A Transformative Approach to DEI in Advertising

tl;dr

The lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in advertising is a challenge we must tackle head-on. Rehab is exploring the power of AI to not only address this problem through thoughtful data use. We're bringing underrepresented voices to the forefront and validating ideas in ways never before possible.

The Muted Voice

The value of diversity, equity, and inclusion in all sectors is undisputed. Yet, advertising—a field that thrives on creativity and perspective—still lacks representation. This shortfall is partly due to an underrepresentation of diverse talent contributing to creativity, and the lack of audience insights to support the work.

It's not just about increasing diversity within our ranks—it's about authentically understanding and reflecting the values, needs, and challenges of our diverse target audience and local communities.

AI as a Catalyst for Change

We are looking into how to close the insight gap. To help ensure more diverse perspectives are considered when creating advertising ideas? The answer might be in leveraging the transformative power of AI.

Using data from underrepresented communities can generate more diverse and representative advertising. AI offers us an unparalleled means to delve deep into this wealth of information and validate our ideas.

Here's a glimpse of how we’re thinking of putting these principles to work:

1. Campaign validation: Although there is a lack of diverse audience data, AI can help us to take existing data sets and leverage that data to synthesize characters that can be used to validate creative ideas.

2. Campaign Audits: Leveraging AI to comprehensively audit existing campaigns and identify DEI gaps by testing existing creative ideas against synthetic audiences.

3. Culturally Aware Campaigns: By training our AI models with diverse data, we generate insights to create culturally aware campaigns that resonate with a broader audience.

4. Accessibility: AI models can also create more accessible content, considering factors like visual impairments and cognitive disabilities.

It's an innovative, intelligent process that pushes the boundaries of what's possible with human teams alone.

Leveraging AI to Drive DEI in Advertising

Imagine: A major fashion retailer is launching a new line of clothes aimed at the Gen-Z market. Their previous campaigns, largely created with traditional audience data, have been met with moderate success but lack meaningful engagement with certain demographics, particularly people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.

They're keen to rectify this knowledge gap, and ensure their campaign messaging resonates with a truly diverse Gen Z audience.

In the absence of diverse audience data, we propose using AI to create Synthetic Audiences—a comprehensive and fine-tuned virtual representation of the target audience crafted using a multitude of data sources.

1. Collecting Diverse Data: To kick-start this process, we gather data from a variety of channels—social media trends, cultural and demographic reports, previous campaign analytics, consumer behavior studies, and more. AI algorithms are used to parse through this massive influx of data and filter out meaningful insights that represent the diverse tapestry of our target demographic.

2. Creating Synthetic Audiences: The crux of this approach involves feeding these diverse insights into advanced machine learning models, which then synthesize this information to create detailed virtual personas. Each persona, a synthetic representation of a real-world consumer, encapsulates various demographic attributes, preferences, behavior patterns, and consumption habits.

3. Developing & Testing Campaigns: These synthetic audiences serve as a testing ground for our campaign strategies. We can create tailored advertising messages for each persona, run them through simulation models, and observe how each reacts. This way, we can fine-tune our approach and anticipate the real-world response of different demographics within the population.

4. Continuous Learning & Improvement: AI doesn't stop at campaign creation. We feed the data generated from campaign testing back into our AI models, enabling them to learn and adapt. This cyclical process ensures our synthetic audiences continue to evolve, reflecting the dynamic nature of our real-world audience.

By creating synthetic audiences, we're attempting to bring underrepresented voices to the forefront.

Not Substituting, but Enhancing

While this isn’t a replacement for finding represented voices and listening to their stories and thoughts, it’s a way to amplify their voice and creates a focal point for brands to reach more votes, using the output from those conversations as input into an AI platform, to create something truly representative.

With AI, we can design campaigns that aren't just representative and resonant with the diverse world we live in today. Not only bridging the insight gap but also cultivating a culture of inclusivity and validation in advertising.

Wait. Isn't AI inherently biased?

The answer is yes. Today's AI models are mainly trained using public data from the internet, which impacts the generative outputs. The “Out of the box” chatbot solutions like ChatGPT and PaLM2, while being heavily mitigated, ultimately suffer from this.

Recognizing this inherent bias within AI language models is the first crucial step towards making AI a tool for inclusivity rather than perpetuating harm.

Our teams at Rehab have been exploring ways to make AI more representative and inclusive, ensuring that the tools we use in the creative process truly reflect our diverse audience base.

Through our fine-tuning process, we can take real-user data from various sources and use this to re-train the AI, creating AI that is truly representative of a wide range of groups.

We're committed to the responsible use of AI and ensure that our methodology respects data privacy while promoting diversity and inclusivity. It's a delicate balance, and we're continually learning and adapting to better serve the cause.

Your Thoughts Matter

If you’re reading this and considering leveraging AI for DEI, you’re already ahead of your peers.

We believe in the power of shared knowledge and experiences. Have you seen this work before, even without AI?

Do you see other avenues where AI can make a difference? We’d love to hear your thoughts and continue this important discussion as we build AI toolkits to address the issue.

Let's drive the change toward a more inclusive, equitable, and diverse future in advertising.

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