Bharat Matrimony aims to help young singles find their perfect match for life. It is a brand that celebrates the institution of marriage and togetherness. But data suggests that young adults are questioning marriage lately.

The task of finding a life partner is often associated with the idea of finding perfection. And our relationship with social media is more or less the same. As per GWI data, 32.1% millennials said that there's too much pressure to be perfect on social media.

So, this Valentine’s Day the brand decided to tackle this in an interesting way and give young adults a new perspective on approaching their search for a life partner. Bharat Matrimony believed that perfect matches can be built on beautiful imperfections. And to deliver this message, they created the ‘perfect’ messenger.

2023 started with Elon Musk’s tweet on scary good ChatGPT.

In many ways, ChatGPT epitomised perfection. It passed a law school exam, aced LSAT, wrote codes and ads, even won chess games!

If it were an eligible single man, he would make the young perfection-seeking Indian woman’s heart skip a beat. So that’s exactly what we did… we created an AI-generated picture of The Perfect Valentine - ‘Aaditya Iyer’.

A series of AI-generated images showed Aaditya as a man who looked perfect, cooked perfect, thought perfect, shared perfect photos of perfect travels, and even wrote perfect poetry!

Everything was perfect, nothing was real.

And it worked! In 10 days, Aaditya Iyer gathered 10,000 followers. Then on Valentine’s Day, Bharat Matrimony dropped a video that revealed that Aaditya may be picture-perfect, but he was not real. Real people are beautifully imperfect, but they can still be perfect for you.

Aaditya Iyer - India’s first 100% AI-generated virtual influencer, came to life to build a bubble of perfection only to burst it. A Morning Consult survey showed that 38% people follow influencers because they post beautiful images, a further 18% because they’re physically attractive. So, the strategy was to create visual appeal. Instagram allowed for a pileup of AI-generated images and opinion-building captions to build this world.

The 10-day arc was designed to be long enough to build follower base, but full of days like Rose Day and Propose Day, to retain interest. The audience strategy was to appeal to the underlying need for authenticity, that was getting overwritten by the pressure to be perfect. In an MTV study, young Indians were 68% more likely to prefer real stories. So, we told them the unreal story of a perfect influencer, to show that ‘real’ amounts to more than just ‘perfect’.

Aaditya Iyer - a name chosen for its initials ‘AI’, spent as much time being born, as he did living his perfect life on Instagram.

A lot depended on the visual grammar being just about right to pull off the digital illusion. His face was generated by AI, based on research about what women found most attractive. Most gravitated towards a beard, so Aaditya’s pictures started growing a well-groomed beard.

Since the images were AI-generated, they had to look consistent. A Midjourney specialist joined the journey, and helped create hundreds of digital illustrations. Telling Midjourney to generate an image of ‘a good-looking man in a café’ was not enough. Prompt after prompt was carefully crafted, keeping in mind nuances like angles, scene details, lighting, camera lens, etc.

All this helped us eventually create posts that told the story of a friendly, good-looking, pet-loving man who was charming, well-read, and well-travelled.

The long process of trial and error made it clear that while AI was good at generating perfection, it heavily depended on human creativity to bring the touch of reality and relatability to create desired results.

The choice of Instagram was dictated by GWI data that said 64.4% of women between 20-30 years used Instagram daily. The sequence of posting mirrored the experience of meeting a new person. The first posts introduced Aaditya, followed by his interests, then experiences, and finally his deeper thoughts.

Launched on 4th Feb, Aaditya quickly gained more than 10K followers in just a week. Almost 50 influencers commented on him. Starting 7th Feb, he started celebrating Rose day, Propose day, Kiss day, declaring his intention to find a Valentine.

However, on Valentine’s Day, the real story unfolded, Aaditya Iyer - the Perfect Valentine, may be picture perfect, but a picture was all that he was.

Bharat Matrimony's AI Valentine campaign was a huge success in terms of social media engagement and digital coverage. Using an AI-generated influencer, Aaditya Iyer, the brand successfully engaged its target audience and promoted its services. The campaign garnered over 11k followers for Aaditya during the 10-day campaign period and trended #1 and #2 on Twitter on Valentine's Day. The campaign caught the attention of over 50 influencers and was covered by around 15 regional TV news channels. MOM (Mad Over Marketing) also wrote about the campaign to its 1.1 million followers, gaining nearly 15k hearts. The campaign demonstrated Bharat Matrimony's commitment to real relationships and helping people find their perfect match. Totally it received earned media worth 2.7 million INR. It marked a significant milestone by creating India's first fully AI-generated virtual influencer!