Experience Stern | Faculty & Research

Recent examples of high-profile brands misjudging consumer response include Apple’s Crush! iPad Pro campaign, and the Bumble dating app’s anti-celebacy spot, both this past May. The Apple campaign showed a giant press crushing symbols of art and creativity into their very flat iPad Pro productivity device. While it was perhaps meant as a metaphor for all the varied creative applications the device can augment, it was viewed by many as technology squashing human creativity. Bumble’s anti-celibacy campaign tells women that “celibacy (i.e. giving up on dating apps) is not the answer”. It was negatively perceived by many as Bumble presumptuously telling women how to manage their social lives. Both Apple and Bumble suffered widespread backlash on social media which was then covered by mainstream media, and both companies issued public apologies.

Synthetic personas, aka virtual personas, powered by the latest LLMs from Google and Open AI mimic the sensibilities of real human personas and can help brands test and optimize creative for different target audiences, reduce backlash risk, and potentially increase the chances campaigns will go viral. Developing advertising that is topical and resonates with consumers is a balancing act for brands. What appeals to some as clever or funny, can be viewed by others as offensive. Synthetic personas done right can help brands identify the best balance and reduce brand damaging missteps.

RehabAI, a cutting-edge digital innovation partner I admire, helps brand teams develop culturally relevant, well-received creative and tech. They typically guide insight generation, brief creation, ideation, and creative testing – the latter being a stellar example of how thoughtful and thorough data inputs and carefully crafted algorithms can combine to optimize synthetic persona testing and significantly reduce advertising creative risks and backlash.

Read the full Forbes article.
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Michelle Greenwald is an Adjunct Associate Professor.