best looking bun and best looking tomato and light it carefully so the meat glistens. But in my experience with food, you do have to feature the same ingredients in the same amounts. In other words, to shoot a particular fast casual salad, you must use the same X ounces of cherry tomatoes and X ounces of chicken, and you can’t put 3x the cheese on it. So it is an accurate (if artistic) presentation of the same food you’ll get when you order it at the restaurant.
There were days when stylists used Crisco as a stand-in for ice cream since it wouldn’t melt. This doesn’t happen much anymore. Most food stylists use the actual food products. However, if the ice cream is just a prop in an ad for a refrigerator, then it really doesn’t matter what it’s made from.
🎨 Illustration
In this case, it’s generally clear that it’s an illustration and not the actual object in front of you. Depending on how abstract or realistic the style of the illustration, there will be less or more of an expectation that it resembles the real object. There will probably need to be an accurate depiction of the object somewhere – typically at the point of purchase online if you’re not in a physical store.
📐 CGI
Computer generated product imagery is a kind of digital illustration typically based on an actual CAD file of the object. So, while it’s not the physical manifestation of the object, it is rendered from the actual 3D engineering files. Therefore these renders are very accurate representations at least in form. Texture or finish is another consideration.
✨ Gen AI
You could use AI to enhance any of the image making above. You could build your own AI ecosystem based on meticulous rules and extensive (real) image archive. But when an image is generated completely by AI prompts, things get squishy fast. AI is not bound by the laws of physics. There may be too many rivets, or no rivets at all. Knobs are not to scale. Shoes magically lace themselves. However, these depictions can seem accurate to anyone who has never seen the object before. And therein lies the problem.
(NOT an accurate depiction of New Orleans.)
A colleague pointed out some Priceline ads that advertise travel to places like New Orleans and Chicago but inaccurately depicted the places they’re urging you to go. The gen AI above shows the New Orleans Superdome right on the river among other issues. If you’re telling me I can go HERE, and the HERE is some made up place, that seems false. Also, someone on Reddit mentioned it’s pretty easy to find accurate stock imagery of NOLA. Why go through this extra trouble? And if you wanted to create some mashup of all the NOLA landmarks in one image, you could have made a cool collage.
I’m not sure if they don’t care or whoever is generating these doesn’t know what NOLA looks like or if these are being generated automatically without a person involved. But there is a responsibility to show the correct thing. And there are many different ways to do just that.
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