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Dave Frauenfelder is the Vice President of Brand, Marketing Communications and Sponsorships at KPN, the leading telecommunications company in the Netherlands. He’s responsible for redefining the company’s brand strategy — focusing on long-term brand growth, relevance, and impact.
For over five years, the face of KPN hasn’t been a celebrity — it’s been Louis the cat. Our resident mascot is more than just a character; he’s a beloved part of Dutch culture, representing our brand across 11 large campaigns, so far.
On all of these campaigns, we have worked with a tight-knit collective — our agency partner, Dentsu Creative, as well as the same directors, production teams, and editors — who know Louis inside and out. Because we work so closely, we share the same creative ambitions.
“Christmas is a time of being together, and a time that people are really into films,” explains Joris Tol, executive creative director at Dentsu Creative Amsterdam. “We always thought, wouldn’t this be a great moment to do an episode with Louis? So, we wrote a charming story about Louis meeting a mouse — a fun twist on the usual predatory dynamic — where they actually end up friends.”
However, we faced a number of obstacles. We all loved the script, but we had never aired a major Christmas ad during this season — a notoriously competitive and expensive window for TV advertising. Plus, filming a real cat in a high-production, snowy environment would be unfair on Louis himself, and we didn’t have the retail budget to justify traditional live-action or massive CGI.
So, the script sat on the shelf for two years.
“As a partner we always aim to think forward, and look for new ways of doing things,” continues Tol.
Then came a meeting at the Google office. We saw what generative AI tools, like Veo, could do, and a lightbulb went off. What if AI could finally bring our Christmas script to life?
The strategic leap: Testing the AI waters
We knew we had to be incredibly careful. The Dutch public loves Louis, and AI was facing heavy public scrutiny at that time.
If the AI cat didn’t look right — if Louis’ fur, head size, or movements felt off — the project would be a no-go. So, before creating a full film, we assembled our go-to team to build a 15-second proof of concept to test character consistency.
“At that time, I had met Tony Stearns who just started his company: Return to Earth,” says Tol. “Their AI film expertise became key to combine with the director we always work with, to bring the story to life and guard Louis’ tonality and character.”
We treated this exactly like a normal high-end production shoot. We didn’t just throw text into an AI generator. It required an intense amount of upfront preparation from our director and the team.
“Normally, the director has a conversation on set with the director of photography about which camera movement to use, what the environment will be like, or what lenses will work best,” continues Tol. “But with AI, he had to decide everything beforehand — specifying the exact wide-angle lens or camera movement in the copy — and then wait to see how the shot turned out. Doing that properly takes a lot of preparation and expertise.”
Once we had our proof of concept and were confident we could do justice to Louis’s legacy, the real fun started.
When AI goes rogue: The reality of innovation
Experimentation always comes with a lot of trial and error, and our first foray into creating a full AI film was no different.
Because AI creates imagery as a single, “baked-in” layer, we hit technical speed bumps when it came to colour-grading. Having snow fall during the generation meant our team couldn’t easily adjust the background later. It required our team to rotoscope the entire film by hand, which took time and expertise.
And then there were the behavioural glitches. AI didn’t always understand natural cat physics. This led to scenes that went hilariously wrong. For example, we asked the cat to jump onto a roof behind the mouse, and instead of a natural feline leap, he bounced through the air like Super Mario.
The reality of generative AI is that it’s a craft. It took a lot of preparation, fine-tuning, and expertise, as well as a whole human team, to ensure the film kept its human (and feline) soul.
“People think AI replaces the creative process, but it actually intensifies it,” Tol notes. “We had to act as digital puppeteers, refining the lighting, the Amsterdam architecture, and Louis’ expressions frame-by-frame to ensure it didn’t feel ‘synthetic’.”
Feline-tastic results
For me, the most nerve-wracking moment wasn’t the production — it was the launch. How would the audience react to a digital Louis?
The results blew us away. Audience research confirmed that viewers did not react negatively to our use of AI, proving that if the storytelling is good, the technology becomes secondary. In fact, the campaign scored an 8.2 out of 10 for likability, significantly higher than our 7.8 average.
“Gen AI is a powerful tool. So humans need to own it, be quality driven, and make decisions about where to use it. And when not to,” adds Caio Franchi, creative lead at Google. “What made this a success wasn’t just the tech, but the talent, the high quality bar, and the human ownership behind it.”
Instead of dropping a massive budget on prime-time TV slots, we aired the ad just once on television and then leaned into YouTube to maximise reach.
We used AI-driven media targeting on YouTube to reach the right viewers efficiently. And by doing this, we saw a 54% completion rate — significantly higher than our traditional benchmarks.
According to our surveys, brand clarity reached 79%, and interest in KPN products hit 71%, despite the ad having no direct commercial message. And it even won a YouTube Works Award.
It became one of the best-evaluated campaigns in KPN’s history, landing us in the top 3 most funny Christmas ads of the season.
“Beyond the great numbers, we received so many compliments from competing parties and other creatives,” says Tol. “They said to us, ‘You proved you can make a high-quality production with AI.’ It wasn’t just short, mid-funnel content thrown together for budget reasons, but a proper film with excellent production value. It came down to exceptional teamwork.”
Driving a cultural shift
Stepping into this uncharted territory took real bravery from our stakeholders. KPN is a historic and well known telco, and innovation always carries risk.
But proving that AI can deliver real brand value and emotional engagement has completely reshaped our internal culture. We’ve earned trust from our management board, making it far easier for our marketing team to innovate and experiment in the future.
“This case proves that AI is the right tool when it’s used for the right script,” Franchi continues. “It allowed KPN to create a ‘YouTube-first’ campaign that felt as premium as a Super Bowl spot, but with the agility of a digital-native brand.”
We aren’t afraid of the AI revolution. By keeping human vision at the centre of the craft, emerging tools will only simplify complex tasks like character consistency and grading.
Ultimately, that frees up our minds to do what we do best: telling great stories.
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