As AI continues to disrupt industries, conversations about its role in creativity and advertising remain more relevant than ever. This year’s ARF’s Creative Effectiveness Summit and Ogilvy Awards centered on the theme of reclaiming creativity in the age of AI, bringing together thought leaders to discuss how brands and agencies can work with AI tools and still continue to effectively produce innovative campaigns and build genuine connections with consumers.  A few of the Affectiva team members attended the event, bringing back insights that reinforce the importance of balancing AI with human creativity.

Here are some key takeaways from the event featuring some of the talks that took place, as well as our thoughts on how Affectiva’s Emotion AI can enhance this balance:

1. Creativity Belongs to Humans

Generative AI can undoubtedly be a powerful tool in accelerating processes and amplifying output to scale, but the summit’s overarching message was clear: creativity still belongs to humans. 

True creativity, especially in advertising, comes from understanding people — empathizing with their emotions, needs, and desires — and this is where human intelligence (HI) leads the way.  And this makes sense – after all, humans are the best at understanding human behavior.  And while AI solutions can assist or accelerate some of the creative process, it currently lacks the emotional intelligence necessary for an authentic connection and should not change everything that agencies and brands are doing in their day-to-day work. 

At Affectiva, we leverage Emotion AI to bridge this gap. In our recent eBook Generative AI meets Emotion AI: AI Disruption in Advertising, we tested content built by generative AI to see what works (and what doesn’t) with audiences.  We found that ultimately, iteration and a human touch on the creative is what drives success.  While good prompt engineering is key, there not only needs to be human involvement in designing campaigns, but also consistent pretesting to understand people’s reactions.  By analyzing emotional responses to content, we help brands understand how real people feel about their campaigns. This is paramount to building the authentic relationships that AI alone can’t replicate.

2. Humor is a Powerful Tool

A session led by WARC pointed out an interesting trend: today’s ads use far less humor than campaigns from the past. Over the last several years, there has been an uptick in serious ads, and despite increased spending on global meta and linear TV ad spend, most ads fall short and generate muted neutral responses from audiences.  However, humor is making a comeback – WARC stated that 75% of the Cannes Lions awards used humor in 2024 vs only 52% in 2023.

It was said that while making an ad can be perceived as easy, the challenge is creating an entertaining ad that can effectively appeal to audiences.  And while there may be reservations in utilizing humor as a creative strategy (as it can be perceived as risky), WARC emphasized the importance of humor as it strengthens the potential for both short and long term memories of ads, making them more salient and impactful.  And the best way to know if humor works?  Identify the humor that works for the brand, understand your audience to know what travels, and always be testing and getting feedback from people to inform your team on how to optimize.

Using Emotion AI, Affectiva can track and measure audience reactions to humorous moments in advertising and entertainment content. For example, our analysis of the Deadpool & Wolverine trailer revealed that the comedic dynamic between the two characters led to higher levels of positive engagement and emotional resonance. These insights highlight the power of humor in capturing audience attention and improving the overall impact of creative content.  

3. Inclusivity Drives Creativity

The ARF's Cultural Effectiveness Council shared an essential reminder: diversity and inclusivity fuel creativity.  According to their research, 65% of US people expect brands to be fair and represent society, yet this is not reflected in advertising. This is a missed opportunity.

While AI tools can power and expand some processes, it does not always accurately reflect consumers and consumer behavior, even with good prompt engineering. Researchers should be aware of the pitfalls of AI, especially when it comes to data diversity and algorithm bias.  As such, human involvement and intelligence is critical here, both in the development process, as well as in research.  This enables the opportunity to build truly powerful creative that builds trust with consumers and resonates with wider audiences.

Affectiva’s Emotion AI helps brands to tackle this twofold.  One is in our training datasets – in our business journey, we have obtained nearly 15 million face videos from 90 different countries to build our facial coding algorithms, all diverse in age, gender, and cultures. The second is our ability to conduct analysis to understand how different markets or demographic groups respond to content via our normative database and ability to create survey breaks within our dashboards. Our technology can measure emotional engagement across these groups, providing invaluable insights to ensure that the content resonates with a wider audience.  As the council emphasized, context is king, and understanding emotional salience in context drives more effective creative decisions.  

4. AI Should Never Be the Expert in the Room

Another theme of the conference focused on the evolving role of AI in the creative process.  In a world requiring higher demand for creative assets and delivery in a multitude of platforms, AI appears as a very appealing option to test a high volume of assets with predictive data. iSpot TV and Dick’s Sporting Goods spoke about the ways that AI can contribute to content generation and creative decisions, but advised that AI should never be the expert in the room. 

Ultimately, the human ability to design innovative campaigns and empathize with audiences is irreplaceable. Google AI provided best practices of creative possibilities with their ABCD – Attract, Brand, Connect and Direct.  By using these ABCDs, successful and high performing creative will be rewarded by higher brand equity, purchase likelihood and media ROI, but AI in isolation doesn’t achieve this.

This aligns closely with Affectiva’s philosophy of humanizing technology. Our Emotion AI solutions are designed to work in tandem with human creativity, not replace it. By providing insights into how audiences emotionally react to content using real human facial expression data, we empower creatives to make data-driven decisions without sacrificing their innovative spark.

5. Building Relationships with Creators

In a world with a plethora of social media platforms, purchase behaviors are changing – particularly for younger generations who rely on digital content to provide in depth reviews of products.  NRG and TikTok spoke about the importance of brands and agencies building strong relationships with content creators to scale creative output. By developing authentic partnerships with multiple creators, brands can meet creative volume needs, attract a wider audience and maintain a consistent message.

At Affectiva, we believe this relationship-building process can be further enhanced by understanding audience emotions. By providing detailed emotional moment-by-moment feedback on creative content, brands can refine their strategies in collaboration with creators, ensuring that campaigns hit the right emotional chords with their target audience.

Bringing Emotion AI into the Creative Process

The overarching theme of the summit reinforced what we at Affectiva believe: while AI can amplify and assist, human creativity and emotional intelligence are irreplaceable. In an age where generative AI is increasingly being used in creative processes, and predictive datasets can give quick turn results, it’s crucial to ensure that technology is used as a tool, not as a replacement for humans.

Affectiva’s Emotion AI is uniquely positioned to support this balance by helping brands understand how their content makes people feel. By tapping into both conscious and unconscious emotional responses, we provide insights that help creatives optimize their work, making it more engaging, memorable, and human.

As AI continues to evolve, brands that lead with HI (human intelligence), supported by AI-driven insights, will be best positioned to build meaningful connections with their audiences.