Palette Breaks Down Boundaries with AI in ‘Era of Marketing & Advertising Democratization’

- Palette Inc. has transformed from a traditional ad agency into an AI-driven 
  marketing tech firm, offering integrated solutions that combine creative
  expertise with advanced AI technology to streamline and democratize
  marketing and advertising.
- Their flagship products, Palette AI Advertising and Palette AI Agent, enable 
  efficient, high-quality content creation and marketing automation, 
  making sophisticated marketing accessible to businesses of all sizes.
- By focusing on the fusion of human creativity and AI, Palette aims to set new
  industry standards and expand globally, positioning itself as a leader in the 
  era of marketing and advertising democratization.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is shifting the paradigm of the marketing industry. In video production and marketing automation, AI is transcending its role as a mere tool to become a core technology redefining business models. Riding this wave of change is Palette Inc., an AI-based integrated marketing and advertising platform.

Palette leverages AI technology to harmoniously blend artistry and technical skill, offering solutions from ad production to marketing automation. It presents new possibilities by breaking down the boundaries between technology and creative. We met with CEO Jong-keun Lee to hear about Palette's strategy and vision.

Jong-keun Lee, CEO of Palette / source=IT dongA

From Ad Agency to AI Marketing Tech Firm

Palette began as an advertising agency based on video creative. After founding the agency in 2018 and producing numerous brand campaigns, CEO Lee felt the structural limitations where 'making good content' was constrained by time and cost. Amidst this, he discovered new opportunities like time reduction and cost savings through AI technology, and began developing related solutions in 2022. This February, under the vision 'Creative for All,' the company merged its ad production business with AI platform development, transitioning to a new business model.

Palette finds the best creative solution to unlock with AI technology / source=IT dongA

The company name was also changed to Palette, marking its rebirth as an AI marketing tech firm. The name was inspired by an artist's palette, a tool for creating new results by mixing various colors. "We embedded in our name the philosophy of 'realizing a brand's unique color by adding human senses and strategy on top of AI technology'," Lee explained.

Palette creates brand innovation through the delicate sense of advertising experts and the infinite scalability of AI technology. Accordingly, it champions the slogan 'ARTFUL CRAFT, COLORFUL TECH,' signifying the fusion of artistic precision and diverse technology.

"Palette goes beyond simply applying AI; it deeply understands a brand's concerns and core message, finding the optimal creative solution that AI can unlock," Lee emphasized. "This is combined with Palette's unique creative, emotion, and the capabilities of brand communication experts (Professionalism) to create a difference. This is the 'Artful Craft' that Palette pursues."

Palette's workforce structure has also changed. Of the 52 employees, 40 are AI technology personnel, enhancing professional expertise. "AI technology is pouring out globally. To introduce and preemptively capture the marketing industry with Palette's unique solution, we are walking a path others do not," Lee said. "When facing challenges, it's a stage where we need to think more about 'how we will solve this' rather than 'what do we do'."

Palette's ideal talent is 'someone who accepts and knows how to enjoy change.' "My thinking about talent changed after adopting AI. Existing insights are important, but after adopting AI, you must approach things in a completely new way to create something new," Lee said. "I often use the expression 'We are Solutionists' to employees. A Solutionist is someone who presents creative and innovative solutions to complex social or economic problems. I believe that becoming a Solutionist not only in building services and technology but in the work itself is the driving force to complete Palette's unique solution." He added, "Palette employees are one big palette where various colors harmonize, and they are AI Solutionists."

Providing an Integrated Solution Optimized for Marketing & Advertising

Palette's AI creative solutions are divided into 'Palette AI Advertising' and 'Palette AI Agent.' Palette AI Advertising, launched simultaneously with Palette's debut, enables AI video ad production agency services, suitable for cinematic brand films, corporate branding videos, and product promotion videos. Based on the capabilities of a traditional ad agency, it handles everything from planning to production. This has established a new ad production method that reduces production costs and time by over 70% while maintaining the brand's sensibility.

"Palette AI Advertising is excellent for producing sensory videos and images that tell a brand's story. It covers creative planning, AI R&D, production, and post-production. We utilize optimized generative AI tools and apply AI technology to editing as well," Lee stated.

'Palette AI Agent,' newly launched in September, is an AI marketing automation solution that easily assists with complex marketing processes, including SNS content planning, material production, channel distribution, campaign optimization, and performance reporting. It is essentially a next-generation marketing solution combining the role of an AI CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). It is currently offered in general subscription (B2C) and premium subscription (B2B) models and is expanding into a data-driven marketing efficiency platform usable by everyone from small businesses to large corporate marketing organizations.

"A marketing department needs several employees to perform related tasks. Now, with Palette AI Agent, you can build an AI team at once," Lee explained. "It doesn't just automatically generate; it learns the brand's tone and manner and recommends strategies based on performance data."

Lee emphasized that the AI Palette aims for is not 'automation through technology,' but 'expansion of expression through technology.' He added, "The essence of advertising is still the 'story' that moves people's hearts, and AI is a new language that can deliver that story faster and more elaborately."

While many AI companies in the marketing industry focus on the technology itself, Palette has aimed for 'Human Creative AI' that can read a brand's philosophy, aesthetics, and emotion. This is why they have developed AI not just as a tool for video generation, but as a technology partner that interprets and visualizes brand value and sensibility as data.

Palette AI Agent is marketing automation platform developed with the latest AI technology / source=IT dongA

"The realm of marketing and advertising starts from boundless imagination. That's why we concluded it cannot be defined by technology alone. We consider it important how to fuse the insights and creative of existing experts with AI technology. I believe this is Palette's identity and differentiator," Lee said.

Ultimately, Palette's biggest differentiator is its integrated solution combining AI technology, brand strategy, and expert creative sense within one structure. Lee defines Palette as 'a company that makes AI understand the brand's language.'

Accordingly, Palette operates on an 'end-to-end' basis, providing an integrated solution from start to finish. This minimizes communication loss and ensures the brand message and tone-and-manner are consistently maintained from planning to delivery. This is a production infrastructure unique to Palette, difficult to implement even for large ad agencies. Furthermore, rather than developing a single AI model, Palette possesses 'AI Orchestration' technology that combines and integrates commercial AI technologies from around the world to fit the purpose. It has built an AI creative engine that can execute within a workflow based on various AI tools. As a result, brand managers can produce high-quality content in just a few steps without handling complex tools.

Confronting Doubts About AI Quality Head-On... Leading to Collaborations with LF, Iconix

The biggest challenge Palette first faced in the marketing market was 'doubt about the quality of AI-generated results.' Lee recalled that at every client meeting, the most common questions were, "Can an AI-made video have the same level of completeness as an actual shoot?" and "Can AI understand a brand's sensibility and details?"

Palette did not give up. It confronted client doubts head-on with 'photorealistic direction based on brand identity.' By combining AI image-based pre-simulation with directorial techniques on par with actual filming, it elevated the ad's quality.

Hazzys brand films with Palette's latest AI Technology and Marketing Professionals / source=Palette

A representative case is the brand film for 'Hazzys,' a casual brand from the lifestyle culture company LF. For the successful image transformation of the long-standing Hazzys brand, Palette's latest AI technology and marketing experts were deployed. Hundreds of visual concepts combining a classic atmosphere with modern sensibility were derived in just a few days, and the optimal visual was selected to create a successful result. "Previously, completing a brand film required a long time and significant cost, but Palette dramatically reduced this. The Hazzys product in question also saw a rise in sales compared to the previous year, proving the commercial effectiveness of AI advertising with a strong market response," Lee said.

The collaboration with animation company Iconix, famous for characters like ‘Pororo’ and ‘Tayo’, is also noteworthy. While producing short-form content for the new Gen Z-targeted characters 'DecoDeco Malkang Friends,' Palette's AI technology was applied to the 3D content production process. This significantly reduced complex manual tasks like modeling, rigging, and rendering. They secured high completeness while revolutionizing production time and cost. It also received positive evaluations for confirming the potential of a new style of content for Gen Z by capturing the characters' personalities and emotions with lively direction.

The Palette AI Agent division is building trust through PoCs (Proofs of Concept) with various industries. They are testing customized agents tailored to the characteristics of each sector, from professional services like lawyers and tax accountants to manufacturing, distribution, and food companies. Among them, a food company that couldn't attempt to run its own blog due to a lack of manpower started one through Palette AI Agent, and confirmed a significant increase in traffic to its company mall just two months after adoption. Lee said, "Palette is establishing market trust by proving our technological excellence with actual brand performance, rather than just explaining it with words."

Lee revealed his desire to create a world where all companies can easily market through Palette. He judged that as AI technology lowers the barrier to ad production, an era has come where even small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can create ads at the level of TV CFs, which were previously only possible for large corporations. Palette calls this the 'era of democratization for marketing and advertising.'

In particular, Palette AI Agent is a solution that helps companies struggling with marketing manpower recruitment and operation to easily execute marketing. Until now, marketing has been perceived as difficult and complex to enter, considered a specialized field. "Palette is taking on the most important task of changing this perception and creating an environment where anyone can grow their own brand," Lee said. "We will prove through actual success cases and performance data that AI is not a technology that replaces people, but a technology that expands marketing opportunities for everyone."

In fact, Palette's AI solutions were first adopted by large corporations, and are now being used by SMEs, startups, and public institutions. Recently, inquiries have been coming from universities and freelancers. This has been made possible because Palette has lowered the entry barrier to advertising and marketing.

Global Expansion with Establishment of Offices in India and Singapore

Based on its domestic success cases, Palette is accelerating its global market expansion. The Indian branch, established in 2022, is composed of AI specialists and is currently focused on R&D. The Singapore branch will operate as a hub to target the Asian market. Through the Korea SMEs and Startups Agency (KSC), Palette was selected for the '2025 SWITCH (Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology) exhibition program,' running from October 29-31 in Singapore, and is focusing on building networks with local investors and related organizations. A U.S. market entry is also planned for the future.

Lee and Indian CTO Hanish Keloth are in conversation / source=IT dongA

Palette is securing opportunities for technological and business expansion by participating in the Oracle track of the 'Global Enterprise Collaboration Project' promoted by Seoul National University of Science and Technology (SeoulTech). Recently, as an Oracle network company, it was invited to the 'Seoul Global Investment Forum,' networking with foreign VCs and global tech companies. This process has helped secure tangible opportunities for technological collaboration as well as global market entry and investment linkage.

"We are receiving technical support from the Oracle AI infrastructure. In particular, we are strengthening the operational efficiency, scalability, and security of Palette AI Agent by utilizing Oracle's global AI infrastructure and database systems. Through this, we are building a stable service architecture at the level of the global Result as a Service (RaaS) model," said Lee, expressing satisfaction. "We also anticipate business expansion through the global investment network. Through this, we aim to strengthen our global competitiveness as an AI marketing tech company."

As such, Palette is setting a new standard for AI marketing. The goal is clear. According to CEO Lee, the goal is to make Palette the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of 'AI marketing' within the next 3-5 years. To achieve this, the short-term plan is to establish the industry standard in the AI ad production sector, and in the mid-to-long term, to complete a model that innovates the marketing efficiency of companies on an industry-wide scale through its marketing automation platform.

"Palette will continue to define AI technology not as a technology that 'replaces people,' but as one that expands creativity and strategy, and will establish itself as a new infrastructure company for the marketing and advertising industry," Lee stated, sharing his aspiration.

Palette has thrown down the gauntlet to change the landscape of the marketing industry with AI technology. Its transformation from an ad agency to an AI marketing tech firm, and its successful collaborations with major brands, show that Palette's goal is an achievable future.

By Kui-im Park (luckyim@itdonga.com)

* This article was written with support from Seoul National University of Science and Technology.