BUD Anheuser Busch Inbev SA NV

By Mike Shields 

A new startup says it can make it easier for brands to ramp up the volume and quality of their content on social media, with the help of artificial intelligence.

Justin Fuisz, who founded the interactive video ad startup Fuisz Video in 2013, is rolling out Octi, a video technology company designed to help marketers pull together video shot by teams on the ground at live events and use that content to populate their various social media feeds.

Marketers these days have an ever-pressing need to produce more and more content for their social media channels. But feeding that beast often requires paying multiple agencies to crank out post after post -- and the quality of such content can vary widely.

Instead, Octi allows marketers to shoot videos using multiple cameras at the same time and then uses artificial intelligence to automatically produce a seamlessly edited single clip to be distributed on social media, according to Mr. Fuisz.

Anheuser-Busch InBev, which along with startup incubator Techstars has invested an undisclosed amount in Octi, plans to begin a pilot test in the coming weeks.

Ben Kosinski, director of digital Innovation at Anheuser-Busch, said the hope is that the new product allows the beer giant to do more in social media with fewer resources.

"This allows us to create quality content at scale," he said. "Typically for something like this you have to bring on agencies, pay them. That takes up a lot of time. This lets you produce high quality content without all that."

Here's how a marketer could use Octi: Let's say a brand was sponsoring the Super Bowl. The brand can send a group of social media executives (they don't have to be professional video producers) to the game to shoot lots of footage on their phones using Octi's app -- everything from key plays to live shots of the brand's marketing presence at the game. The marketer can set up a custom Octi editing filter, so the AI will focus on integrating into a single clip only videos that feature people's faces, or action shots, or whatever kinds of video shots they prefer, explained Mr. Fuisz.

Then via a digital dashboard, the marketer can quickly push the videos out to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

The result could be compilations of scenes from a sporting event or car dealer opening or concert that could instantly be woven together in a narrative form that is not unlike Snapchat or Instagram Stories -- only with a slicker look and feel, Mr. Fuisz explained.

Down the road, brands might be able to ask fans to shoot hundreds of such videos at events, particularly local gatherings, on their behalf. This technology could even be used for live streaming on Facebook, said Mr. Fuisz.

"Brands really need their video to be authentic these days," he said. "This feels like it fills that gap."

Write to Mike Shields at mike.shields@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 11, 2017 06:14 ET (11:14 GMT)

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