“Just by making the creative more relevant and compelling, [Zipcar] was able to double its ad awareness and [saw] a 6% increase in site traffic [compared with] the year before,” said John Elder, co-founder and CEO, Supernatural. In 2023, the brand’s website saw a total of 1.3 million monthly unique visitors, compared to 1.23 million in 2022, according to Semrush, via Supernatural.
By surveying 500 people, half of whom were exposed to the ad, Zipcar saw a 28% increase in brand awareness while brand recall increased by 81% among those exposed, the company said. To that, 68% of participants reported an improved perception of Zipcar, and brand favorability saw an uptick of 119%. Zipcar wouldn’t share revenue specifics.
“All this without an increase in budget [while using] AI to precisely uncover attitudes and interests of the target audience, develop a more compelling strategy and then create more relevant work,” added Elder. “This further improved marketing performance.”
Nuances of prompt engineering
Zipcar used Supernatural’s AI tool Merlyn to understand how audience cohorts differed from the national average in 2022. The brand discovered several characteristics of its audience, including that they value avoiding the commitment of a mortgage, they prefer not to have a spouse or partner, and they tend to lean towards ultra-liberal views.
The agency extrapolated these data sets into synthetic personas, and then asked them questions.
Queries like “Why would you rent a car?” or “Why would you not use Uber?” led to responses such as “I am heading to Ikea, and Uber is too small,” generating details on why people opt for car rentals over ride-sharing services in certain scenarios.
However, prompt engineering, or querying the AI personas multiple times with specific questions, remained critical to brand strategy, helping tease out what makes someone use a car rental.
“The ability to ask questions is quite a difference maker,” said Elder. “The platform has moved eons beyond where it was the year before.”
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