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Episode 108

The New Rules of Great Video Creative with Steve Babcock

Marketers only accurately predict the outcome of an A/B test 52% of the time. With today's viewers constantly multitasking, creative has seconds—not minutes—to make an impact. But many brands still rely on outdated approaches, leading to forgettable commercials.

In this episode, Elena, Angela, and Rob are joined by Chief Creative Officer Steve Babcock to discuss Marketing Architects' new report on TV creative effectiveness. They explore why strategy must come first, why pretesting is no longer optional, storytelling lessons from marketing effectiveness research, and how AI is enhancing (not replacing) human creativity.

Topics Covered

• [01:00] New research on what makes TV creative effective in 2025

• [05:00] Why the old creative playbook no longer works

• [08:00] Finding the "elephant in the room" for strategic development

• [13:00] How AI-powered pretesting is changing creative development

• [21:00] The cost of "dull" advertising that evokes no emotion

• [25:00] Using AI as a creative engineering tool

• [36:00] The future of "shootless" video production

Resources:

2025 Marketing Architects Report

2025 Marketing Architects and Adweek Webinar

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Steve Babcock

Chief Creative Officer

Transcript

Steve: It's so amazing when you're able to see something that you can celebrate on a creative level and also go, and you know what's even more amazing is it did this and this and this in terms of business growth. Usually you don't get to that part. You just celebrate like, oh well, it's really cool. So I think the great ads are emotional and utility.

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper. I run the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Angela Voss, the CEO of Marketing Architects. And Rob DeMars, the Chief Product architect of Misfits and Machines.

Rob: Hello.

Angela: Hi.

Elena: And we're joined by a special guest, our chief creative Officer, Steve Babcock.

Steve: Hello. Thanks for having me on the podcast.

Rob: Welcome back.

Elena: We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results.

This is a little bit of a special week for us because it's Lightning Strike Week, which is a week that we spend months planning for. We try to concentrate content and promotion around a topic for that week. And the idea of a lightning strike was coined by category pirates. The theme for this lightning strike is creative effectiveness, specifically for video.

So that's why Steve is joining us. Today we're gonna talk about why TV is still the heavyweight champion of advertising, but creative needs to evolve. And we're also gonna cover a new TV creative research report that is out this week. But let's start, as we always do with that research, because we have some of our own.

It's titled The New Rules of Great TV Creative. What it does is lays out sort of a new playbook for what works for TV creative in 2025. Strategy comes first. Brands need deep audience insights before creative development even begins. Second, pre-testing isn't optional anymore.

Marketers only predict success about half the time. So testing creative is essential Before launch. Third today is distracted. Consumers demand high impact storytelling, strong branding and emotional connections. According to system one, nearly half of TV ads produce no emotional response, which means most are easily forgettable.

And finally, AI is transforming creative production, making high quality, scalable content, more accessible than ever. But AI isn't replacing human creativity. It's enhancing it. And the key takeaway from the report is that brands that can combine proven creative principles with new technology will drive better results.

The rules have changed and advertisers who adapt will win. So Ange that report, it highlights some of the major shifts happening right now in tv Creative, the need for stronger strategy testing, AI driven production. So from your perspective, why is this conversation important right now? Like what's driving the need for brands to consider a bit of a new video creative playbook.

Angela: Yeah, I mean the marketing world is an ever evolving space, but I feel like we're at a really unique moment that makes the conversation that we're having today really critical, the focus and topic of discussion. 'cause you really have three things happening all at once. The first consumer attention is possibly the hardest to attain that it's ever been.

We live in this attention economy. People are watching TV while they're scrolling. TikTok guilty, ordering dinner, replying to texts, and TV still earns more attention than any other video format, but it's just no longer guaranteed. And so what that means for marketers is your creative has seconds, not minutes to earn attention, evoke emotion, drive response, build memory.

And I just feel the old formulas weren't designed for that reality. Secondly, we have this moment with AI unlocking a new era of possibility. The old constraints of production time, cost complexity are just collapsing on themselves. AI is allowing us to test ideas, iterate faster, execute more what we've been calling, or I think Steve, you came up with the term shoot list creative with speed and with scale.

But using AI requires a new mindset. We still wanna start with insight, but then we've got this tech enhanced execution and we need creatives to think in terms of brand building systems, not just one-off ads. And then I think lastly, brand has always been important, but I really feel with the shift in AI is gonna be your most valuable asset.

From a company perspective, TV still plays a critical role in building mental availability in scale. It commands attention and drives brand growth more effectively than any other medium. But as we move into a world where consumers are increasingly relying on AI agents to make decisions on their behalf, the strength of your brand becomes even more important.

AI agents are gonna be using proxies for decision making, things like brand recognition and trust signals and past behavior. And if your brand doesn't readily come to mind or to the model, you risk being filtered out of consideration. And so video becomes increasingly important in ensuring that you've got that mental availability.

Elena: Yeah, lots of challenges, big and small, new tools, technology, and we're gonna talk about all that today. But first, Steve, thanks again for joining. I wanted to start with kind of a big picture question because you've seen the creative industry change quite a bit over your career and the report makes it clear at tv.

Creative we don't think has really kept pace with how people watch today. So what do you think is the biggest problem with how most brands currently approach TV creative?

Steve: Ooh, that's a huge question. I could have a whole lot of answers. Not that I'm some disgruntled creative person that has, there's all kinds of problems with the world, but I would say this and I actually think it stems from a organizational issue typically found on the client side. And that's the separation of brand creative department or a brand department and performance. And when it's separated at a client level, the fallout has the creative itself or the executions have been separated.

And so there's this mindset that oh, there can be work that is quote unquote brand, we'll just call it good, creative, engaging, emotional. And then there's this other stuff over here that is designed to work. You know, it's like, wait a minute. I do think that that's a huge problem. And from the creative side too, I mean, it's there maybe more on an ego level. You go to a lot of the ad festivals and things, and there's just this idea that like, oh, well creative that works is subpar.

It's not worth celebrating. And so we have a, a mantra that we use here that I can take no credit for. 'cause I think I got it from Rob. I'm assuming Rob came up with it. Maybe not. Remarkable work that works remarkably. Rob, is that you?

Rob: I give that credit to Catrina on the strategy team. She first uttered

Steve: but she's not on this. Hey we're I'll take full for it. Absolutely.

She's not here right now, Rob, so please. But I think that's really it. It is a nice way to say it, but it's just, yeah, you can have work that is remarkable that ticks off those boxes from a brand perspective, but that also works and satisfies the business objective. So I think that's really the biggest problem is first of all, it's a mental shift, and then also an organizational one. Put these things together, they need to work together.

Elena: Yeah, we had, um, Lexi Wolf from work on the podcast a few weeks ago and she was echoing something similar that you see more and more within brands. They have separate brand and performance teams. And I think that's kind of legacy thinking too, that, you know, one creative execution has to be for brand, one has to be for performance, but their new report is sort of debunking that, that it actually works better.

Like you can have both in the same commercial. So that's good news for us 'cause that's something that we've believed for a while, but one of the first lessons that we have in the report is to always start with strategy, but a lot of brands, they still kind of lead with their gut when developing creative. Why do you think that could be a risky approach?

Steve: It is super risky. But I kind of understand it, right? First of all, one of the biggest risks of your gut is a lot of times you are not your audience. You are not your consumer, right? And you're not able to look at it through the lens of your consumer. And so I think that's risky to just say, this is what I think, and it's really important to actually step outside of yourself, as uncomfortable as that can be, and what it usually means.

And we have a phrase here that we use called elephants. What is the elephant in the room? It's that very big unspoken truth that everyone acknowledges, but maybe you don't talk about. And you can also call that a consumer insight, a category insight, but real strategy is that idea of being able to unearth what that is.

And if you don't do that and you don't allow yourself to have the empathy to put yourself in your consumer's shoes and acknowledge that, like, Hey, even though I wanna say this thing to you as a marketer, there is this elephant in the room. You're thinking it, but if I don't address it, or at least acknowledge that it exists, I'm just talking at you. I'm not talking with you. And I think that the best creative is kind of that two-way communication with people.

And it does require that marketers and brands do that strategic work. And there's levels, right? There's always just like, well here's an insight. And you're like, yeah, but is that interesting? You know? And that's why I think we like referring to them as elephants. 'cause it's like, is that really there? Is it, is there attention to it? A lot of times it'll make it uncomfortable, but I think the best work out there is work that is acknowledged, or like I said, just spoken to you in a way it understands that that elephant is there. So if you want an equation, spend 80% of your time, mental time really getting to that elephant and 20% executing creatively off of it. It is by far the most important part of the process if you want to really connect to your consumer.

Elena: A big part of finding that elephant, you said, is stepping into your customer's shoes. It feels like there's more ways than ever to do that. Like there's more data than ever. There's different ways to do surveys. Now we can create synthetic audiences. Do you think that with all this new stuff we have access to are brands getting better at understanding their audiences? Or do you think it can be a big blind spot?

Steve: Well, I think it depends on what you mean by audience. If you mean like existing audience or potential audience, right? The fringe, the light buyers, the audience that they don't actually know that is there. So I do think that gospel of Steve here. I do think that we as a whole have gotten maybe a little too focused on this crazy, crazy, hyper, hyper, hyper, hyper targeting of this exact persona that is our audience and that.

You know, largely is because of the technology of social and digital that allows you to go, I'm gonna send this message to the blue-eyed blonde-haired person who likes soccer and wears shorts. You know, it's like, um, that, that we've thought that there's so much advantage to that, and potentially lower funnel. Sure. That we've maybe taken our eye off the ball of like, well hold up.

Where's our next audience? Where's this light buyer that sits next to this person that we're hyper targeting, that we're missing because we're going so deep? So I actually think it would behoove us as an industry to make sure we're stepping back and going like, well, when we say audience, it should include our target, but also these light buyers, fringe new audiences, et cetera. Because that's where growth comes and obviously life after your current audience isn't your current audience anymore, so yes and no. If I answered your question, right,

Elena: And I think sometimes too marketers maybe they've been so focused on one core audience that they didn't even know that like a whole nother group could be also a core audience or could be a part of it, but they've been so narrow focused.

I think it's fun when you put someone on TV and all of a sudden it's like, oh, women like our product too, or parents are buying it. It just gives you an opportunity to make those connections. Speaking of marketers being wrong about things, one part of the report we talked about like predicting creative success and we have this stat from an ad testing company that called Mar Pipe.

They found that marketers only accurately predict creative success 52% of the time. So it's basically a coin flip. And I've come across research that's, it's even more grim than that. It's like less than 50% of the time we can predict what's gonna work. So the report, it talks about pretesting being mandatory or it should be mandatory, but many brands still skip it. Why do you think that is?

Steve: Well, I mean, it's a pain in the butt, first of all. You know, it's, it's, uh, it's cumbersome, it's costly. Of course, there's things like that. I imagine in some cases there's some ego involved. I don't need that validation. I'm the professional here. In my experience, the traditional way also comes with just hoards of human bias. I've always felt, which is weird, right, because I fundamentally believe in the power of quote unquote pretesting.

But I've always been, you know, historically really confused by the methods that were available to us, kind of pre technology that we use. I'll talk about in a second, but like I would always go into these rooms. They were in person. There's a one way mirror. We're all back there behind there, just binging on snacks while there's a group of people that somewhat represent the audience that have been paid to come out of their life and sit in a room and react to creative in an environment that is nothing like the environment of their couch.

Just watching a TV commercial, you know, like it's, there's nothing scientific about it. And then they just sit there and group think and talk. Some clients who were a little bit better at it, knew how to glean some of the helpful stuff outta that. And then there were some that were just like, well that lady in the blue sweater, she said this, so creative team change all the, you know, and so it was like, I understand. I definitely do understand. Like I just want to forego that. I don't see any value in that.

We and I will credit Rob on this, and if you say this was Catrina, maybe it was Catrina, had developed a tool called ScriptSooth which is based on large language models, which basically allows us not to mention how fast it is and easy it is. It's at like a word doc level where I can go in and get an actual metric of response based on my script. And because of that, it's not sitting in a group, it's not getting group think.

There's no human bias to it. It's been really awesome. And like I said, how seamless it is in our process, right? It's in like the ideation process. It's not like after we've gone through all this work, fallen in love with it, had people draw pictures, flew to Denver or flew to Chicago to sit in a room, it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Everybody in the world would follow this approach, that number of creative success would skyrocket because it isn't cumbersome, it's not a pain in the butt, and it's actually, I think what we're finding considerably more accurate than that old approach.

Angela: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what's great, there's a lot of great things to your point about it, but it allows our team to don't bring a client an idea that's not going to win. we've got this database of performance history of years and years and years of both radio and TV performance, so we already know we've got validated. You know, data to tell us what works and, and doesn't work. And that's how we sort of reverse engineered the AI to produce that result for us early in the process so we don't have to bring an idea and get all that emotional energy going towards something that ultimately you put in front of 12 people in a room that.

Have the gospel for the rest of the nation, apparently. Um, in terms of their opinions. And does it work or does it not work? The other thing that kills me about pretesting too is this idea that regardless of the methodology, that it somehow stifles creativity like this. It's, it's the romanticizing of that creative gut.

When I think in the majority of cases, it's the opposite. That becomes true. In a safe pretesting environment, you're allowed to think a lot bigger I think when you're testing in market. The pretesting de-risks that and allows you to go bigger than you otherwise might have.

You're taking the big stage, you're on television, and so sometimes ideas get so big that they're kind of scary. Those can be the unlocks that are really impactful if you actually get 'em into market.

Elena: So Steve, I was gonna ask you if you've ever worked on a campaign where the testing results, like completely change the creative direction. Now, I'm, I'm wondering if I should reframe it as like, how often does that happen?

Steve: Well, well, Yeah. I'll give you two worlds, right? My previous world and then today's world. A client who shall not be named in the fast casual dining experience years ago. This was maybe 20, call it 12, 20, yeah. 11. And typical of that category. Very boring, they all just close up shots of food and music and, come get a sandwich, whatever.

And we were really excited about this challenge to, to do something that broke out of the category was very different. And of course, the client came to us and was like, that's what we need. We're declining sales, everything's blah, blah, blah, and so we did, we created work that we really felt would accomplish that by all means. Like this is nothing like your category. The elephants are stampeding in this work. Like it is so rich with insight and like, let's do it. And then I flew out to Chicago and sat in a room behind a one way mirror and watched as this group of people just dismantled everything out of it and argued.

And it was like a, I was on trial, there was like a jury deliberating and unfortunately this particular client was one that was like, whatever they say we're gonna do. And we walked out of there ultimately with just back to square one because they were in there critiquing and basically pushing it back into that expected nothingness. Well, it should just be this, it should just be this, this, this. So it, it dramatically changed it in my opinion to the negative. And then if I come into today, especially when we've first started working with ScriptSooth, this tool.

You know, it would be really interesting because I would, I would have something that creatively, I was like, okay, this is dynamite. You know, like, okay, and I'm gonna put it into this AI thing, and it's gonna, it's gonna make it boring. It's gonna come back and just be like this nice, make it lame and I was really surprised. Well, probably it worked to my ego. 'cause in this particular case it agreed with me. It was like, this would be really captivating.

This would be really interesting, but you're missing this and you're missing this and you're missing this. Some things that I was like, oh, oh yeah, let me fine tune, let me tweak, let me do this. And ultimately I kind of came in and the work was really strong from a what we'll call remarkable side, but it wasn't really strong on the works remarkably side. And what this allowed me to do was to fine tune those things without diminishing the creative part that I was really excited about and ultimately come out with something that had the complete equation.

And that's why I really like ScriptSooth. But I really like that is because it's at this individual level, at the concept and at the creation stage where I can kind of do that before I even need to show anybody.

I'm like, I've got this thing working. It's been really good lately. It's awesome to have work out there that you're proud of and the team comes back, analytics team is like, Hey, this is working well, this is working like over and over and over and over. Versus in the old days if it didn't work well, you're like, well, the, the media agency's fault, or, you know, somebody else's fault. And it's like, it's really fun to actually have work you like working.

Elena: The speed must just be huge because I can imagine if you've put all this time, energy, and effort into a creative idea, it can also be hard just with the sunk costs if it doesn't test well to go back and change it. So yeah, having that earlier is nice. Rob, what about you? Do you have any pre-testing war stories you'd like to share?

Rob: Marketing Architects was founded by a data scientist back in 1997, and I've been with the agency for a couple decades, so I actually don't remember a time when we didn't test in some capacity. Testing has always sort of been a part of the DNA, especially back in our radio days and while it wasn't necessarily in radio a pretest. We were testing with audiences and we were putting what I would call like a portfolio approach to creative testing out there. So what do I mean by that?

Really the opportunity of being able to honor the brief, like Steve was saying, like, what's that, you know, elephant, I love that. What's that key insight? But then how do you take a divergent approach? speaking into that brief. So you might have some ideas if you're thinking about like a financial investment portfolio, some stuff that's like, yeah, this is kind of tried and true, and then you have some stuff that's in that moderate bucket and then some stuff that are big swings and putting those out there and then ultimately letting the audience help steer which direction.

It could go. So yeah, definitely would get surprised in that process. I've always said I'm an expert in my opinion. And boy, the audience really would tell you like, wow. And it was the audience that was actually telling you, you know, especially in our early days. And for us to be able to replicate that now that sort of feedback loop.

Through LLMs has been really helpful like Steve was saying, and also just really helps to accelerate the speed and let's face it, creating those animatics our productions in and of themselves, right? I mean, it's like there's a lot of time and money and weeks and sweat and then all of a sudden to have those die, it actually hurts a little more than when it's just still in its early phases of a Word document.

Elena: So part of this report, we used a lot of research from System one and they're a kinda a TV pretesting company. They had a report called The Cost of Dull that I personally really, really liked because it highlights how the biggest issue with TV commercials, you would think it's a ads bombing, but it's not.

It's actually ads that leave you feeling nothing. And they found that 47% of TV ads, they produce this feeling of neutrality. Like they're just completely forgettable. So that's actually a bigger, like, the bigger risk is just me leaving people feeling nothing versus feeling negative emotions. So Steve, I mean that's a pretty, that's a pretty scary stat 'cause those are commercials that make it onto tv. So what do you think separates, you know, just a good ad, maybe like a, you know, neutral, average one from a really, really great one.

Steve: Yeah, I go back to strategy as the foundation of that and referencing those elephants in the room, which again requires everybody to embrace some discomfort. Not that everything has to be all crazy and provocative, but there are edges of comfort zones that when you get into them, you actually start to get into more areas of truth with your audience.

So I think the best work, the great work like I said, communicates with people versus at them because it's communicating in a way and based on a foundation of mutual understanding. Also I mean, at the end of the day, there's also just a thing called creativity.

There's things that are inventive, there are things that are interesting, and that can be in a production value. That can be, in a way, something is put together a script. There's work that feels very formulaic and that can end up feeling dull. But then there's work that is just really understanding the idea and the assignment of like, I need to break through, especially if you're in a category that is typical of doing one thing.

If you asked, you know, what separates a good ad from a great one? You go to a lot of industry award shows and see good ads, great creative ads, but I still think a great ad has a job to do. And that goes back to the remarkable work that works remarkably. It's so amazing when you're able to see something that you can celebrate on a creative level and then also go, and you know what's even more amazing is it did this and this and this. In terms of business growth, usually you don't get to that part. You just celebrate like, oh well, it's really cool. So I think the great ads are emotional and utility.

Elena: That's great. I also liked how you mentioned like there's lots of different ways to make work interesting 'cause I think maybe sometimes we just think of it through one lens. but I even saw the other day that like sound is such an important part of tv. Why it's so memorable for people and like there's a lot of ways to make work interesting. Well, we have to talk about AI apparently, because it's, if we're talking about creative, we gotta talk about ai. And the report, it does include stuff about AI because it's a big part of creative production right now.

Some people are worried AI is gonna make ads more generic, other state as a creative accelerator. Some people are just tired of hearing about it. But Steve, where do you stand on AI and creative today?

Steve: Well, I've already accepted the fact that like we will, we'll all just be destroyed. Like AI is just gonna just, and, it, and, and you need to get to that point. You need to get there first. Just like, let we're, yes. It's gonna, it's gonna develop conscious, it's gonna take us over like it's all happening. Got it. Cool. I love it. I absolutely love it. And part of why I'm able to say that is because I have access to it.

And it's one of the things that I massively attribute to Angela here at Marketing Architects to be able to drive such a push to make sure that we have access to the tools. I have a lot of friends in a lot of agencies where they're like not allowed to even touch it. Which I, I understand. There's a lot about it that's a little bit complex and chaotic at the moment, but the ability to experience it and to play around with it and explore it is what makes you go, whoa, this is awesome.

There's so much potential. I think when you don't have that experience, it's very easy to maybe just read headlines and go, ah, it's this and that, and this. But it is an amazing tool and that's what it is, just as all the amazing tools that we've had that have helped us make better work faster.

This is definitely probably a tool unlike one we've seen before. But it is, it's an amazing tool and one of the things I really like about it is it shortens this bridge that typically is this really long bridge between I have an idea, or anybody who has an idea. And then that idea being an execution, typically, there's a massive bridge between that. And it's a really expensive, and it costs a lot of time and there's a lot of room for things to get messy on that bridge now. I can go, like, I have an idea,

I'm gonna make that come to life. You know? I'm gonna minimize somebody having to have theater of the mind because I can make it come to life. And it's been amazing, especially even in like client presentations where previously it's like, here's a written word script, man, we're all gonna be reading that differently. You know? Like, well, what do you mean by sunset? What do you mean by, you know, versus here is a pretty darn close visual representation of what we're trying to create.

And they're like, love it. You know, or, or if they have critique, it's based on a mutual understanding of what something is in its almost completed form. So I think it's amazing. I've seen so much amazing potential in just how we work in terms of developing, but also creating and producing work. For example, when you go to a shoot, it's pretty final. Unless you wanna do a reshoot or whatever, you know, it's like, and how many times do you get back in the edit or you're talking with your client? It's like, oh wait, the product needs to be this, or we had an update that's this or this.

Well, that sucks. But with AI it's like, oh wait, I can fix that, or I can change that. And the technology is where it is today. By the time this airs, it will have improved a lot, it will get to a place where it's indistinguishable, it will. Like will Smith was eating spaghetti two years ago, and you're like, what the heck is that thing? And now it's like, whoa.

So I think it is absolutely crazy exciting. I've never looked at it as like it's replacing human creativity. We use a term here creative engineers. That's how we think about it. 'cause it's like we still need human taste makers to drive the machines. Holy cow, the amount of work we're gonna be able to put out because of the efficiency and speed.

And we've even seen with several of our clients that have typically hey, we'll do one or two kind of evergreen things a year versus like, we can be way more relevant on occasions. Clients can start taking a social media approach to TV if you can create with this kind of speed.

Angela: It sort of allows you to kind of maximize the idea of category entry points, right? Like for a brand where there are certain brands of course, that are seasonal, but that's something that's come up for us is when you're like, we have so much more capability, so much quicker, it really allows for you to kind of expand the mind in terms of how we can bring either light buyers in or influencers in or what have you, to ultimately grow the brand.

Elena: Yeah. Steve, I like too, how you think about it as like, what can AI do now to help us? I think a lot of people get stuck in that debate of it doesn't look good, or it's not doing the full thing. It's like, well, you're missing out on using it for like, what it's good at in the process too. But before we wrap up this discussion of the report, I wanna ask you one last question, which is, if you had to give brands, you know, one piece of advice for developing breakthrough TV creative this year, what would it be?

Steve: Spend the effort figuring out the elephants. Dig deeper. And it's not just strategy team, it's everybody, all humans have the ability to understand how we think and, and what's real and what's true. You have you can have a lot of times where as a brand you want to project just like, this is what I want everyone to think. It's perfect.

But there's a lot of times where there's something there. There's something sitting there of why someone might go I don't really think that, and just telling them that doesn't help them understand that, but So I would say definitely focusing on that it really is the connection to a human's emotion and to their rational side as well. It's the thing that makes them go, okay, I'm gonna listen because you've included me in this conversation. And then just stop for the love of all that's holy splitting performance and brand.

Please. If I can just get one plead to the industry, put those departments together right now. Call your brand manager, call your head of performance and put 'em in an office together. I'm getting so much hate mail right now. Put 'em together. And the work will be remarkable work that will work remarkably. Then that 52% thing that you told me, like, which is horrible, will not be a coin flip anymore.

Angela: Aren't we glad that it's 52. I mean, we get like 2% of a win there as marketers. Like this is what we've been doing our entire lives.

Steve: I know. I was like really excited about this podcast until you threw that up there. I was like, oh, my parents were right.

Rob: I've wasted my

Angela: Mm-hmm.

Elena: Maybe we need like a podcast format where we bring in like Brand and performance people and have like a

Steve: Oh, that'd be a great show. Like a debate. Yeah. Well, it's like a matchmaking kind of game where it's like, hey, you know. You guys actually do get along. great.

Elena: So this week I said we're doing a lot of promotion and one thing we're gonna share is a press release about some of the generative AI enhancements that we've made in production at ma.

And that's been with the help of Rob and your team at Misfits and Machines. And one challenge that we tackled together was there's this consistency issue with AI generated video, especially if you're trying to, you know, add in logos, product details, and maintain your brand sort of unique style. Rob, you developed a Laura based approach to solve this. I know you know all about this. You're an expert on Lauras, so can you explain how they work?

Rob: I am a real big nerd, so you're gonna probably cut out a lot of this explanation. Obviously the big challenge with text to video, let's just say like Steve's got really cool headphones on right now, and let's say I want to do a TV commercial using those headphones.

And, and I want to use Steve as the talent in that commercial, I can't go to one of the many text video generation platforms out there and go, Hey put this bald white guy like me. I can say that 'cause I am one in the TV commercial with these headphones and all of a sudden you get a piece of video that looks like that, right?

It'll take a really good guess and it will produce all kinds of different cool looking headphones. But it won't produce those headphones. And if, obviously, if that's your point of your ad is to show an ad with those headphones in it, it's just not gonna happen. We all know that's not gonna happen. So how do you solve for that?

The first thing you have to do is to teach the AI what your product looks like. And that's done using something called a Laura or a low rank adaptation. What you do there is you train the Laura with 20 to a hundred different still images. And the AI gets really good at understanding what it looks like.

Now, the crazy thing is you can do that with humans as well. So if you wanna train the lo to also understand what Steve looks like, you can do that. So now you have what's basically like a plugin that's been trained that you can now take and use with something called Comfy ui. And Comfy UI is a graphical interface that works with stable diffusion, which is one of the main technologies out there enabling us to, to do all these cool image generation and basically comfy UI is like a workshop.

That works with stable diffusion, has all kinds of different tools and experiments that you can run with it. And so if you know how to put the right tools in the right order, you can have stable diffusion, do all kinds of things like create generative images that are true representation of Steve's headphones and what Steve looks like.

And basically, if you think about it, it's like one of those Rube Goldberg, you remember those? Rube Goldberg things where you put together a bunch of random things like a, you flick a lever and it shoots a marble up and it rolls down a runway, like that's comfy ui. That's how you're assembling these things together.

So if you can get the right combination together, you can then generate those outputs. Once you have those outputs, you can then use image to video to create pieces of video using many of the platforms out there, runway, Luma Labs, Ray two, VO two, um, and then ultimately create those pieces of video that look just like the product indistinguishable from the product in any environment you want. And you can generate them super quick.

Elena: You did a great job explaining it. It's a little hard on like an audio podcast, but there are videos on the Market Architect's LinkedIn page if you wanna see what it looks like because it's pretty cool.

Rob: Cool.

Elena: So in that same release we talked about the future of shoot list video production, and Steve, I believe that you're the person who coined that term. Um,

Steve: was Catrina.

Elena: It was you stole it from Catrina.

Rob: Let's get her on here.

Elena: What do you think, are we really heading towards this world where brands never have to shoot traditional commercials? Or do you think we're gonna have more of a kind of hybrid approach?

Steve: I think in the near term it'll be hybrid obviously. 'Cause there's a lot that has to happen. Technology needs to continue to advance and us humans and our client partners need to be able to embrace it. I always think it'll be hybrid in terms of human driving the tools.

I'm excited for it to be shoot less, I love going on shoots and cameras and doing all those things, and there's nothing against any of that other than it is very finite. It's a gamble. And I love, I think I've figured out in my life that I'm, I'm a pretty anxious person and our traditional approach has just wreaked havoc on like my anxiety.

'cause I'm always, I've been on many sets where I'm like this, all these people, all this money on an idea that I hope, you know, I hated that. And I think one, one of the reasons I love this notion of shoot list is that it just removes that. The risk is so diminished because I can create in a way that doesn't mean mobilizing key grips and

cameras and trucks and clients and all this stuff. So I do hope so. But I'm very realistic to notice that it'll be a while, but the more and more people can get on board with it. I think for us, when we started developing this notion of shoot list, it's probably way ahead of its time. But I think for us, we're so excited about it that it's like, let's get really good at it with where the technology is now. Tons of limitations. Shoeless requires you to concept in a very small box. You know, like we're not creating a spot that has a person talking to camera

cause at the moment AI cannot do that. But tomorrow it will and so I think that's really exciting. And that's kind of part of it is like as creatives, at first there was a mindset of like, oh, this sucks 'cause I'm used to having the freedom of being able to, and I now I can't, 'cause I can't get the tool to do this.

And it is dramatically shifted to like, this is amazing and incredible and every day it gets better and better and better. So yeah, it's hybrid now. I don't know if there'll ever be an industry standard for me personally. It's so exciting and, and the things that it unlocks and the freedom and the potential that it unlocks for our client partners, all for it. Plus, I don't like leaving the house anymore, so I could sit right here.

Elena: Steve,

Steve: I can sit right here and make it all happen.

Elena: It's a big, a big bonus. Well, Ange, we've covered a lot of big and potentially overwhelming topics today about, you know, just producing video creative. So what do you think is kinda the biggest takeaway a marketer can have after listening to this or reading the report?

Angela: I think it's just like really getting real about are you operating with a 2005 playbook creatively? Because it is uncomfortable and there are different aspects that we spoke to today.

Update your creative process. I mean, just start with one component of it if you need to, but to Steve's point, make strategy the starting line test before you commit. Design for a way that people actually watch TV today. Embrace ai not as a threat, but this new creative superpower. Just start knocking those blocks down.

I think when you get into it to your point Steve, like there's a lot emotionally and bias wise that people just hang onto this romanticizing of your creative gut. But as you get into it, you start to identify new wins that maybe you hadn't thought of before. And ultimately the name of the game is driving sales and we really believe that a lot of what we talked about today is essential to be able to do that really well.

Elena: Love it. let's end with something kind of fun and keep up this creative theme. Steve, we'll start with you. What's one piece of creative work? It could be an ad, a song, a painting, a film, really anything that you wish you had made.

Steve: Oh, that one's easy. So I grew up in a very small one, stoplight town in southern Idaho. And for whatever reason, as a youth, I was. I was gonna make movies, like I wanted to be a director, a big movie director. I didn't know anything about it. You know, we'd use our little family camera and make movies and I remember really wanting to make a movie about what it's like to grow up in small town idaho. 'Cause it's just quirky and weird.

And then a guy named Jared Hess went and did it and it's called Napoleon Dynamite. And I remember watching that in the theater. It was later years in college and I actually teared up and I'm the only person who maybe cried in Napoleon Dynamite because it was so accurate. And I've since worked with Jared Hess and we've become friends, and he was from a town just down the street. But yeah, Napoleon Dynamite to me would be I wish I would've got to that one.

Elena: That is lovely and unexpected. I, that's great. Angela, did you have something in mind? I,

Angela: I do. It's, I don't have a great story, but a space that I just don't even come close to belonging to is the musical world. And to me, absurdly brilliant is Queen and specifically Bohemian Rhapsody. Like, if I could put my name on that, I would just be like, I, can die now. I, I did it.

Elena: You made it.

Angela: Mm-hmm. Rob, what about you?

Rob: I don't play the piano. I've never written a song and I, I can't really sing well, but I fantasized being in a room filled with friends, which is already a fantasy 'cause I don't have enough friends to fill a room and, uh, and sitting by behind a piano and playing anything for Elton John, particularly maybe your song or something. I would love to be able to do that, but never have. Never will.

Elena: That's funny. 'cause we're all on the same like musical page, which, that's what I also, I was thinking I am obsessed with Cynthia Arrivo. She was in the movie Wicked. She's an incredible singer and she sings Defying Gravity and the notes that she hits at the end of that song. I actually cry when I watch it. Like I'll just go back and watch her perform at the Oscars and just start crying because it is so amazing and she's so talented.

I'm like, man, what would it be like to have that type of talent where everyone's sitting there tearing up listening to you sing? It's like anything she does just sounds amazing.

Angela: Mm-hmm.

Rob: So good. That's kind of wrapping us up here. If you're interested in the report, you can go to marketing architects.com. I'll also say that Ang is doing a webinar tomorrow with one of our clients to talk about the report and just creative in general. That's yeah, April 16th at noon. So if you're interested in that you can find that on our website too. So thank you, Steve for joining us.

Steve: Thank you for you, Steve.