Let’s cut through the noise, creative advertising isn’t about making noise. It’s about making impact. That used to mean throwing a lot of clever ideas at the wall and hoping a few stuck. Today? It still does but now we throw smarter, faster, and with a lot more accuracy. Data isn’t the whole answer. AI isn’t a magic wand. But when you combine sharp tools with sharper minds, you stop guessing and start building campaigns that actually hit.
Here’s how we use consumer insights and AI-backed analysis to make top-of-funnel (ToF) creative that doesn’t just look good in a deck, it actually gets people to care.
1. Defining Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
We always start with people, not personas. Ideal Customer Profiles aren’t about basic demographics or fictional customer avatars that get ignored by creative teams. They’re about mapping real behavioural patterns, motivations, and emotional drivers.
Example: selling eco-friendly cleaning products? Don’t aim for “eco-conscious consumers.” Target “Millennial parents in downtown condos who read product labels and follow zero-waste TikTokers.” Narrow. Real. Actionable.
That level of clarity becomes your creative North Star. Without it, you’re just yelling into the void.
For DAO, we focused on Ontarians aged 45–65, male and female, still socially active, increasingly in need of dentures whether due to age, injury, or decay. They wanted to feel normal, not be reminded of what they’ve lost.
2. Analyzing What Consumers Are Really Saying (w/ AskPolly)
Once we know who we’re talking to, we get to work figuring out what they’re actually talking about. Enter AskPolly, a tool that doesn’t write ads, but does help us find the raw, unfiltered truth in consumer chatter.
We dig through forums, comments, threads, reviews, and posts to find the pain points people aren’t telling brands directly. Sometimes it’s straightforward, “these dentures don’t fit.” Sometimes it’s personal, “I’m embarrassed to eat in front of my grandkids.”
Is this a perfect science? No. But it’s miles better than guesswork. We still argue about what insights matter. We throw a lot out. But with this approach, we’re no longer shooting in the dark, we’re triangulating fast. Businesses that use advanced data strategies are 23x more likely to acquire customers.
AskPolly revealed the pain points we suspected — missing teeth from trauma, food avoidance, denture embarrassment — and surfaced the exact language people were using. That’s how we knew to lean into everyday moments and Canadian cultural hooks.
3. Building Creative Inside the Lines (Then Colouring Outside Them)
Armed with the right data and direction, we start concepting — fast. But it’s not a blank page. It’s a sandbox. The insights form boundaries. The ICP shapes the tone. The messaging needs to punch, not just float.
We don’t waste time chasing cleverness for its own sake. Every idea has to answer: Does this speak to a known tension? Does it reflect what our audience is already feeling, saying, or doing? Based on advertising campaign performance, 31% of ads with emotional pull succeeded versus the 16% success of ads that focused on rational content.
That doesn’t mean we don’t get it wrong. We do. All the time. But by cycling quickly through ideas, pressure-testing them, and killing what doesn’t hold up — we move through the junk and get to gold faster than shops that cling to “the big idea.”
We pitched 5 concepts. Killed 3. Sharpened 2:
- Unforbidden Fruit: A middle-aged woman longingly looks at food she used to eat. After a visit to the denturist, she bites into an apple — hard.
- Spittin’ Chiclets: A guy loses a tooth in a beer-league hockey game. In the locker room, a teammate hands him a card. “Denturists — yup, we do that.”
4. Testing for Traction, Not Perfection
We don’t promise that creative concepts will work. That’s fantasy. What we do is test early, test fast, and test often. We use predictive tools to forecast engagement patterns and compare similar campaigns. It gives us directional confidence not divine prophecy.
Sometimes a bold idea gets axed because the audience isn’t ready for it. Sometimes a “safe” idea bombs because it’s boring. The point is: we validate before we drop 20k on a shoot not afterward when it’s too late to course-correct.
And we’re fine with throwing stuff out. That’s the point. Fail fast. Move on. Get sharper.
For DAO, food and hockey were the right bets, confirmed in the data, confirmed in the culture. And yes, we debated “spittin’ chiclets” for 20 minutes before we greenlit it. But sometimes the risky one is the sticky one.
5. Real-World Launch and Realistic Measurement
Here’s the truth no one says out loud: attribution from top-of-funnel to closed deal is rarely clean. And that’s fine. We’re not promising to track a Meta impression all the way to your CRM. What we are doing is measuring the signals that matter:
-
- Branded search spikes
- Organic social lift
- More conversations in the right communities
People saying, “Yeah, I’ve heard of them.
These things don’t show up in your ad platform dashboard. But they show up in culture — and that’s where awareness lives.
DAO Outcomes
-
- 4.12M impressions on Meta
- 98.6K+ page engagements
- ~20K video plays over 15 seconds
- 683K impressions on Google
- 4K more people talking about denturists
- 550 more saying they used one
Did every metric line up like a sales funnel? No. But this wasn’t about direct conversions. This was about owning the conversation — and we did.
Final Word: Good Creative Isn’t Lucky, It’s Earned
You don’t need magic. You need method. You need speed. You need the guts to toss half your ideas and the clarity to know which ones to chase.
This isn’t about perfection. It’s about volume, velocity, and vision — powered by tools like AskPolly, sharpened by experience, and executed by a team that knows how to turn raw consumer tension into creative that punches.
We don’t guess. We don’t hope. We don’t chase awards.
We build ads that work — and we’ve got the data to prove it.
