TRAIBE ← Lab
Lab / Experiment 02 · CreationDel Valle Limonadas

Thousands of takes,
a human eye to choose.

How my category team at Coca-Cola used generative AI to create the freshness visuals for the launch of Del Valle Limonadas: four times faster and at half the cost of a traditional production.

TeamCategory team, Studio X, Traffic Studio
Generated2,000+ images, 3,000+ videos
Speed4× faster
Cost50% lower
One of the launch films for Brazil, with sound. The note on screen reads “Imagem gerada por IA”: image generated by AI.

The challenge

Del Valle was entering lemonade, with three flavours, Classic, Tropical and Pink, in 290 ml cans. The idea behind the line was to take juice beyond breakfast, which accounts for around 60% of juice consumption in Latin America, under the line “O toque cítrico que te reconecta”, the citrus touch that reconnects you.

The campaign was global, so the budget to adapt it was tight. And we needed something a global film does not bring: a layer of intrinsic assets, the close-ups that make you feel the citrus, the cold and the freshness of the product. That layer became the AI leg of the project.

I was the head of the category, and my team ran the work with Studio X on the creative side and Traffic Studio on production. Coca-Cola’s brief asked, explicitly, to bring new technologies into the process.

Five steps

The AI produced the volume. People decided what the story could ask of it, and what made it to the screen.

01Script for the toolHuman-ledThe script was written around what AI generation can and cannot do. You do not control every output, so no scene depended on one exact frame.
02GenerateAI-ledMore than 2,000 images and 3,000 videos, exploring citrus, cold and freshness from every angle.
03CurateHuman-ledThe human does not only write the prompt. They curate what the AI generates, and choose the few takes that carry the brand.
04Finish with craftHuman-ledAI images combined with matte painting; AI video with 3D tracking, compositing and sound design.
05AdaptAI + human30 final renders: master, lifts and formats for TV and social, plus a re-edit of the global film for online video.

On screen

A few of the pieces that made it, out of thousands of takes.

The range. Pink, Classic and Tropical, in a burst of ice and citrus.
Inside the lime. A freshness shot that would be hard and expensive to film for real.
Speed and citrus. A lime-green superbike on the track, one of the scenes of the campaign.

What it took

5,000+images and videos generated
30final renders on screen
4×faster than a traditional production
−50%in cost
Estimate What would the generation cost at today’s prices?

3,000 videos of 8 seconds each is 24,000 seconds of footage, plus 2,000 images. At the list prices of today’s leading models:

All video on a fast model (Veo 3.1 Fast, 1080p, US$0.12/s)≈ US$2,900
Mixed: 80% fast to explore, 20% on Veo 3.1 for finals (US$0.40/s)≈ US$4,200
All video on a premium model (Veo 3.1, US$0.40/s)≈ US$9,600
2,000 images on Nano Banana Pro (US$0.134 each)≈ US$270
Mixed scenario, video and images≈ US$4,500

My estimate, not the project’s invoice: the studio’s tools and plans are not public. List API prices from August to October 2026, before taxes and subscription discounts.

More than 5,000 generations for 30 pieces on screen. The saving did not come from skipping people. It came from spending their time on choosing, not on producing.

What I learned

Write the script for the tool. AI generation does not give you full control of the output. A script that respects that limit works; one that fights it burns time and budget.

Curation is the new craft. Prompting is the easy part. Choosing the right take among thousands, and knowing which ones are on brand, is where the team adds value.

AI works best as a layer. We used it where the global campaign left a gap, and kept VFX craft on top to finish it.

A tight budget is a good brief. Without the pressure on adaptation costs, we would probably have produced the old way.

What this means for marketing teams

When a take costs almost nothing, the job is no longer making it. It is knowing which one deserves to be on screen.

Sources Traffic Studio: Del Valle Lemonade, the case Traffic Studio: Del Valle Intrinsec, the freshness pieces AbraMark: Del Valle Limonadas launch, Classic, Tropical and Pink (Apr 2026) GKPB: Del Valle launches its lemonade line (Feb 2026) Portal Mesa de Bar: Del Valle lemonades in cans (Apr 2026) McDonald’s Brasil: Del Valle Limonada Pink on the menu invideo: official per-second prices of AI video models (Aug 2026) movcl: AI image API prices compared (Oct 2026)
Read: A prompt is a brief More experiments