Lotte Department Store builds ‘AI Letter Generation Model’ for Year-end Event
Lotte Department Store,
“We’d like to present a special experience for customers to write letters with AI.”
Starting the project…
When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone? You’d probably express your gratitude by text or messenger instead of a letter, and you might have an uneasy experience of what to say to genuinely deliver your messages. Especially during the holidays, you must feel a lot of pressure towards this. For the year-end customer event in 2023, Lotte Department Store has builded a “AI Letter Generation Model” to write letters when customers type only a few keywords in a prompt. It is quite exceptional for companies to build AI models for customer events, not for productivity purposes. Let’s find out why and how this model was built during the holiday seasons, which are considered the most important marketing season in the retail industry.
Event Overview
[Letter House Tonttu’s secret letter]
- Project Duration: October – November, 2023 (2 months)
- Event period: 1st – 25th of December, 2023
- How to use: Access the event page through Lotte Department Store App → Select keywords (letter design, recipient, title, tone of writing, font, etc.) and type more information → AI generates a letter → Send a completed letter via the sharing function → Present giveaways and raffles depending on the number of letters generated
- Details: Up to 5 letters can be generated and sent per ID
The reason why Lotte Department Store decided to build the AI letter generation model is…
- The model would provide customers with a unique experience. By incorporating Generative AI into the personal activity, writing a letter to someone close to, customers will be able to get a new and rare experience during the holidays.
- The client wanted to conduct marketing activities that are meaningful to customers. Rather than applying for online activities simply using copy&paste to get prizes, he/she wanted to develop marketing that can give customers the opportunity to convey their feelings to those they have been grateful for throughout the year for Christmas and the holidays.
- Through this bold attempt, the client aimed to tap the scope of the latest technology for future marketing. As a leading retail company, he/she wants to try unique marketing methods using the latest technologies that other companies have not yet tried to measure the effects, strengths and weaknesses, and actively wants to consider other possible marketing events using AI technology in the future.
The role of Crowdworks AI is…
- Provide consulting before building a model, such as defining requirements and setting project timelines.
- Build a customized model through prompt engineering based on the ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo model.
- Conduct maintenance on the model during and after the event.
Insights from Crowdworks AI’s Project Manager…
- The period of the building model was 2 months and the period of the event was less than 1 month. Since it was a customized AI model development aimed at short-term development and utilization, we conducted a tuning of ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo API using prompt engineering and coding. The focus was on writing the letters as natural and diverse as possible, rather than answering the exact facts following the purpose of the model development.
- The B2C model needs a different consideration apart from the B2B model. It is impossible for B2C businesses to predict exactly how many customers will access the website at the same time. Therefore, we built the model to handle sufficient traffic during the event without any problems in use.
- Since It was used by customers of all ages, genders and situations, the letter should be tuned to generate as natural written language as possible. It also required proper restrictions and controls on abusive language, slurs, and profanity. We’ve run countless tests, checked the results, and post-processed them not only through prompt engineering but also through coding.
- There were also various legal issues, such as use of the personal information due to the raffles, so the model was built in conjunction with the existing Lotte Department Store APP.
Finishing the project…
As of 23rd of December, 52,065 letters were sent through the AI letter generation model. The client received feedback from customers who participated in the event such as “It was a unique experience,” “I was worried about how to write a letter, but it helped me to write it only with a few keywords,” and “I want to use it when writing other messages.”
This Generative AI model was an interesting case in a way that the model was built and released so that customers could use it directly in a short period of time. In the future, Crowdworks AI will also introduce many new cases of Generative AIs in the marketing area, so please stay-tuned to our updates.
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