Is there anything AI cannot do? It’s writing ads, millions of them, if Jellyfish’s stats in Jules Love’s Shift: AI for Agencies are right. Check out the book here.
And if you want a smart take on how agencies can use AI to feed the algorithm and thrive in a fragmented media world, read this IPA Effectiveness piece.
But today, we’re not here to debate AI’s role in adland. That’s been done to death.
We’re here to talk about… a kettle.
Meet the World’s First AI Kettle
Russell Hobbs set out to design a kettle that met the emerging consumer desire for emotional comfort in everyday routines. Using AI to explore moodled design directions, they developed a product that captures a return to emotional, intentional living.
The result? The Calm™ Kettle:
While the kettle’s form was inspired by AI, its positioning came from a deeply human insight. It took a person, not an algorithm, to recognise that when you are waiting for the kettle to boil your mind naturally drifts. That moment, often overlooked, is actually a microbreak. A rare moment of calm.
That insight became ‘A Moment of MeTime.’ And shaped everything: the name, the positioning, and even the features of the product itself. Soothing sounds and gentle lighting were added to enhance the mindful experience, turning a simple kettle into a small ritual of reset.
We took ‘A Moment of Me-Time’ everywhere when we launched the kettle:
- Emotive AV and immersive stands for trade
- Retail experiences that felt like a breath out
- Soothing social and media-first special builds
- And the media was placed where stress peaks, so we could interrupt it with calm
By combining AI ideas with human insight across all 4Ps, Russell Hobbs has captured a significant share of the £90-£100 kettle market for the first time. This has generated incremental revenue in the short term and increased the average selling price across their entire range for the long term.
AI at the Start, Not the End
This was not AI used for creative or production efficiency. It was AI as a spark for ideas.
As Jules Love says: “The point of differentiation isn’t ‘Are you using AI?’ It’s ‘What can you do now that you couldn’t do before?’”
At Audience Collective, we’re asking: “What can AI start?”, not “what can it finish?”
We are testing synthetic insight in research, running AI focus groups alongside real ones and simulating quantitative results.
Academic research has explored this too. For quantitative product testing, synthetic responses can align with real ones about 75% of the time, especially on measures like brand similarity and product attribute ratings. Read the studies here and here.
But here’s the catch: AI is far better at evaluating and refining existing concepts than creating new ones. Which makes the Calm Kettle feel like a rare exception rather than the rule.
As Lynsey Carolan, MD at Spark, puts it:
“Synthetic is problematic. It makes things up and over-eggs personas. If you copy what’s already been done with real people, fine. But ask it to ‘be Irish’, and it dives headfirst into stereotypes.”
Leading scholars echo this: AI should complement human insight, not replace it.
Watch a brilliant summary here.
If Machines Can Do the Work, What’s Left for Marketers
Last week at Audience Collective, we hosted our first-ever Alt Feed webinar. Over 150 people joined to debate one of the biggest questions in modern marketing: what happens when machines can do the work, and what’s left for humans?
This wasn’t about AI writing ads or planning media. It was about the stuff that really matters: insight, ideas, and creating products and experiences that actually meet audience needs.
You can watch the best bits here.
