Newell Brands produces creative campaigns 5x faster with Adobe Firefly Custom Models
Elmer's slime campaign assets that once took months to plan and shoot are now produced in days; Yankee Candle's European team generates dozens of design variations in seconds—all from a single AI-powered content supply chain.
Background
Newell Brands manages a sprawling portfolio of heritage consumer brands, each with distinct visual identities and strict brand governance requirements. The legacy approach—months-long shoots and productions per campaign—could not keep pace with the demands of always-on digital and ecommerce channels. The company needed a content engine that could scale without sacrificing brand consistency.
What Was Implemented
- Deployed Adobe Firefly Custom Models trained on individual brand assets (Elmer's, Paper Mate, Yankee Candle) to enforce brand standards in AI-generated imagery
- Used Adobe Firefly to generate hundreds of backdrops and campaign visuals from text prompts, paired with product images by human designers
- Integrated Adobe Workfront for project management (AI Assistant for summarizing, generating records, automating approvals)
- Integrated Adobe Experience Manager Assets for content storage and reuse across brands
- Used Adobe Express to accelerate social asset creation (Oster: 52 assets from 12h to 8h)
- Generated dozens of bow-on-candle design variations for Yankee Candle in seconds for performance testing
Results
Elmer's achieved a 5x increase in campaign production speed , compressing a multi-month process into days. Paper Mate packaging production accelerated by 75% . Oster social asset creation time fell by 33% (12 hours to 8 hours for 52 assets). Yankee Candle generated dozens of design variations in seconds. The company's stated ambition is to fuel five times more content overall across its brand portfolio.
Lessons
- Training brand-specific AI models (rather than using generic generative AI) is essential for organizations where brand consistency is non-negotiable
- Integrating generative AI into an end-to-end content supply chain (project management → generation → storage → deployment) multiplies the productivity gains beyond any single tool
- AI excels at the iterative, repetitive production tasks (resizing, background swaps, variation testing), freeing human creatives for high-value ideation
- Testing AI-generated creative variants (e.g., with/without a bow) provides data-backed insights for campaign optimization