Industrial & Manufacturing

Everything else is footage

How we built the Dear AI campaign website for Ottobock in four weeks

AI & Data Solutions,

NoA Ignite — The digital consultancy that delivers

Challenge
Dear AI is Ottobock’s 2026 brand campaign addressing the lack of accurate, authentic representation of people with limb loss and limb differences in AI-generated imagery. Made for AI, not with AI, it draws on real community images and experiences. The website needed to explain the mission, introduce the people behind it and make the datasets accessible, all within four weeks.
Solution
Together with Ottobock and its campaign partners, we designed and built a visual, story-led website with the community at its centre. Ambassador stories, video and motion-led interactions create a clear journey towards two datasets covering upper- and lower-limb communities. We also supported the technical preparation and publication of the datasets on Hugging Face.
Impact
The website became the digital hub connecting the campaign story with practical action, helping audiences understand Dear AI and access the datasets. The campaign generated more than 1 billion in cumulative media reach. The website drove 178 direct dataset downloads on Hugging Face, representing roughly 7% of landing-page sessions.

Direct dataset downloads
178
Of landing-page sessions led to a dataset download
~7%
Cumulative campaign media reach
1B+
Organic views of community-created content
17M

AI-generated imagery is rapidly becoming part of how people, bodies, and identities are represented in culture, media, and advertising. But current AI systems still struggle to represent the real lives of people with limb loss and limb differences accurately and authentically. Dear AI was created to address that gap in a constructive way.

Rather than simply pointing out the problem, Ottobock invited people with limb loss and limb differences to help shape the solution themselves. Members of the community contributed images, videos, and perspectives from everyday life, helping define what more authentic representation should look like. The result was a community-developed resource designed to give AI better visual references to learn from.

The campaign translates that technical challenge into a human conversation through personal letters addressed directly to AI. Real people share real moments: working out, getting dressed, spending time with family, expressing their style or simply going about everyday life.

Microsoft supported the initiative with technology and research expertise, while the resulting datasets were made available through Hugging Face. Our task was to turn this ambitious idea into a digital experience that could carry both sides of Dear AI: the emotional power of the campaign and the practical utility of the data.

A joint team across Finland, Norway, and Germany built the Dear AI website around the campaign’s central idea: letters from real people to AI.

Instead of conventional product imagery, the experience puts authentic community voices and everyday moments at the centre. Ambassador stories unfold through short video clips, imagery and letter-like captions, giving each person space to speak in their own voice.

The visual language deliberately steps back. Personal, handwritten elements reinforce the idea of a letter, while motion and vertical video bring the stories to life without overpowering them. The experience unfolds as visitors scroll, moving from individual stories to the wider mission and ultimately to action: understanding why the datasets exist and accessing them on Hugging Face.

The site combines a campaign landing page, contextual information and FAQs with dedicated ambassador storytelling. It was designed mobile-first and built around vertical video, motion-led scrolling and sticky storytelling moments. Accessibility was considered from the start, including a reduced-motion experience.

Microsoft and Hugging Face are integrated as important parts of the initiative without distracting from the people and stories at its heart.

Behind the experience, the motion patterns, scroll modules, and components were developed as a reusable system, with documentation covering architecture and implementation decisions.

We briefed NoA Ignite four days before the first posters went up and had a site only four weeks later that felt like it came from the same camera roll as the films. It carries the Microsoft credit and the FAQ without ever looking like a corporate page.

— Martin Wider

Vice President Customer Experience & Global Marketing at Ottobock

Dear AI connects something that rarely sits together: human representation and technical utility.

The website plays a specific role within that ecosystem. The campaign films, ambassador content, OOH, and earned media generate attention and tell the human story. The website turns that attention into understanding and action.

For the public, it explains why representation in AI matters. For media and partners, it provides context around the initiative. And for researchers, developers and creators, it provides a direct path to the datasets.

The campaign generated measurable reach across media, social and public space, including 906 million in earned-media reach and 75+ media placements across Germany, the UK and the US. Paid campaign content delivered 21.1 million impressions, while social activity reached 9.2 million accounts. The campaign also generated approximately 1.5 million OOH contacts, including 2,750 wild posters in Berlin Mitte, alongside 45+ UGC posts from people with disabilities.

The datasets themselves form the practical core of the initiative: the campaign creates awareness, while the data gives developers and creators something they can actually use. This relationship between storytelling and utility is central to Dear AI’s strategy.

The website launched on 22 July 2026, the same day the datasets went public. It is where the posters, social films, and press coverage send people, and where developers find the download.

Made for AI, built with it.

The human stories and footage at the heart of Dear AI were not created with AI. They were created for AI to learn from.

But AI did help build the experience around them. AI-assisted coding supported our team in taking the website from concept to production in four weeks.

Made for AI. Built with AI.

Florian Plank: Head of AI; (+49)17682465930|florian.plank@noaignite.com

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In short

Challenge

Solution

Impact

Direct dataset downloads

Of landing-page sessions led to a dataset download

Cumulative campaign media reach

Organic views of community-created content

Made for AI, built with it.

Everything else is footage