It’s no secret that Opus 5.5 is excellent at generating videos. It mostly writes JavaScript to do the simple stuff like writing text and stitching together scenes, but it works best if you give it access to other tools, like an OpenAI API key to generate images or a Cartesia API key to generate synthetic speech. Contrary to popular belief, it does not need access to video generation models, which are both slower and more costly.

The startup I work at now, LearnVector, has barely had any marketing, and we only have a small brand kit. Our founder, Andrew, recently came up with the brilliant concept that LearnVector is a frontier “human development lab” (as opposed to an AI development lab).

I wanted to riff off of this idea to explore the feel of our brand: hopeful, positive, reassuring, and adamant that human development matters more than AI development.

Here was my first go, an idea that came together in just one prompt and an image reference for the flowing grass. I provided the copy, feel, “clapping” idea, and the aforementioned image.

Human skills > agent skills.

I think this first one is the best of the three. It came to me in a half-dream state before sleep. I love the image of the guy gazing into the distance over the flowing grass. It reminds me of the Ray Bradbury story “The Veldt”.

I tried another idea that took a jab at the frontier AI labs. In this one, Claude created its own pencil drawing images of Sam, Dario, and Andrew.

Using Andrew's catchphrase as the payoff.

And, the weirdest of the three, playing off of the phenomenon of labs releasing models under codenames like “nano banana”, where they top benchmarks before the ultimate reveal.

Imagining a human as the ultimate benchmaxxer.

I’ve gotten a wide variety of responses from coworkers. People have favorites! (It’s pretty split between 1 and 2.) Most people laugh at “Sam and Dario got you down?” and then ask me “Wait, what was quantum goose?” The feedback has been that the ads are a bit too fast, but would probably appeal to Gen Z.

I experimented with these ads because I want to expand my builder knowledge to branding and marketing. I think marketing is the epitome of an underappreciated field. But, at a startup, you’re thoroughly aware of how crucial it is to get your message to the right users, not just to have a good product.

I encourage you to give video generation with Opus 5.5 a try!