Cybersecurity firm Gen has developed an entire 12-part YouTube series entirely through generative AI as it looks to adopt the technology deeper into its creative process.
Gen CMO Krista Todd tells Marketing Week that the business has been “very focused on AI” across the marketing function for a while now – and that barely a meeting goes by without her asking how the team used AI to “reshape the work, the workflow, or the output” of any given idea.
The result in this case is ‘The Twelve Days of Scam-mas’, a public education campaign that looks to combine creativity and useful learnings, made entirely in generative AI released over 12 days at the start of December similar to an advent calendar.
Each of the twelve shorts focused on a different scam consumers could fall foul of during the festive season: from dodgy websites to social media frauds and already claimed gift cards. At the heart of each of them is a cute, though naughty, robot called Deceivus who is foiled each time by Gen’s cybersecurity suite coming to the rescue.
When you get different minds in the room, and you say, AI is going to be at the centre of it, but human creativity and strategies surround it, this is what happens.
Krista Todd, Gen
It’s something noticeably more high concept at a time of year when attention is at a premium – and intentionally so.
“We were thinking about how we are going to stand out during a busy time and busy season,” says Todd. “And the output ended up being incredible because it uses emotion and makes it relevant to what’s happening in the moment with the consumer, versus if you get a pop-up email that is just educational.”
The series has come to its conclusion but will be used throughout the holiday season across different media channels in shortened forms to keep the conversation going – as well as being localised for French and German-speaking nations. AI, of course, helped with that process as well.
The whole experiment has further convinced Todd of the creative potential of AI as well as the efficiencies it offers – as long as it comes with a healthy dollop of human creativity too.
“When you get different minds in the room, and you say, AI is going to be at the centre of it, but human creativity and strategies surround it, this is what happens,” she adds.
One CMO on why marketing must be at the heart of product developmentThe campaign is tied to Avast – one of multiple cybersecurity firms that belong under the Gen banner including Norton, AVG and LifeLock by Norton – and the fun, more light-hearted approach to security shown in this campaign is something that helps differentiate the brand from the others.
“We are all very unique in our needs, wants and desires in how we interact with cyber safety, and, as such, you have to try and make sure that each of the brands stands for something distinctive, so consumers can make easy mental shortcuts and choose the brand that works for them,” says Todd, who has spoken in the past about how to ensure each brand doesn’t cannibalise the other’s share.
According to the Gen team, Scam-mas is the scale of project that would have cost far too much for the brand to throw budget behind before the advent of AI. Todd estimates that the campaign – which cost in the region of tens of thousands of dollars – would have been closer to hundreds, “if not millions”, of dollars had it been created using traditional methods.
And, better still, instead of taking 9-12 months to produce, as estimated, the project came together from idea to finished video in just under three months. It’s a scale of efficiency and saving that may be a solution to marketing’s tireless challenge of having to do more with less. Not that Todd believes that would be a healthy attitude to take.
Creative people will be at the heart of marketing’s AI revolution“The request to all the companies is how do you do more with less? And so case studies like this help give us some confidence, but at the same time, it’s got to be gradual,” she says. “There can’t be a complete drop in budget, because you don’t want to compromise the quality or storytelling, and your ability to deliver great work.”
She accepts, though, as she looks as to how to spend her budget in 2026, that something with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of dollars across multiple campaigns – and multiple geographies – will give her more options when it comes spending what she has. But Todd is adamant that any savings generated should be put back into the business and help it learn more about what AI can do for the company.
“I have been connecting with my CEO about how we continue to reinvest those savings in learning even more about the possibilities around AI,” explains Todd. “Because right now, it should not be about, okay, let me give back these savings to the business, but instead, does it help us drive better performance and higher quality?”
AI adoption at scale
Todd is suitably effusive about the potential of AI in marketing – but acknowledges as a marketing leader it is her job to ensure the rest of the team are singing from the same hymn sheet.
“If your entire team is not in it, then it’s not going to be successful,” she says, noting that the original plan was to create a small AI working group within the wider team before deciding it needed to be broader than that.
“You need those innovators, of course, but everyone’s got to be bought in. They’ve got to see the value from a productivity standpoint to an optimisation standpoint and to how it helps consumers. It really matters,” she adds.
To help increase the pace of adoption at Gen, Todd has introduced “AI show and tells” in an effort to share best practices across teams. Finding out what works and what doesn’t is an important part of the process – as is testing tools to see which should be carried forward and which should be dropped.
Gen is using “over 40 AI tools at any one time” and while Todd notes this doesn’t mean “we have long contracts or we’re going to keep them all”, it does mean the business is in the mindset of asking whether the tool is “solving a need” that it has or not.
The key trends shaping technology in 2026This is easier, she believes, because of the inherent advantages of working in a multi-brand, mostly single category company. While the brand’s will have distinctive brand strategies aimed at different audiences, there are still things you can “learn very quickly”, says Todd.
“We ask the team to act like small teams. So you may be working on Scam-mas, but if you are not sharing what you have learned from that campaign to the other brands and teams, then you’re not doing what’s best for Gen,” she explains.
The expectation being that, of course, each individual brand’s marketers should want their brand to grow and thrive – but this can’t come at the expense of growth for the wider business. Sharing talent, ideas and learnings across the brands has quickly become a goal for growing a positive company culture.
“Let’s talk about the strategy. Let’s talk about the tools. Let’s talk about the execution and see if there are ways for us to share those best practices and learnings to help the other brands,” she says.
And for those reticent over what an AI future might hold for marketing, Todd is bullish about its potential. “AI isn’t going to take your job, it’s going to take your job to the next level,” she concludes.