At this year’s New York Festivals Advertising Awards, Lightricks’ LTX Studio partnered with the festival to launch NYFAi—a first-of-its-kind competition designed to showcase how marketing and advertising teams can push the boundaries of storytelling by using AI-powered tools.

Advertising and creative agency Clutch rose to the challenge. By integrating LTX Studio’s AI-powered platform into their workflow, the team produced “Expansive Pad”—an emotionally resonant spot for a nonprofit that earned the Silver Tower Award. The project proved that marketing and advertising teams can still win big on creativity and impact without the big-budget costs of launching a full-scale video production for a short 60-second spot.

Introduction to the Partnership

When Kiko Mattoso, Creative Lead at Clutch, first worked with LTX Studio’s AI-powered platform, he was struck by how intuitively it supported the creative process: “It’s a tool that creates with you.”

The New York Festivals Advertising Awards partnered with LTX Studio for the inaugural NYFAi competition, staying true to the festival’s mission to push the boundaries of creativity while recognizing craft and execution. 

In this collaboration, LTX Studio functioned as the core creative engine, enabling creative leads like Mattoso to experiment, iterate, and evolve agency concepts with the support of AI-powered software. As fellow Creative Lead Eduardo Quadra explained, the platform allowed the team to “adjust the creative and actually improve our approach.”

The Challenge

The brief was clear but demanding: create an impactful, high-quality ad under strict time constraints, without the resources of a full production set. 

Time Pressure

In advertising, speed is non-negotiable, and this brief was no different. Campaign development needed to move quickly and efficiently. For Clutch, those boundaries became the spark for innovation.

Nonprofit Advertising

The focus on the nonprofit sector added another layer of complexity. Nonprofit storytelling relies on authenticity, honesty, and emotional resonance to capture attention and inspire action. The question was: how could AI-powered tools be used to build a campaign that felt not only visually compelling, but also truthful enough to honor mission-driven work? Clutch knew their concept would need to evolve quickly while maintaining clarity, consistency, and emotional impact.

Production Without Hard Costs

As part of the competition, teams had to deliver results without traditional production resources—no cameras, sets, or hired talent. These kinds of constraints reflect the reality of agency life, where clients often expect high-quality production value on limited budgets and accelerated timelines.

The Solution

Rather than viewing these constraints as limitations, Clutch integrated LTX Studio into their workflow as they would any collaborative team member. Their approach centered on three key strategies:

Concept-First Development

Clutch developed their campaign idea independent of production tools, allowing their relationship with AI to guide creative directions and influence brainstorming organically.

AI as a Creative Partner

By using LTX Studio to experiment with different scenes, angles, and prompts, Creative Leads Eduardo Quadra and Kiko Mattoso explained how their ideas evolved organically, as they often do whilst collaborating with other creative players on a campaign-style brief. As Kiko explained

"The key takeaway for me is that you and AI, you're partners. It's not just a tool that executes things and creates stuff exactly as you imagined it, it's a tool that creates with you."

Iteration and Refinements

The team generated multiple variations of visuals and sequences, refining their storytelling with each pass. Eduardo noted how this process enhanced their work:

"At the very end, the creative changed and evolved and improved a lot with the tools that we had for creating new scenes, and created different angles, even with the prompts, we were getting different scenes, different sequences that we were able to adjust the creative and actually improve ideas." 

These strategies showcased how LTX Studio can serve as both a creative partner and creative solution—helping teams move from concept to a high-quality, polished output under real-world, industry-specific time constraints.

The Results

Clutch's innovative approach delivered measurable success across multiple dimensions:

• Award Recognition: "Expansive Pad" earned the Silver Tower award at the New York Festivals Advertising Awards, placing among the industry's most creative and innovative work.

• Enhanced Creative Output: The collaboration between human creativity and AI-powered technology elevated the final concept beyond the original vision, proving that AI tools can enhance rather than replace human creative thinking.

• Professional-Grade Results: The campaign demonstrated how LTX Studio enables agencies to iterate faster, reduce costs, and achieve cinematic results without compromising storytelling quality. 

• Cost Efficiency: The team delivered a high-quality, emotionally resonant campaign with minimal added production costs—demonstrating how AI can minimize traditional production expenses. This further proves the value of time and creative expertise as the most important investment for creative agencies.

The project validates LTX Studio’s role as a creative co-pilot, empowering agencies to push artistic boundaries while delivering professional-grade outcomes on real-world timelines and budgets.

Why It Matters

Clutch’s success with “Expansive pad” validates a new way of thinking for creative teams: AI-powered tools like the LTX Studio platform serve as creative co-pilots that empower teams to push artistic boundaries while delivering professional-grade outputs. For agencies and marketing teams operating under time constraints and complex stakeholder and approval chains, AI offers a solution that aligns with client goals and budgets.

AI-powered creative tools are not meant to replace the human touch, but to allow any teams, no matter what size, to use AI as a collaborative partner in campaign development.

On an industry wide level, this proves that the future of advertising lies in combining human grit with AI-powered iteration, allowing creative minds to explore possibilities that weren't accessible through traditional production methods. 

As the industry continues to evolve, forward-thinking agencies like Clutch are showing how embracing AI as a creative partner can lead to award-winning results.

Ready to elevate your creative process? Discover how LTX Studio can elevate your next campaign and join the community of agencies pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in advertising.