📓Creativ Brief: Reasoning AI for Deeper Consumer Insights
Breakthroughs in Reasoning AI. Disney and Getty take on GenAI. OpenAI drops Scale. Cannes Lions hits 26,900 entries. Retail media bets big on video. Cannes moments with clients.
Hi,
As Chief Operations and Information Officer at our Machine Generated Insights firm, I've been intensely focused on pushing our R&D. We're actively exploring what the reasoning model breakthrough can mean for consumer research. This isn't just about clever text generation; it's about machines executing "step-by-step" flows to deliver the deep, actionable insights marketing executives crave.
Beyond Surface Data: What "Reasoning" Unlocks
Traditional LLMs summarize what was said. Reasoning models go further, engaging in a "thought process" to break down complex issues and connect disparate information. This provides clarity and confidence in insights, bringing you:
True Customer Sentiment Beyond Demographics: These LLMs use reasoning to infer why customers say things, understanding genuine sentiment tied to specific product/brand interactions. Pinpoint subtle shifts in mood, identify pain points by intensity and causal link, and predict nuanced market reactions based on underlying emotional drivers with unprecedented depth.
Optimized Owned Content Impact via Evoked Emotion: Reasoning allows LLMs to analyze your content for the precise sentiment and emotional response it evokes. Understand if content genuinely inspired excitement or confusion by dissecting underlying intent, enabling fine-tuned messaging for stronger emotional connections.
Intuitive "Chat With Data": With reasoning, LLMs synthesize vast data (reports, market research, forecasts), logically connecting seemingly unrelated points. This powers a chat-based experience, revealing novel opportunities or risks as you ask complex questions and receive reasoned, consolidated answers.
Improved Traceability & Error Mitigation: Reasoning techniques like Chain-of-Thought make the model's "thought process" explicit. This transparency helps human operators identify potential logical flaws, enabling human oversight to mitigate errors in critical decisions.
Real-World Impact: From Our Research Lab
We're seeing exciting impact in consumer research by applying reasoning flows to recently released features:
Predicting Campaign & Influencer ROI: Analyze messaging and audience reactions to predict which elements drive the highest engagement and conversion.
Mapping Adjacent Brand Affinities: Our LLMs infer other consumer brand categories your audience actively discusses, revealing unexpected partnerships and new market segments.
Identifying Latent Needs & Pain Points: Infer unarticulated desires from vast text for innovative product solutions.
We achieve this via LLM applications, targeted finetuning, and advanced RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) for incredible accuracy.
Current Best Applications For Reasoning Models
Reasoning LLMs extend to complex domains. For mathematics, physics, and advanced science, their ability to conduct multi-step problem-solving, verify equations, and synthesize research is transformative. This precision, applied to your consumer data, means smarter strategies and clearer paths to growth.
Ready to see how reasoning can elevate your consumer insights?
3 Stories Shaping the Media and Tech Industries
The lawsuits spotlight how these powerful AI models, which create images based on massive scraped datasets, may be operating as “a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” compelling studios to demand licensing, transparency in training data, and filters to block infringing outputs.
Why it matters: Major entertainment companies are drawing a clear line: AI tools cannot exploit copyrighted material without consequence.
Despite Scale accounting for only a small portion of OpenAI’s overall needs, this move reflects deeper industry concerns about data neutrality and strategic conflicts, as other major players like Google, xAI, and OpenAI itself distance from Scale, while alternative providers like Mercor and Labelbox gain traction.
Why it matters: OpenAI is drawing a line: AI data providers must remain fully independent and conflict‑free in an increasingly competitive and strategic ecosystem.
Growth was particularly notable in key categories—Glass: The Lion for Change surged 53%, Design up 17%, Creative B2B rose 13%, Entertainment Lions for Sport climbed 15%, and independent agency submissions jumped 18%
Why it matters: The festival continues to grow. Festival organizers are emphasizing creativity’s role as a force for transformation in business and culture.
Creativ Spotlight - OK GO, 1stAveMachine, SpecialGuest, SpecialGuestX win Cannes Lions Award
OK Go’s “Love” music video won a Silver Cannes Lions award in the category of “Entertainment in Music” for Excellence in Music Video. Congratulations to our clients 1stAveMachine, SpecialGuest and SpecialGuestX for their amazing work!
Stat of the Week - Channels US Retail Media Buyers Expect to Spend More on in Retail Media Over the Next 12 Months, March 2025
US retail media buyers plan to increase their spending most heavily on video ads and social media platforms over the next 12 months, with 66% and 63% of respondents respectively indicating growth in those areas.
While Connected TV (54%) and display ads (45%) also show strong momentum, interest drops off sharply for podcasts (21%) and digital out-of-home (18%), signaling a clear prioritization of screen-based, high-engagement formats.
Retail marketers are doubling down on visual-first platforms where short-form video dominates consumer attention.
One Fun Thing - Creativ Co + Clients at Cannes
Snapped earlier this week — a quick moment with clients between panels, press, and celeb run-ins.
Featuring folks from Havoc Robotics, Ryff, 1stAveMachine, and SpecialGuestX!!