Client
Google
Year
2024
Problem
Small business owners have a deep understanding of their brand’s soul, but they lack the resources to translate the idea into professional marketing.
Solution
AI-driven product that decode a brand’s unique identity and automate the production of tailored creative content.
Keywords
Research, concept development, prototyping
Packages
Frame - Discover - Imagine - Materialise
Launched as
Pomelli (Google Labs, October 2025)
Google Labs
Google Labs
Related Project
Pomelli
We’ve been working with Google on AI user experiences since 2018, exploring how AI can feel more human, and how to design for capabilities that don’t fully exist yet.
It’s a long collaboration we value deeply, and one we rarely get to talk about.
In 2023, we partnered with the team behind Pomelli to explore early-stage concepts.
At the heart of the work was a simple but difficult question:
What happens when someone pours everything into their business, but struggles to communicate that care at scale?
And what if AI helped by understanding what makes them distinctive first, rather than generating more of the same?
We started where we always start – with people, specifically small business owners. A pastry chef who knew exactly how her shop should feel, but couldn’t translate that into marketing. A hardware founder who could describe his brand in a sentence, but not express it consistently. A jewellery maker whose brand was inseparable from her own personality.
Alongside this, we spoke with branding experts and strategists to understand the gap between knowing who you are and being able to show it.
What we found was that most small businesses don’t lack creative ambition. They lack the tools, language, and time to turn instinct into output. The gap isn’t imagination. It’s the distance between what they feel and what they can produce.
We translated this into a series of interactive concepts. Through research and close collaboration with Google’s team, we explored how AI could bridge that gap, helping businesses move from intuition to expression, without losing what makes them distinct.
It’s a long collaboration we value deeply, and one we rarely get to talk about.
In 2023, we partnered with the team behind Pomelli to explore early-stage concepts.
At the heart of the work was a simple but difficult question:
And what if AI helped by understanding what makes them distinctive first, rather than generating more of the same?
We started where we always start – with people, specifically small business owners. A pastry chef who knew exactly how her shop should feel, but couldn’t translate that into marketing. A hardware founder who could describe his brand in a sentence, but not express it consistently. A jewellery maker whose brand was inseparable from her own personality.
Alongside this, we spoke with branding experts and strategists to understand the gap between knowing who you are and being able to show it.
What we found was that most small businesses don’t lack creative ambition. They lack the tools, language, and time to turn instinct into output. The gap isn’t imagination. It’s the distance between what they feel and what they can produce.
We translated this into a series of interactive concepts. Through research and close collaboration with Google’s team, we explored how AI could bridge that gap, helping businesses move from intuition to expression, without losing what makes them distinct.
“Working with the Special Projects team is always a pleasure. They bring real rigour about people combined with a creative instinct that's pretty unique. The research was thorough, the concepts were magical (naturally), and their prototypes and storytelling made the ideas feel tangible. They really helped us find the human story inside the brief.”
Rob Marchant, Google DeepMind
Google’s team continued to develop and refine the product over the following two years.
Pomelli launched through Google Labs in October 2025. It reads a business’s website to understand its identity, then generates tailored campaigns across social, ads, and email – now extended into product photography and video.
It’s since become one of Labs’ most successful launches.
For us, the project represents something we care deeply about:using AI to amplify human judgement, not replace it. Designing systems that don’t flatten individuality, but help people express it more clearly.
Pomelli launched through Google Labs in October 2025. It reads a business’s website to understand its identity, then generates tailored campaigns across social, ads, and email – now extended into product photography and video.
It’s since become one of Labs’ most successful launches.
For us, the project represents something we care deeply about:
