Marketing Architects Research Gives Humans and AI a Shared Language for Creative Quality

A study of 500 marketing and creative professionals validates a framework for creative quality, giving the TV agency confidence to build AI tools supporting creative decision making.

TV advertising agency Marketing Architects has spent years building technology to predict TV performance. Now it’s expanding its suite of tools, using new research to empower creatives while helping AI understand what makes TV advertising memorable, distinctive, and brand-building.

To do this, Marketing Architects needed a consistent language to define “good” creative. Creative quality is one of the hardest parts of advertising to articulate. Most agencies rely on gut feel and internal debate to decide whether an ad concept will work, but that debate rarely produces a consistent standard.

So the agency built a framework for discussing and evaluating creative quality in TV advertising. It breaks creative quality into seven criteria: concept originality, narrative surprise and emotional punch, visual freshness, dialogue and voice distinctness, craft cohesion, brand-fit risk and reward, and cultural resonance.

Then, Marketing Architects commissioned a national study of 500 marketing and creative professionals to evaluate whether, with the right prompts, this framework could allow AI to apply human judgment to its development and evaluation of TV creative. The results were surprisingly positive. Humans and AI reached similar ratings and conclusions across creative executions, suggesting AI could judge scripts similarly to actual creatives when using the framework.

"There's skepticism that AI is too rational to judge something as subjective as creativity," says Catrina McAuliffe, SVP Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects. "This research suggests AI can recognize many of the same creative qualities people do. That gives us the confidence to build tools that not only empower but also raise the bar for our writers."

Marketing Architects next built the framework into a new evaluation tool for its creative team. While the agency’s AI pretesting tool, ScriptSooth, refines TV scripts for performance, this new tool gives writers early feedback on brand and creative quality.

“We’ve always believed brand and performance are both crucial for creative success on TV,” says Joel Kalinowski, SVP Platform. “Now, we're building technology that understands and informs the full scope of what makes TV effective.”

Marketing Architects will continue implementing the framework across its growing suite of tools designed to empower the people behind the scenes of great creative work. Beyond tools, the research provides the agency with a common language for creative discussions regardless of how ideas are developed.

About Marketing Architects

Marketing Architects is an All-Inclusive TV agency that helps brands get more out of TV advertising. Founded in Minneapolis, Marketing Architects has spent 30 years building homegrown technology to solve TV's pricing, measurement, and scale challenges. Learn more at marketingarchitects.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260817414894/en/

"There's skepticism that AI is too rational to judge something as subjective as creativity," says Catrina McAuliffe, SVP Brand Strategy at Marketing Architects. "This research suggests AI can recognize many of the same creative qualities people do."