This post was created in partnership with Zappi
The consumer attention economy continues to fragment, and marketers must adapt to not just grab it, but hold it.
During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ fireside chat, Ryan Joe, editor-in-chief at ADWEEK, sat down with Steve Phillips, chief innovation officer, founder, and chair at Zappi, and Nataly Kelly, CMO of Zappi, to discuss strategies for effective marketing in the era of borrowed attention.
It takes more than attention
Kelly opened the panel by talking about Zappi’s latest annual report, “The State of Creative Effectiveness.” The report looked at ads across social media to understand what engaged viewers.
One finding that Kelly shared: Advertisers are good at getting attention but not at building a connection with consumers. In many cases, simply partnering with a celebrity or creating content with an influencer doesn’t impact sales.
“What the highest performing ads do is draw a throughline to distinctive brand assets and make sure that they are front and center,” Kelly explained.
Phillips added that brand assets are more than what you see on the surface; they’re how a brand communicates a message or story.
“Every client thinks they know what their distinctive brand assets are, but it’s not just the logo, it’s not just the colors,” Phillips said. “It might be the type of story arc in your advertising or the type of humor related to you, and that storytelling can be a much more distinctive brand asset.”
Breaking through the noise
Phillips brought up what he called “struggling with scroll,” or when brands compete to stand out with meaningful ads on devices. He said marketing teams are great at making TV ads, but social media needs improving.
“A lot of the scroll ads are naturally formulaic because the only way brands can manage the process is by putting guidelines in, and then the guidelines become more important than the creative,” Phillips shared.
But losing sight of the creative can lead to consumer indifference. According to Phillips, an indifferent reaction is a problem because it means there was no impact other than a brand “spent some money.”
“Marketers need to think creatively about making a story and making it authentic for the consumer, the creator, and the brand,” Phillips explained.
Testing ads with synthetic consumers
Phillips shared that Zappi has developed a synthetic audience—an AI-generated, data-driven simulation of real customers—that brands can use to test large campaigns at scale. If a campaign has thousands of assets, it would be impossible to get feedback on every piece of content without synthetic consumers.
“Testing all of them with humans is too time-consuming, too expensive,” Phillips said. “However, you do want feedback on every piece of creative. You want to know whether it’s good or bad. You want to know whether you can improve it, but also critically, you want to understand: Does it fit with the rest of the campaign?”
He made it clear that key pieces of a campaign should still be tested with humans, but derivative versions and less risky elements can be tested with synthetic consumers.
