The art of make-believe: How KOMPAN built a Porsche campaign with Artlist AI
Highlights
Think back to being a kid, sitting behind the wheel of a pretend Porsche in a playground. Reality didn’t stand a chance. You tore through mountain passes, busy city streets, and winding coastal roads with the wind in your hair. Pure, unfiltered make-believe. That feeling is at the heart of KOMPAN’s campaign with Porsche.
Earlier this year, KOMPAN, the global leader in commercial outdoor playgrounds and play spaces, teamed up with Porsche on a new premium playground car, bringing two icons of their industries together. There was just one small problem. The car existed only on paper. It hadn’t been built for a single playground on the planet yet.
Mathias Starklint, Head of Editorial & Creative at KOMPAN, and Creative Producer Simon Christiansen did what great in-house teams do. They brought that childhood imagination to life and built the launch film themselves, using Artlist.
The in-house team on a discovery mission
KOMPAN’s creative department sits within group marketing at its headquarters in Denmark. The team creates everything from global product launches to sales toolkits and content for local markets around the world.
When Mathias joined three years ago from the agency side, he set out to bring creative and production skills fully in-house.
"We are working as an in-house agency, and we are a service provider to all markets globally. We don't have an agency telling us what to do. We’re doing it ourselves."
Both he and Simon come from behind the camera. Simon spent years as a photographer before joining KOMPAN, while Mathias started in commercial film editing. That background shapes how they think about creation and storytelling.
The team started using Artlist in-house this year, initially using AI voiceovers to localize content across key markets like the US, Denmark, Germany, France, Spain, and the UK. As Mathias puts it, "speed is key in today’s marketing landscape."
It also transformed their localized production budget. Traditionally, booking real voice actors through agencies meant spending upwards of $5,000 per production once multi-market global rights were factored in. Shifting to Artlist made localization fast, adaptable, and a financial no-brainer.
The opportunity: launch a product before it reaches the playground
For KOMPAN, the Porsche collaboration is a positioning play as much as a product offering.
"It’s a product where we can position ourselves together with Porsche, because we both sit at the highest level in our separate industries."
New playground products launch early, often before the first one is bought, shipped, and installed. Instead of waiting for an installation to film, the team saw room to take the product anywhere in the world.
"With no installation in place, an actual location shoot was off the table. The team needed a way to tell the story without physical footage, and the core creative narrative was already clear.
"You’re automatically playing that you’re driving a Porsche. So how can we play with that in a creative way?"
Working with Artlist
Mathias and Simon met with the Artlist team for an exclusive hands-on workshop to learn more about the workflows behind AI creation. Recognizing the opportunity for the Porsche campaign, they brainstormed the concept and together built the initial scenes — including the opening shot of a young girl walking toward the Porsche car.
"Artlist ignited the situation. Having the possibility to sit, learn, and concentrate, all of us together, looking at the same page. That was really important."
For Simon, the biggest shift was learning how much direction AI models need and how to formulate precise prompts.
"It’s very important for us that the product looks precisely as it is."
The sessions also established concrete workflow habits. Mathias calls out three key best practices that made the difference:
- Generating 5-second video clips at a time to maintain visual control,
- Setting clear lens and composition criteria,
- Avoiding prompt overload so the engine wouldn't hallucinate.
"It gave us comfort, and an introduction to the fact that this is actually possible if you know what to do."
2 days at the beach house
The workshop gave the team a character, an opening scene, and a direction: a young girl on a road trip across landmarks around the world, including Italy's Dolomites. Mathias wrote the final script afterward and edited the rest of the film himself.
"The other clips I made during my summer holiday, from the beach house. I probably used two days all in all."
For someone who leads a department, it meant returning to the hands-on craft he loves most.
"To me it was just creative freedom. To actually have the opportunity to just sit and do what I love the most."
He is candid about what producing the same campaign the traditional way would have entailed.
"This would cost tens of thousands if you were to fly to Mallorca or the Dolomites with a production crew. But I can sit in my beach house during my summer holiday, do this in two days, send it to the CEO, and people are over the moon."
The internal reaction was unprecedented. Sharing the output possibilities with the team marks a shift in what you, as a brand, can achieve, and Simon and Mathias know firsthand just where the opportunities and limits are.
A real tool for professionals
Mathias and Simon brought their professional language into their work, and understood that "This is actually a tool for professionals. This is not amateur tooling."
For Simon, it represents an evolution of standard production workflows built on the same creative instincts.
"We know in our mind what it should look like, and then it’s just a matter of learning by doing."
Simon’s advice for teams making their first AI film
- Start with a clear vision: Storyboard scene-by-scene from start to end before generating assets.
- Keep it simple initially: Focus on single actions and tight prompts rather than overly complex scenes.
- Use visual references: Feed reference images and video clips into your prompts to ground the output in your intended aesthetic.
A real-world stamp
"It’s still important that the output has a real-world stamp to it. Most of our content is kids playing outside in the real world."
The Porsche film succeeds because the concept is intentionally imaginative; viewers accept the artistic premise rather than mistaking it for a literal document.
"People know that this is AI, and that it’s from a conceptual perspective. We succeeded with that in the Porsche film, because it’s a girl driving a playground car."
That philosophy drives their future creative plans. KOMPAN’s designers already layer animation over real footage, like stylized scribble animations. Mathias sees significant potential in treating AI as a conceptual overlay on top of physical video.
"It’s a creative layer you can put on top of real-world footage. We’re not pretending that this is the real world."
What’s next: Staying at the forefront
The Porsche film is just the beginning. KOMPAN is already preparing its main catalog release film for January, with plans to continue leveraging Artlist across upcoming global product launches.
When considering whether to develop AI capabilities in-house or rely on external platforms, KOMPAN's internal technology and architectural visualization department provided a telling recommendation:
Mathias shares how the internal IT team emphasizes,
"What Artlist is giving to you guys, we cannot maintain internally. Artlist constantly updates and evolves, and is at the forefront of what’s possible within AI."
For Mathias, having music, SFX, stock video, voiceovers, and emerging AI tools consolidated under one roof is what makes the partnership essential.
If you would like to learn more about working with a creative partner at Artlist, contact the team today.
