“The death of art”, “lifeless and soulless”, “devoid of any creativity” – it’s fair to say AI’s introduction into ad creative has been far from seamless.
As the technology continues to advance and gather momentum, so have the eye-bruising comments and headlines criticising brands such as Coca-Cola, Puma and Volvo for plonking one of their six machine-generated fingers into the AI creative pie.
The backlash against AI-generated ads exposes ever-widening fault lines across Adland’s already fractured landscape – creativity v convenience; soul v scale.
But amid the noisy, seemingly endless man-versus-machine debates, it seems we’re losing sight of the bigger picture. AI isn’t here to replace creativity, it’s here to help.
One area AI is already having an impact is in creative testing and optimisation, as shown by a recent ad campaign from U.S. Bank.
Like many companies across the Finance sector, the bank’s marketing team had become worried by the rate it has fallen behind on AI adoption. So last year it started to integrate various AI-powered technologies to help with its “Power Of Us” campaign.
Keen to delve even deeper, the financial brand this year leaned further into its use of AI, leveraging insights from an AI-powered ad testing process to shape its latest campaign.
The three new ads all showcase U.S. Bank’s range of services. “The Power of Jess” shows Peloton instructor Jess Sims managing her finances through her checking and savings accounts. “The Power of Mia” follows a woman using a business account to grow her small boutique swimwear brand, while “Big Milestones” features a woman gifting her dad a car, made possible through smart saving.
The bank used AI to identify key messaging and common themes and then tested and honed the three ads using human-trained, AI-powered audiences to ensure they had the maximum impact on viewers. However, just to be clear, AI was not used to create the characters on screen.
The result is three ads that all scored well above the average for overall effectiveness. Using DAIVID’s Creative Effectiveness Score – a composite metric score out of 10 that combines positive emotions, attention and brand recall – all scored well above the 5.8 average.
“Big Milestones” managed the highest score of 6.56, putting it in the top 26 per cent of best performing ads. “Mia” and “Jess” were not far behind though, with scores of 6.37 and 6.16 respectively.
Far from accusations of being “soulless” or “lifeless”, driving such a strong performance was the ads’ use of strong, positive emotions.
For example, all three generated intense feelings of warmth that were well above the industry average. “Milestones” was the highest, consistently generating strong feelings of warmth throughout (see below).
Altogether, viewers were 67 per cent more likely to generate intense feelings of warmth watching the ad than the industry norm. Both “Mia” and “Jess” also hit people right in the feels, with feelings of warmth 43 per cent and 38 per cent higher than average.
This in turn led to levels of trust – a key emotion for a bank (or any brand, for that matter) – all between 50-85 per cent higher than the average ad. Knowledge, another key emotion for a brand talking about the variety of its services, were all above the norm too.
Feelings of confusion – so many times an effectiveness killer – and boredom, were also well below the industry norm. People understood the message and were intrigued by the content.
This is borne out by the levels of attention all three ads attracted, which were all well above average from start to finish.
But did the content motivate people to act? Well, yes. First of all – thanks to U.S. Bank’s products and services and its branding playing a key role in each creative – the percentage of people who could identify the brand behind the ads was all above average.
“Big Milestones” led the way, with 70.3 per cent of viewers correctly identifying U.S. Bank. That’s 28.1per cent higher than the average ad. “Power of Mia” followed with 66.2 per cent recall (20.6 per cent above average), while “Power of Jess” achieved 63.4 per cent, outperforming the norm by 15.5 per cent.
It meant viewers were significantly more likely to take action after seeing the ads, particularly “Big Milestones,” which boosted purchase intent by 19.8 per cent over the average.
All three ads increased the likelihood of viewers recommending the brand to their contacts, with “Milestones” again leading the way at 45.4 per cent – 17.8 per cent above average. “Jess” was 12.6 per cent higher, and “Mia” 8.2 per cent higher.
Brand search intent also rose across the board. “Milestones” was 12.6 per cent higher than average, followed by “Jess” (+9.2 per cent) and “Mia” (+6.2 per cent).