Image generated with Nightcafe. Prompt: A neverending texture of fashion clothing
Objects can be easily modified with RAISE and image generative AI.
This is a Web version of the Companion Appendix for RAISE: A New Method to Develop Experimental Stimuli for Advertising Research with Image Generative Artificial Intelligence, developed by César Zamudio, Jamie Grigsby, and Meg Michelsen, and published in the Journal of Advertising. Questions? Feel free to contact us!
While most of the examples concerning visual stimuli generated using the RAISE methodology are of people, RAISE can also be used to generate objects other than people. For instance, consider the work of Sevilla and Kahn (2014). In this article, the authors posit a “completeness heuristic,” by which consumers would prefer a complete product rather than an incomplete one. In their work, they show the completeness heuristic effect for a number of products, such as sandwiches and shampoo bottles.
Here, our goal will be to build a shampoo bottle with a handle, and a shampoo bottle without a handle using the RAISE methodology. We will begin with the complete bottle. The initial prompt is as follows:
Here, our goal will be to build a shampoo bottle with a handle, and a shampoo bottle without a handle using the RAISE methodology. We will begin with the complete bottle. The initial prompt is as follows:
Note that, ideally, Stimulus A should have no background, in case the product is to be displayed or superimposed in an ad alongside other items. Furthermore, adding the handle requires empty space within the bottle, with white space being preferred (as will be discussed shortly). As such, removing the bottle's background is recommended. In this case, we used Photoroom to remove the background. For more on backgrounds, check the Technical Details section.
The initial prompt constructs a set of candidates for Stimulus A (a complete bottle). Because the bottle is complete, few details are needed to generate it. After selecting a suitable candidate for Stimulus A, generating a Stimulus B featuring an incomplete bottle using RAISE can be done by first manually adding elements, a “hole” created using a lighter and a darker ellipsoids on top of Stimulus A, which can serve as the bottle’s handle. Another approach might be to simply paint a hole using a white brush with a free editing software. This can be done at no cost using tools such as PowerPoint or Paint. Although crude, such manual additions will assist any iGenAI tool as it generates a new image.
Afterwards, the manually edited Stimulus A can be used as basis to construct Stimulus B, using the following prompt:
Using simple manual edits to generate further stimuli can be used creatively to change details such as a person’s hair color, adding objects to an image, and so forth. However, successfully constructing stimuli will depend on the image strength parameter – for example, in the incomplete bottle example, strength was set to 45%. Success will also depend on the quality and characteristics of the manual edit – for example, if manipulating hair color, an appropriate color and brush would have to be used for the resulting stimulus to be of high quality. Finally, note that additional details, such as logos or logotypes, can generally be manually added. For example, in the main RAISE paper (Figure 8) we add the logo “varela shampoo” to the bottles shown here as shown in the Examples & Tutorials main page.
Below is a handy summary card outlining the process you just learned:
Ready to learn more?
Feel free to browse our gallery of examples with full tutorials, and the technical details section to learn the finer points of generating visual experimental stimuli using the RAISE methodology.