AI-designed billboards.
Artificial intelligence is everywhere in conversation right now. Everyone is talking about what AI could do, but far fewer are showing what it can actually do in the real world.
Xpand IT decided to take a different approach.
Instead of running another campaign explaining AI in theory, Xpand IT launched AI Built This, a marketing experiment designed to demonstrate AI in action. In partnership with Dell Technologies, Xpand IT set out to generate AI-designed billboards for major cities across South Africa, using a Dell laptop as the creative engine behind the campaign.
The objective was simple:
Show what AI can do in marketing, rather than telling people about it.
Turning AI into a creative partner
The idea was to create virtual billboards – one for each major city – generated entirely using AI. These visuals were designed to reflect the character, culture and nuances of cities across South Africa, and were released digitally as part of an ongoing campaign.
From its launch, the campaign stood out as a first-of-its-kind local experiment, using AI to generate city-specific creative at scale across South Africa. The digital rollout allowed Xpand IT to test how audiences engaged with AI-generated marketing in real-time, rather than relying on theoretical use cases.
Within weeks, AI-generated visuals were released for multiple major South African cities, generating measurable engagement and ongoing audience interaction.
Engagement was high, conversations were lively and audiences were genuinely curious – not just about the visuals, but about how they were created and what role AI played in the process. While it’s difficult to say whether physical billboards would have generated more attention, one thing became immediately clear: digital provided something traditional billboards never could – measurability and agility.
We could track engagement in real-time, take feedback on board and adapt the next AI-generated billboard accordingly before it was even released.
That ability to iterate quickly fundamentally changed the creative process.
What we learned along the way
As much as the campaign highlighted the power of AI, it also surfaced some important realities.
One of the biggest lessons was prompt fatigue. Prompting an AI generator is not nearly as simple as it sounds. Designers often worked through dozens of prompts to get close to what they envisioned, and even then, a key truth became apparent: you will never get exactly what you want.
AI doesn’t replace creative thinking; it demands it.
Human insight, patience and experimentation remain essential. The difference lies in speed. Even with multiple iterations, AI dramatically reduced the time normally required to conceptualise and produce similar work.
From a cost perspective, the impact was just as clear. AI-generated design significantly shortened timelines and reduced production overheads compared to traditional approaches.
The role of the right technology
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the campaign was the role of technology itself.
AI is only as effective as the platform it runs on. While the creative execution took place on a Dell laptop, the campaign was grounded in the broader reality of enterprise-grade infrastructure. AI workflows – from experimentation to deployment – rely on scalable, reliable backend systems to perform consistently at speed.
This is where Dell PowerEdge Servers play a critical role. Built to support AI, data-intensive workloads and modern applications, PowerEdge Servers provide the performance, reliability and scalability required to move AI from concept to production environments.
Without the right infrastructure, AI workflows quickly become slow, frustrating and limiting. Outdated technology doesn’t unlock AI’s potential – it restricts it. Modern, AI-ready end-user devices and enterprise-grade servers working together are what enable experimentation to become practical, repeatable and business-ready.
When technology works with you, rather than against you, innovation becomes productive instead of exhausting.
AI Built This was never about replacing designers or traditional marketing. It was about learning – hands-on – what AI can realistically contribute today, where its limitations lie and how businesses can use it responsibly and creatively.
We learned a lot.
And most importantly, we moved the conversation about AI from theory to practice.
Because the future of AI won’t be shaped by those who talk about it most – but by those willing to use it, test it and learn from it.
Dean Irwin, CEO of Xpand IT, a Dell Technologies Gold Partner. (Image: Supplied)
