Harnessing AI for Creative Testing

tl;dr: Explore how our AI-driven creative testing solutions analyze audience feedback across various stages of the creative process. We used our AI-driven Stress Tester to analyze Apple, The Underdogs: OOO (Out of Office) advert and others, revealing a wide spectrum of audience reactions that mirrored industry feedback. These insights highlight the importance of considering diverse perspectives in creative testing, ensuring campaigns resonate effectively across all audience segments.

The Modern Advertising Challenge

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, marketers face the daunting task of ensuring their creative content resonates with a wide array of audiences. 

Missteps can lead to backlash, damage brand reputation, and dilute the impact of even the most well-intentioned campaigns. Recent examples like Apple’s Crush advert, Google’s Dear Sydney video, and Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign underscore the need for more sophisticated solutions in the creative process—solutions that can anticipate audience reactions before they go live.

Testing has become a major challenge

Brands still understand the importance of testing, but the landscape around campaign execution has evolved dramatically, and traditional testing methods haven’t kept pace. The usual process—using creative testing platforms, sourcing survey panels, organizing focus groups, and analyzing data—now faces tighter deadlines and the need to produce more content than ever before. Testing has become a costly luxury, forcing brands to:

• Access large-scale, real-world opinions with every test

• Pay per perspective, per person

• Compromise on testing due to costs and time constraints

• Rely on cherry-picked assets, assuming partial results represent the whole

Brands are forced to act without being armed with all the info. 

Stress Tester, AI Creative Testing Solution

At RehabAI, we’ve developed advanced AI solutions specifically designed for creative testing. These are comprehensive AI-driven systems built to assist marketers in refining their messaging throughout the creative process. By leveraging consumer data, persona insights, and audience behaviors, we’ve created virtual personas that simulate how different demographics might perceive your content in real-time and at scale.

One of these AI solutions, Stress Tester, can be integrated at any stage of the creative journey, whether you’re brainstorming initial ideas, storyboarding, writing scripts, or finalizing assets. Stress tester uses real human consumer insight data to simulate real perspectives. You can test repeatedly, at scale and get instant feedback before ideas go into production. You can build a range of challenging and hard-to-surface perspectives fast and have them at your fingertips during creative ideation. 

The result? More informed decisions and a higher likelihood of your campaigns resonating with the intended audience.

Insights Gained from Testing Adverts with Stress Tester

Apple’s Crush: 

When we ran this advert through our Stress Tester, we uncovered a wide range of reactions that echoed the feedback from the industry.

• Jamie (M, 20): Thrilled by the cinematic style and the unique way the ad highlights the iPad Pro’s capabilities.

• Maria (F, 32): Impressed by the visuals but found the message confusing, questioning the link between destruction and the iPad.

• Ethan (M, 17): Concerned about the environmental impact, seeing the destruction as wasteful.

• Linda (F, 45): Found the emotional tone unsettling, with the destruction of a creative space potentially alienating some viewers.

• Mark (M, 28): Appreciated the visual mastery but wondered if the ad was a bit too over the top.

• Grace (F, 38): As a parent, felt the ad’s aggressive tone might not be appropriate for all audiences.

• Leo (M, 34): Liked the bold and attention-grabbing approach, seeing it as a clear differentiation of the iPad Pro.

• Sophia (F, 19): Enjoyed the artistry but questioned whether it connected with practical concerns like affordability and user needs.

Sport England’s This Girl Can:

Running the This Girl Can campaign through our Stress Tester provided a rich tapestry of positive feedback for teams.

• Jamie (M, 20): Loved the genuine feel but suggested incorporating AR for enhanced engagement.

• Maria (F, 32): Appreciated the campaign’s simplicity, resonating without needing tech enhancements.

• Ethan (M, 17): Valued the message but was concerned about the environmental impact of promotional materials.

• Linda (F, 45): Praised the campaign for its representation of diverse body types and abilities.

• Mark (M, 28): Found the visuals striking, crucial for breaking stereotypes.

• Grace (F, 38): Worried that the campaign might promote too much screen time for kids.

• Leo (M, 34): Suggested integrating tech like fitness trackers to personalize the campaign.

• Sophia (F, 19): Liked the concept but felt it could be tweaked to appeal more to younger audiences, possibly through collaborations with trendy sports brands or influencers.

These insights highlight the campaign's strong impact while offering suggestions to broaden its appeal and enhance its effectiveness through technological integration and environmental considerations.

Apple’s Out of Office Thailand

Running the recent video campaign through our Stress Tester provided a diverse range of valuable feedback for the teams.

• Jamie (M, 20): Loved the VR tech use, finding it engaging, but questioned the practicality of the dramatic approach.

• Maria (F, 32): Found the scenes in Thailand stunning but was confused about the messaging and what the video was trying to showcase in terms of product or service.

• Ethan (M, 17): Appreciated the environmental visuals but was concerned about the environmental impact of filming and the heavy tech focus, suggesting the need for a clearer purpose.

• Linda (F, 45): Noted the cultural representation in traditional attire and setting, suggesting the need for ensuring cultural sensitivity.

• Mark (M, 28): Praised the visual appeal, highlighting the colors and movement, but felt the video lacked depth and leaned too much on style over substance.

• Grace (F, 38): Expressed concern that the focus on tech overshadowed the human element, wishing for more emphasis on human stories rather than just gadgets and disasters.

• Leo (M, 34): Appreciated the blending of tech into traditional settings, seeing it as a way to showcase the versatility of modern solutions and connect different worlds.

• Sophia (F, 19): Liked the style but questioned its accessibility, wondering if people would really relate to the scenario depicted.

These insights underline the campaign’s visual strengths and innovative approach while highlighting areas for improvement, particularly in messaging clarity, cultural sensitivity, and balancing tech with human stories.

How We Build Our AI Solutions

Our AI-driven creative testing solutions are built by combining detailed consumer data, persona insights, and audience behaviors. We create bespoke AI models tailored to the specific needs of advertisers, ensuring that every aspect of the creative process—be it conceptualization, storyboarding, scriptwriting, or final asset creation—can be rigorously tested. This allows for rapid iteration and refinement, enabling teams, agencies, and partners to gather more data quickly and make informed decisions that resonate with their target audiences.

The Purpose of Stress Testing: Challenging Your Creative Assumptions

The Stress Tester is designed to surface a broad spectrum of opinions, offering insights into how different personas might react to your creative content. This tool doesn’t just provide feedback—it challenges your thinking by presenting diverse viewpoints that may conflict with one another. 

The value here lies in helping you decide whether the concerns raised are valid and should be addressed or if they align with your overall creative strategy. By challenging assumptions, the Stress Tester ensures your content is robust and ready to resonate with a broad audience.

Try It Yourself: Experience the Stress Tester in Action

We’re excited to offer you a chance to experience our AI solutions firsthand. Here’s how you can demo the Stress Tester:

1. Visit StressTester.RehabAI.ai: This is your gateway to understanding how different audience segments might perceive your content.

2. Copy and Paste: Insert the description of a piece of creative content—a script, a storyboard, or even a finalized video. Or copy and paste from the descriptions at the bottom of this article.

3. Select Personas to Stress Test Against: Click on the persona images to include them in the test, then click “Stress Test.”

4. Get Real-Time Feedback: Within moments, you’ll receive a comprehensive analysis of how different audiences might interpret your messaging. This insight allows you to refine your content to ensure it resonates across the board.

Why It Matters

In a world where consumer sentiment can shift rapidly, the ability to test concepts against diverse audiences to refine creative concepts in real-time is invaluable. Our AI solutions empower marketers to make data-driven decisions that ensure content resonates and aligns with brand values and audience expectations.

While our AI solutions provide powerful insights, they must be used responsibly. The goal is not to homogenize content but to ensure it resonates while respecting cultural and individual diversity. This balance is crucial to maintaining the richness of human creativity and expression.

Ready to elevate your creative process? Explore how our AI solutions can help you create content that deeply connects with your audience.

Join the Conversation

How do you think AI can enhance the creative process? Share your thoughts below and learn more about integrating AI into your creative strategy.

Try the tool for yourself; copy and paste these descriptions into the tool

Apple’s Crush: A metronome ticks back and forth in a dark room with a record player and a piano. The camera pans across a room filled with musical instruments, art supplies, and other objects. A song begins to play, and as the camera pans around the room, the objects begin to shake and rattle. The camera focuses on a trumpet as it begins to spin rapidly, and then pans to a piano as paint cans fall from the ceiling and splatter paint all over it. The camera continues to pan around the room as more objects are destroyed, including a metronome, a guitar, and a pile of books. The camera then focuses on a small, yellow emoji with a scared expression on its face as it is crushed by a large, metal press. The press then crushes all of the objects in the room, leaving behind a pile of rubble. The camera focuses on a black rectangle on the ground, which is revealed to be a new iPad Pro. A hand reaches down and picks up the iPad Pro, and the Apple logo is displayed on the screen.

Apple’s Out of Office Thailand: The video opens with a group of three people arriving in Thailand, where they are greeted by a man in a colorful shirt and a woman in a floral dress. Their attire suggests they are on a business trip, and the scene is accompanied by music reminiscent of traditional Thai melodies. The next scene takes place inside a tuk-tuk, where the three people are seated side by side. The man in the colorful shirt talks about the need for a new design, contract, and budget, while the woman in the floral dress looks concerned. Cutting to a different location, the video shows a man wearing a VR headset, seated on a couch in a living room. He speaks to someone off-screen, and a message pops up on the screen that says, “It’s a total disaster.” The video then returns to the group of three, now on a boat. The woman in the dress is focused on her laptop, while the man in the colorful shirt, now visibly annoyed, puts on a life jacket. The video concludes with a shot of the woman on the boat, still working on her laptop and looking increasingly stressed. The video uses humor and exaggerated scenarios to depict the challenges the characters face during their trip.