Manychat SXSW
[Challenge]If people in the real world are tired of hearing about AI, imagine at one of the biggest tech festivals on the planet. Between panels, talks, giveaways and activations spread across Austin during SXSW, getting attention for one specific brand is no easy task. Manychat put the question in direct terms: how do you make your activation at the Creator Hub Club deliver more than a bland filter, a photo with a sign and a swag line? Manychat's main feature is its Instagram DM automation. The answer had to run through it.
[Solution]We wanted to impress with what was already impressing everyone at the time: AI video starring you. But of course we weren't going to settle for Sora's 10 unpredictable seconds. The idea was to generate a 20 second video with five different scenes. All with control and at scale.
We built a dedicated internal app for the event. The participant went to Manychat's Instagram profile, sent a DM and took a photo at the activation. Two minutes later, they got back a video made of five scenes, edited with music and starring them, traveling through iconic spots in Austin all the way to the Manychat party. Exactly where they were standing.
The pipeline mixed AI and humans at surgical points. The AI generated its hundreds of images and videos, and a human reviewer approved each step before moving to the next. 114 videos finished in a single afternoon. Impossible without AI.
A big testimonial quote from a client who loved us and our work and wants to keep working with us.
Aline Jurie
Role @ Manychat
One photo and two minutes was all we needed to make you a giant.
It took hundreds of tests to understand which story we wanted to tell and whether each scene was feasible.
The participant started on Manychat's profile with the action that best represents the brand: sending a DM. The start of the automation.
A photo taken right there at the activation. No extra sign-ups: the Instagram handle had already been collected in the previous phase.
With our training, the AI placed our protagonist as a giant at four Austin landmarks and in front of the house where Manychat's activation was happening.
Not everything comes out perfect, so it helps to have a human keeping an eye on things. This phase checked that the frames would move on to the next step without errors.
Each approved image became a three to five second scene, keeping everything consistent.
A second human review to make sure nobody got turned into a bat along the way.
The AI edited it, adding the soundtrack, and the video arrived in the person's DMs via Manychat's automation, ready to post on Instagram. Everything connected.
- Client
- Manychat
- DATE
- March 2026
- Creative direction
- Felipe Pacheco & Paulo Aguiar
- ART DIRECTION
- Paulo Aguiar
- APP & TECH
- Felipe Pacheco