How do you get high school kids excited about vocational learning when the general consensus is that it’s ‘boring’ and limits their career choices? With GenAI, we helped Linköping municipality change the narrative. To paint a new picture, highlighting the real-world skills and huge variety of opportunities on offer. The result? A renewed buzz around vocational paths.
With Linköping, AI plus human ingenuity is helping shape young futures
The challenge
Linköping, Sweden’s fifth-largest – and growing – municipality, places high value on meaningful opportunities for its youth. It turned to us for a solution to address negative misconceptions around vocational learning. With a tight budget, there simply wasn’t room for the usual (and invariably pricey) visual strategies, like photo shoots and stock images. But, if GenAI is the obvious answer, how do you avoid the pitfalls that can go with it? Imagery that isn’t relatable, or doesn’t connect, just won’t cut it – especially with teens.
“Our ambition? Combining human creativity and AI to bust vocational training myths within budget”
Simon Göthson
Lead Conceptual Creative | Empathy Lab
Our approach
Introducing Sweden's first photorealistic GenAI campaign.
We based our strategy around the discovery that young people often reject vocational education, thinking it sets them on a lower, and slower, career path.
Our mission was to challenge this stereotype and showcase how vocational programmes can kick-start exciting career journeys – from sous chef in a Michelin-star restaurant, to working as a NASA space technician. But we had to do it in a way that would resonate with young people. It had to be – and look – authentic and achievable.
Our solution
With the help of Midjourney, we crafted a 360-degree campaign with photorealistic visuals, showing just how far a vocational programme can take you – even to space.
Our main concept, “Shape the future, just the way you like it” set the tone. We developed detailed prompts for Midjourney, focusing on age, posture and facial expressions and avoiding any biases. To ensure a cohesive campaign look, we played with camera and lighting settings, carefully creating our own retouched reference images to guide the AI.
We used Remini.ai for AI face enhancement, Adobe Firefly in Photoshop Beta for touch-ups and adjusting to different formats, and Topaz Gigapixel AI to deal with resolution when upscaling to billboard size. But when it came to final retouching, only the human touch of a professional would do to bring it all together.
Impact
GenAI helped elevate the production value to a new level and our client was blown away. The campaign not only achieved impressive reach but, crucially, struck a chord with younger audiences on Snapchat. By combining AI with the human touch we created a compelling visual story, effectively engaging the target audience with this important message.
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