Marketers have to constantly navigate the challenge of persuading consumers in a world where chaos is omnipresent. The rise of AI has introduced another factor to consider: how can teams effectively use machine learning to speed up the creative process and build more persuasive, authentic messaging?
During our second session at Persuasion 2025, brand strategy experts explored how AI tools are fueling a massive disruption of the marketing industry’s entire operating model. Kendra Barnett, Senior Tech Reporter, Adweek, moderated a panel with insights from Danny Zhu, Director of Digital and Performance Marketing, Jaguar Land Rover; Faön Mahunik, EVP, Strategy and Analytics, Influential; and Russell Pinke, Data Strategy Director, Wieden+Kennedy.
Our panelists shared their key takeaways for leveraging new technologies to innovate testing and creative development, while safeguarding brand reputation in a media landscape flooded with misinformation and political turmoil.
AI can accelerate the creative process for specific use cases
AI is arguably the hottest topic in marketing right now, with arguments for and against using the technology throughout the creative development, testing, and execution process. Our panelists highlighted clear use cases where AI helps teams save time and become more agile. Accelerating consumer testing and insights extraction is at the forefront.
The evolution of cloud computing has paved the way for AI-powered testing platforms that rapidly scale the process of surveying customers—allowing marketers to generate thousands of human responses in days versus weeks or months.
Zhu at Jaguar Land Rover shared that his team recently invested in AI tools to better understand their target consumers—those who are in the market for a $100,000 vehicle—and ultimately build stronger connections to them through marketing messages.
“We’re excited about using AI to help us understand consumer psychology, and we use it to create customer profiles,” said Zhu. “You imagine you need a psychology PhD to extract consumer insights, but AI helps explain them in such an easy way. It gives us the opportunity to customize our messages for conquesting campaigns.”
At Influential, Mahunik noted that being able to move at the speed of culture is incredibly important to produce timely and relevant influencer marketing campaigns. Essentially, AI helps her team do their jobs faster.
“AI helps us produce creative briefs and share those details more quickly to creators,” said Mahunik. “We also use these tools to efficiently identify when our influencer content isn’t brand safe for a particular client, which helps us get campaigns approved faster.”
Experts also shared more obvious instances where marketers should be prudent about using AI, especially in the creative production process. For example, Pinke at Wieden+Kennedy said the agency produced a campaign for a global athletic brand that involved a voiceover of names requiring exact pronunciation—a task AI would likely fail to complete accurately. However, Pinke mentioned that creatives should still be more open to using AI to support existing processes.
“Creatives are very wary of losing their jobs to AI so they are holding back on leveraging these tools,” said Pinke. “But if we can use it to produce 100 ideas, creatives still have the power to pick the best idea.”
The takeaway: Marketers are using AI in multiple ways to improve the creative process. But the most successful application for using AI is to support, rather than attempt to replace, human creativity and judgement.
Testing persuasion drives strategic decision making
The most effective way to validate creative ideas is to test them against real consumers. Our panelists regularly deploy AI-powered iterative testing to better understand which messages persuade—and which ones don’t.
Pinke alluded to the rise of rapid creative testing as a pendulum. Twenty years ago, the pendulum swung toward focus groups, which were the standard for measuring lift. Then, the rise of digital and social gave marketers an opportunity to forego testing and prioritize free data in the form of engagement metrics. But, with teams realizing that high engagement doesn’t necessarily equate to persuasive messaging—and with brands needing to operate at the speed of culture—the pendulum is swinging back to creative testing.
“Content timelines have shortened so much that the traditional way of testing, which took weeks or months, can't be allowed,” said Pinke. “Platforms like Swayable allow you to do that testing in a manner that is up to the speed needs of clients. My hope is to focus more on upfront testing and trust the results, rather than attribution models or post-campaign metrics that can be fuzzy at times.”
For Jaguar Land Rover and Influential, persuasion testing is valuable to gauge how consumers feel about certain visuals, themes, and influencer choices. Zhu shared that his team uses testing to deconstruct hero creative—such as a 30-second TV spot—and understand which specific parts move the needle the most.
“With creative testing technology, we’re able to see which elements of a 30-second ad impact people’s emotions. Then, we can create different versions of that ad to test again,” said Zhu. “The ability to create variations and rapidly test them at scale enables us to be more powerful at persuasion.”
Mahunik added that testing is incredibly important to prove the “why” in what the agency produces.
“Testing helps us provide an additive layer of why persuasion works throughout the entire influencer marketing funnel. Connecting persuasion to ROI is ever evolving, and it’s the next big unlock in testing across our content and influencers.”
The takeaway: Rapid, iterative creative testing enables teams to quickly validate the most persuasive ideas before spending money on campaign production and audience targeting, leading to far greater campaign impact, and avoided waste.
Technology can help—and hinder—trust and authenticity
Leveraging AI for prototyping, content generation, and testing ultimately helps marketers quickly understand what resonates with audiences and what deters them. These insights will enable brands to consistently deliver relevant, timely content to audiences and develop long-lasting relationships.
Mahunik explained that influencers have become one of the core symbols of trust for brands. And partnering with them in authentic ways, even with the addition of AI-powered creative, is paramount to successful marketing.
“Trust has become the ultimate currency for brands,” said Mahunik. “For a lot of brands, influencers have become the biggest trust engine, essentially the king of all opt-ins. They inherently unlock trust in a way that adds a human lens to the technology being leveraged across media channels.”
Zhu shared that his team has ongoing conversations about how to use AI tools for content creation, such as incorporating AI-generated voices in audio ads. They’re mindful about how certain segments may react to AI: for example, research finds that a majority of Gen Z consumers prefer brands that produce authentic, relatable content with real humans. When brands disclose AI usage, they risk coming off as inauthentic among younger generations.
Ultimately, Jaguar Land Rover is using technology to create content that will make people want to stay fans of the brand.
“It’s important for us to know our audience, their value, and what they care about,” said Zhu. “This moment of chaos and uncertainty reminds us to think about what is not changing as marketers. One of those things is building long-term relationships with customers and using the power of storytelling to build brand equity.”
The takeaway: Persuasive marketing is all about building trust. Marketers must strike a balance between using technology to accelerate creativity and ensuring their storytelling choices remain authentic and true to their brand.
For a complete rundown of insights and best practices, watch our full “Disrupting Chaos” panel from Persuasion 2025 below:
Interested in learning about how AI-powered pre-testing can speed up your campaign development? Book a demo with Swayable today.