Smoothie King, the international smoothie chain, recently released a free paperback romance novel, “A Summer Fling to the X-Treme,” with the help of ChatGPT and generative AI. Initially developed to drum up excitement for the return of the company’s seasonal X-Treme Watermelon smoothies, the romance novel has caught the attention of consumers, thanks to the AI powered artwork on the cover featuring protagonist Millie and Walter Melone. Unsurprisingly, the cover image was created with AI, as evidenced by Millie’s seven mismatched fingers. Interestingly, the story features secret codes that readers must parse through, creating a unique gamification of the full-length novel.
Smoothie King has recently teamed up with Barkley as their agency of record for brand and creative strategy. This move marks an effort to reach modern consumers, who have recently been appreciating the genre of romance novel more than ever before. The brand is also encouraging users to give themselves fun names for the order of the paperback copies of the book, a surprisingly friendly tactic fordata collection.
The publisher of the romance novel is Walter Melone, Smoothie King’s newest ambassador who is conveniently featured on the cover. Melone is a buff dude straight from Fabio’s mold, hinting that the story is likely to involve romance between him and Millie, the protagonist. So far, the brand has unveiled Plotlines with enough information for us to make educated guesses on the conclusion; it seems that the two will inevitably fall in love and the novel will be about their journey leading up to this point.
The story of Melone and Millie is indicative of the leap in consumer-facing experiments involving generative AI. As more and more companies and brands strive to innovate using AI, Smoothie King has created a novel way to get customers excited about their products. With the incorporation of AI in this paperback romance novel, Smoothie King has managed to position themselves as a modern brand that utilises cutting-edge technology to create unique experiences for its consumers.
