Blog

AI and Gen Z: The risk of letting AI define your audience | GWI

GWI — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 10:30:35 GMT

TL;DR: AI is making it dramatically easier for marketers to generate audience insights. But generic AI models can give marketers a polished, inherited version of an audience based on information that is incomplete, biased and shaped by what has already been published online. This is particularly problematic when using AI to understand Gen Z, where online commentary can differ significantly from how they actually think and behave. The answer isn't to stop using AI. It's to combine Gen Z and AI with real, relevant human data.

Five things Cannes Lions 2026 confirmed about marketing | GWI

GWI — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 10:26:07 GMT

AI was everywhere at Cannes this year. So was a growing unease about what it can't see.

Synthetic data generation vs real survey data | GWI

GWI — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 14:19:41 GMT

TL;DR: Synthetic data generation uses AI to produce artificial data sets that imitate real responses, letting marketers model how an audience might behave without fielding a full survey. It's fast and genuinely useful for early concept testing and hard-to-reach groups, but a simulated answer is only as reliable as the human data beneath it. The best simulated data is grounded in real, directly-asked survey responses.

AI personas: what they are and how to build ones that work

GWI — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:05:31 GMT

TL;DR:AI personas are a queryable proxy of your target audience, built by feeding data about real people into an AI system, so you can ask it questions and get answers that audience's voice. Yet, they're only as reliable as the data underneath, so this guide covers which to trust and how to build ones that hold up.

Brand equity tracking | GWI

GWI — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:05:59 GMT

TL;DR: Brand equity tracking measures the commercial value of how people think and feel about your brand, using consistent surveys repeated over time. Because perceptions shift before sales do, it works as an early warning system, and a score only pays off once you can see which audiences moved and why.

15 brand tracking tools and software for 2026 | GWI

GWI — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 18:13:42 GMT

TL;DR: Brand tracking tools measure how your brand's awareness, perception, and equity move over time, and the best ones also reveal which audiences are driving the change. They split into two types: survey-based trackers (asking representative samples directly) and social listening tools (analyzing what people say online). This guide compares the 15 best for 2026, with G2 ratings and what each is best for.

Five AI prompts to stress-test your Gen Z thinking | GWI

GWI — Thu, 28 May 2026 09:15:59 GMT

Audience strategy is built through a series of decisions. The audience you define. The method of targeting them. The region you prioritize next quarter. Each one is only as sound as the consumer insights behind it.

Talk Data To Me: Who is the 2026 traveler, really? | GWI x Tripadvisor

GWI — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:42:05 GMT

In this series, Talk data to me, we chat with leaders from the world’s biggest brands and agencies about how they’re using insights to drive their business strategies.

Synthetic personas: The complete guide

GWI — Thu, 07 May 2026 09:50:45 GMT

Synthetic personas have moved from concept to mainstream fast. Open any agency’s new business deck or any insights team's tooling roadmap right now, and you'll see them showing up. The pitch is hard to argue with: a virtual version of your audience you can ask anything, in seconds.

Survey Data Quality | GWI

Jason Mander — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:46:50 GMT

If you rely on survey data to help make business decisions, chances are you've asked at some point: how do I know these human insights are real?