How Cole Haan Produced a High-Converting Brand Video in 30 Minutes With a Budget of Just $15 — Proving AI's Real Commercial Impact
WaveSpeedAI brings Cole Haan a more grounded yet highly imaginative new way of working. — Yangbo Zhao, General Manager, Cole Haan Greater China
In Cole Haan’s Shanghai office, content creation used to be a race against time. For fast-paced ecommerce platforms like Douyin and Taobao, the team needed large volumes of visual assets—daily. High content refresh rates, constant A/B testing, and rapidly evolving platform algorithms made traditional production methods far too slow and too costly.
After weeks of research, Video Manager Tiankai Bao began integrating WaveSpeedAI’s video-generation platform into the team’s crative process. Just six months later, he’s gone from early adopter to power user. What once required days can now be produced in minutes.
He puts it plainly:
A 20-second brand video used to cost at least $7,000 and a full day of shooting. With AI, it now takes 30 minutes and less than $15.
And when it comes to e-commerce short-form videos—such as model showcases or scripted voiceovers—the difference is even more dramatic. Traditionally, producing a single short clip costs several dollars. Now, Tiankai Bao’s team can generate two or three AI versions within minutes, achieving high-performing assets with 70% lower cost and 2× faster output.
The ROI improvement is visible almost instantly.
From Tool to Capability: How AI Became a Standard Marketing Workflow at Cole Haan
For Tiankai Bao, who now fully understands and utilizes WaveSpeedAI’s suite of tools, AI is no longer an experiment—it is a brand marketing productivity engine.
His daily workflow looks like this:
1. High-Quality Product Images With Nano Banana and Nano Banana Pro
Using WaveSpeedAI’s Nano Banana model, the team produces product visuals that are detailed, high-texture, structurally accurate, and fully aligned with Cole Haan’s brand aesthetic.
In addition, after the launch of Nano Banana Pro, the team immediately began using the updated model and reported a noticeable improvement in visual realism.
2. High-Fidelity Motion Videos With Veo 3.1 Fast
The Veo model generates dynamic product videos that preserve fine details and even support “screenshot-to-search” behavior on Douyin and Taobao—allowing viewers to instantly find the product page with one tap.
This combination forms their AI Content Pipeline, used daily for large-scale content production.
Tiankai Bao also developed his own technique: the “Card-Pull Strategy”—generate in bulk, select the best. With experience tuning prompts and model preferences, he now achieves a 50% usable-asset success rate, significantly higher than industry norms.
This kind of human-AI co-creation is quickly becoming the new standard for e-commerce content teams.
AI Content Is Not About Novelty. It’s About Performance.
AI videos aren’t replacing human shoots, but they are changing how brands measure content value.
Tiankai Bao’s north star is simple:
I don’t care whether it’s made with AI. I care whether it drives sales.
And the data speaks for itself:
① Strong Paid Ads Performance — Weekly Spend Reaching $700
On Douyin’s Qianchuan ad system, ROI thresholds are strict. WaveSpeedAI-generated videos reached $700 weekly spend, exceeding the footwear industry’s “excellent” benchmark of $300.
② Real GMV Lift — Single AI Video Generated $2420 in one Week
In one standout case, a piano-themed lifestyle video generated entirely with WaveSpeedAI surpassed multiple live-action versions in total GMV.
According to Yangbo Zhao, 80% of Cole Haan’s performance marketing videos are now AI-generated—underscoring how deeply AI has become embedded in the brand’s day-to-day growth operations.
This proves a key shift:
AI videos have evolved from “experimental content” into true revenue-driving commercial assets.
Authenticity and Professionalism Still Matter
Yangbo Zhao, GM of Cole Haan Greater China, puts it clearly:
Consumers don’t care whether it’s AI. They care whether the brand is sincere.
Low-quality, blurry, or error-ridden AI content damages brand trust.
High-quality, brand-aligned content—AI-generated or not—naturally becomes part of the brand identity.
For leadership, the concerns boil down to two questions: Does AI content drive real business outcomes? Does it uphold the brand’s professionalism and quality?
WaveSpeedAI’s performance has provided a confident “yes” to both.
Cole Haan Has Fully Entered the Stage of “Doing Real Business With AI”
For Cole Haan, AI is no longer a trial—it is now a core capability embedded in the brand’s growth engine:
- Content costs become controllable
- Production efficiency becomes measurable
- Marketing effectiveness becomes trackable
- GMV impact becomes transparent
In China, AI isn’t just a creative trend—it’s become part of the infrastructure actively driving business outcomes.
Cole Haan’s team has embraced this transformation with the same spirit that defines their brand: a bold willingness to explore the frontier of technology, while staying grounded in their commitment to delivering real value to consumers.
WaveSpeedAI is proud to support Cole Haan’s team in this transformation—from “trying AI” to “operating with AI.”
As More Brands Embrace AI, WaveSpeedAI Is Making Technology Even Easier to Use
To help more companies achieve the same results as Cole Haan, WaveSpeedAI is committed to:
- Simpler interfaces
- Higher success rates
- A faster path to ROI
The goal is simple:
It’s to turn AI into a business advantage—just like Cole Haan has done.
Experience Nano Banana Pro Today
Nano Banana Pro is now available to creators worldwide. With higher realism, more consistent outputs, and faster generation speed, it elevates brand content production across the board—becoming a core capability for teams looking to achieve Cole Haan–level results.
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