Myrtle Beach called Mitarry Best in wild AI ad campaign. And there’s merch. Take a look

An ad campaign on the social media site Reddit recently used AI-generated absurd images to promote Myrtle Beach in a creative way.

The Visit Myrtle Beach account on Aug. 22 posted a thread on message board site Reddit.

“We welcome our new AI overlords. Introducing the new AI ad campaign for Myrtle Beach,” the post’s title said.

The post included images of Myrtle Beach’s sights with telltale signs of AI-generated visuals. The name Mitarry Best comes from the characteristically garbled text on an AI-created logo.

“The best design breaks the rules, and boy does AI know how to do that,” the post said.

AI, which stands for artificial intelligence, has been a hot-button topic in the past year with the release of user-friendly text and image generators. While some AI-generated media has an unnatural quality, many worry about these easy-to-use technologies making some jobs irrelevant.

Another image showed a smiling couple holding a lobster while a disembodied hand points at the seafood. The lights in the background are floating and the woman’s arm has impossible anatomy. The caption said that AI “recognized that the couple needed a hand deshelling the crab. It can be tricky! AI is so thoughtful.”

Travel marketing company MMGY Global created the campaign for Visit Myrtle Beach. Over two months, MMGY designers submitted descriptions to AI image creator Midjourney, said Brandon Sanders, VP, Group Creative Director, who led MMGY designers and writers on the project. Each of these prompts returned four images and the designers tweaked their descriptions to get the intentionally nonsensical visuals they wanted.

Sanders wanted viewers to initially think, “Oh, that looks pretty cool. But then you look a little bit closer, and something kind of wild is going on.”

The Reddit thread included links to a Mitarry Best page on the Visit Myrtle Beach website, with ChatGPT-created descriptions of South Carolina’s attractions that were intentionally “a little bit off,” according to Sanders.

A website now sells Mitarry Best merch, after commenters requested it. Listings include a baby onesie – called “tiny human singular apparel” on the site, swim trunks – “dude aquatic leg curtains,” and the top-selling Mitarry Best logo shirt – “gender neutral cotton cloud puff torso tarp.” The store has made almost $1,000 in sales, which will go to pay for the campaign, according to Visit Myrtle Beach.

MMGY has not heard of anyone on Reddit taking the Mitarry Best ad seriously.

“Not every audience would have embraced it the same way and reacted to it the same way,” said Traci Strickert, who worked on the campaign.

According to MMGY, in a little over three weeks, the Reddit thread amassed over 1,200 comments and 6,500 clicks to the Visit Myrtle Beach website. MMGY representatives said they don’t yet know if they will create more Mitarry Best advertisements.

Marlane White, spokesperson for Visit Myrtle Beach, said in a statement that the campaign is “one part of a larger strategy to reach new audiences via the Reddit community as one of a series of experimental campaigns that we’ve launched over the past couple of years, across multiple platforms.”

These strategies have included the TV show Chef Swap at the Beach and advertising on LG’s smart TVs.

A tourism consultant found every dollar spent by Visit Myrtle Beach on summer 2022 tourism campaigns generated $167 in visitor spending at area businesses and $22 in local and state taxes. White declined to say how much the Mitarry Best campaign cost.

Marketing industry publication Ad Age included the Mitarry Best campaign on their list of five AI marketing campaigns and top five creative marketing techniques for this week.