Episode 98 - Jen Neumann

Erik Martinez:Hello and welcome to another episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. Today we're diving into one of the most talked about and least understood topics shaping modern marketing, Artificial intelligence and consumer trust. We all know that AI is now part of nearly every marketing process from writing ad copy to generating product photos. But while marketers and technologists are embracing these tools, there's still a big question that hasn't been fully answered. How do consumers actually feel about it? To help us unpack that I'm joined by Jen Newman, CEO, and owner of DeNovo Marketing.

Erik Martinez: Her team recently [00:01:00] released a fascinating new study, the 2025 AI Consumer Survey, which digs into what real consumers think about brands using AI in their advertising, emails and content. Jen, welcome to the show.

Jen Neumann: Thanks, Erik.

Erik Martinez: Before we dive into the research, you wanna tell us a little bit about your background and what you guys do at DeNovo Marketing?

Jen Neumann: First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. I really enjoy being a host on my own podcast, and it's fun when I get to, see how other people do it as well. I'm the CEO of DeNovo Marketing. We've been around for about 18 years. We're a creative firm, focused on helping our clients through authentic storytelling and, driving meaningful results for their business.

Jen Neumann: we work with a combination of companies communities and nonprofit organizations. I call us curious marketers at DeNovo. And that is what led us into how we could leverage our skills in market research to learn more about this, expanding and new Frontier in [00:02:00] AI.

Erik Martinez: Okay. Jen, what did you learn? What was the big aha when you did the survey?

Jen Neumann: When we started this survey, I think we were out to test a hypothesis, we're a human creative led firm, and we leverage AI to help drive better results. We were curious about how do people feel about it and how does it impact ultimately, their buyer's journey or their decision making, when engaging, with a business or making a purchase.

Jen Neumann: Our theory was that it matters, right? That people can discern it and it does matter to some extent. And the big takeaway is that, yes, while that is true, sometimes a price is a price or a product is a product in the end for consumers.

Jen Neumann: But it did give us some glimpses specifically into how people feel about it and how it impacts their feelings around those brands.

Erik Martinez: You were gracious enough to give me a copy of the executive summary, and I think the thing that stood out to me, [00:03:00] was this idea of trust.

Erik Martinez: There's been a lot of discussion about. Trust in authenticity. One of the challenges is people don't necessarily know when they're seeing AI or when they're not seeing AI.

Erik Martinez: So, when it comes to trust and authenticity, what do you think are the key things?

Jen Neumann: So one of the, key findings, and we have a lot of marketing people in our network, and this was a market research study very much, geographically based in the Midwest. we had to separate out whether people, worked in marketing or not, so that we could see a difference in responses.

Jen Neumann: One of the key things that we found was marketers are a little overconfident in their ability to detect AI, to the point where they, performed more poorly on the quiz, than non marketers. I think they overthought it a little bit, like shocking for marketers to overthink anything, right? But the takeaway that I got there was the more you know, the less you believe.

Jen Neumann: When you have, in the survey that we did, two photos one is a polished and professional [00:04:00] stock photo, and one is an AI generated photo. It's getting hard to tell the difference. One of the recommendations we are talking to our clients about is leaning into authenticity. And as much as this pains my heart, sometimes that less polished look is going to help people feel more of an authentic connection to a brand.

Jen Neumann: Trust is at an all time low. It's really important for brands that rely on trust. And not every brand relies on trust, but brands that do, adjust their marketing even when they do use AI people are starting to assume that everything is AI, whether it is or isn't so how can you produce content? How can you create, assets and pieces in your marketing campaigns that feel true and authentic to your brand. If you're on TikTok, creators are probably starting to feel the pinch where people are leaning in on watching, i'm sure you've seen the AI videos of babies saying things . That type of content is starting to eat creators [00:05:00] lunch. So how can creators be more authentic and more appealing than something that is this quick and cheap and dirty for people to watch?

Erik Martinez: I was at, MAICON about a week and a half ago. For those of you that don't know, MAICON is the marketing AI conference held each year in Cleveland. One of the presentations on the second day was from a filmmaker who has transitioned into doing everything, with AI video. So $2 million ad productions are now coming down to a hundred thousand dollars. That may still be out of reach for a lot of businesses. But what was interesting was, he's applied a full creative team. They do all the storyboarding, they do all the concepting, but they do all the generation using tools like VEO or SORA to come up with their final content.

Erik Martinez: And one of the things that he said that was interesting to me was to think of advertising as a form of entertainment. his lens was to make sure people had fun and enjoyed the content they're seeing I don't [00:06:00] know if that's right, but it resonated with me.

Erik Martinez: You guys are a creative agency, you have all these capabilities. What is the soul of a brand when we're talking about digital content?

Jen Neumann: I do think it's going to change who companies like my company work with over time. We are not afraid of AI. We've just determined that we'll be human led leveraging AI to get better results. It levels the playing field for us in many ways, in things that we couldn't code before, but we can code now, it still takes a human to gut check that and make sure things are right.

Jen Neumann: So I do think it's going to change things, let's say you go to an art show in a town and you fall in love with the backstory of this painting and you buy it. Every day in your house you look at it and it makes you smile because you know the backstory and then one room over.

Jen Neumann: You also have something you bought from Home Goods and you like that just fine. It serves a purpose. It fits the space. That's the way I look at it. You are going to have some [00:07:00] brands that, that authenticity and that backstory is going to be what makes the difference. And you are going to have some brands or some aspects of what they might be selling that it is not so important for.

Jen Neumann: Marketers have to understand the difference and when to apply it and when not to apply it, because sometimes that story is going to be too important. What I believe is going to happen long-term is that people are going to start to crave that, and you're going to see a widening of the very obviously fake, with the very obviously authentic, not so much of the work in between anymore. You're going to have brands start to pick one side or the other. If you are buying stuff. That's fast fashion and you don't care all the models are AI, you're just gonna buy it wear it three times and it's probably going in the bin, then you probably do not care about the backstory.

Jen Neumann: You probably don't care, you know about the humans behind the brand. However, if you're buying a more curated piece, that's gonna matter. [00:08:00] And I think it'll come down to price points too. you're gonna pay a higher price for the authenticity.

Erik Martinez: Do you think, from the results of your survey, does that future vision align with where customers are now? Like, do today's customers go, we really would like to know if it's AI generated or do they say, we don't really care depending on what it is we're buying?

Erik Martinez: And, what I got from what you just said is it probably matters more about what they're buying and when they're buying it. Does it matter if it's AI generated content if the story is true and it is on brand?

Jen Neumann: I think that, to some extent it'll still matter like I said, I think you'll have brands that leverage it and it'll be a little obvious. It's interesting because the survey said two different things and this often happens when you're surveying people Part of it is to figure out where people contradict themselves. They're saying that, yes, I skipped purchases when I found out AI, is involved, and then at the same time they're saying it doesn't matter [00:09:00] to me too much. And I think that gets down to considered purchase versus impulse or necessities that you're not thinking about so much.

Erik Martinez: Or maybe it's just different groups of people in the data too, right? I don't totally care if it's AI generated content or not. Does it actually represent the product or service that I'm trying to consume at that particular moment? So for me, doesn't matter.

Erik Martinez: But I could tell you like my father who's 88 years old, he has real trust issues. And he's not able to really discern whether it's real or fake of what he's seeing. So for him, I think it's a real concern. So it may also be just personality type as factoring into this equation. And so how do brands address that concept where there may be a portion of their audience who is like, Hey, We don't want any of this stuff. And a portion of their audience's we don't care. We love it. Give us more.

Jen Neumann: And [00:10:00] this is where brands need to be introspective, so there's the recent, I think it was J Crew, did a collab with Vans and they produced, some imagery where the guy's foot was at a very unnatural angle, everything about it screamed AI. J Crew is not a fast fashion brand.

Jen Neumann: J Crew is a little bit more of a considered purchase and They had quite the public outcry around that, but did it actually impact their sales in the end? We don't know the answer to that. And did it change the behavior of the brand? J Crew has plenty of money to pay their models, right?

Jen Neumann: J Crew can pay for an actual photo shoot. They chose to do this, it backfired on 'em, but, we don't know the extent to which it actually backfired and, maybe people in the end just wanted those shoes and bought 'em anyway.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think that's true. You know, it was interesting, I was, having a conversation last month with one of my clients who sells luxury men's apparel. And [00:11:00] I did this experiment for them. We've been telling 'em for years you need to be online, and their clothing is expensive and styled in a way that it appeals to a very specific audience demographic.

Erik Martinez: But we still believe that people wanna see people, the vast majority do, and they've just never invested in, photo shoots. So right after it was released, I took a photo of myself with a friend, extracted myself and put myself in their clothing. And then I also did some generations that had just AI models,

Erik Martinez: And I'm like, you guys are a small brand, so you're not necessarily gonna go spend 40 or $50,000 on a photo shoot. Not saying that you shouldn't do that, but here is an alternative, to get some of your clothing on model that looks good. It's still gotta pass the human sniff tests.

Erik Martinez: Does that look good for your product detail pages? I wouldn't necessarily use it as a hero. What do you think of that? Or do you think I'm crazy?

Jen Neumann: I do think [00:12:00] you're a little crazy, Erik, but that is for other reasons. I think this is gonna play out in the long game. When you portray products in a way that looks realistic, but might not be the way it actually fits or feels, that is going to cause some dissatisfaction long term.

Jen Neumann: There is a concern with that. Let's say you, you're putting yourself in that clothing, is that what you will look like if you wear it? Does it look, fine, but is that what it actually fits like on a person? that's the advantage of using real people you see how fabric drapes or you see how it moves when they move.

Jen Neumann: So when we have this more plastic approach people are used to seeing, you know, hot models wearing Right? And we know in our hearts that we're not gonna look like that. but we hope we do. sometimes we buy it and return it because doesn't work that way.

Jen Neumann: Anything that relies on fitting different humans, right? I think that there might be some disconnect there.

Erik Martinez: Apparel is tough. Apparel is really tough. I had the privilege of working [00:13:00] for Peruvian Connection years ago, and they designed all their clothing I got a chance to talk and work with the tech designers. So you know, there's designers who design the piece and then the tech designers turn that into the manufacturing specifications.

Erik Martinez: I learned all sorts of crazy things about material elasticity and different body types. Let's be honest, women are curvier than men in most cases. Even for us men, there's a lot of clothing that doesn't fit. apparel is really hard and I don't know, even in a photo shoot that you totally can address that particular issue.

Jen Neumann: So a different example, not clothing is I'm very crafty I like to crochet and I was looking for some patterns I was like, oh, that is so cool, then I read the comments. This was on Etsy it's like, this is clearly an AI generated image and the pattern is AI generated and when I bought it, nothing worked and that's where [00:14:00] trust is starting to break down between something looking. Maybe too perfect.

Erik Martinez: So do you think that we as marketers should be disclosing the use of AI, and if we do disclose it, is that a positive or a negative?

Jen Neumann: It's funny because, I think meta for a while was, disclosing images that were made with AI. But that went away. you'll see a credit that says digital art, on something that looks like a photograph. And that's a code word for AI created.

Jen Neumann: The survey does say that people want it disclosed, but I don't know. And I think the survey kind of bears this out, that matters too much to them, as long as it's not egregiously wrong or egregiously perfect in a way. Like, oh, there's no way that that's going to look like that in my house, kind of thing.

Erik Martinez: Yeah. I think that's true. I think there's a level, and this goes back to something you said earlier in the podcast [00:15:00] where it probably doesn't matter. a couple weeks ago I was talking to Kristen Chambers, a social media expert and strategist, and we were talking about, how much AI generated content is on social media. And part of that conversation, and this ties to what the gentleman from genre AI was saying at the Conference was her view was, social media is not, in her opinion, a primary buying platform. So it is not necessarily the final step in conversion. Her thought on it was, you gotta think about it as being a place of entertainment and how can you entertain the audience in a way that is relevant to your brand, introduces them to the products and services that you offer. Be authentic enough, even if you're using AI to also tell a little bit of your brand story.

Erik Martinez: And I think that's a really fine line to draw, but I thought it was an interesting perspective because [00:16:00] you think oh, my social media campaign has a half-life of two days. So does it matter versus that print piece or video piece that could live forever, I think maybe there's some distinction there.

Jen Neumann: We've talked a lot about that too. in the world of social media, it's consuming content quickly. We've talked about that sort of cinematic quality versus the, social first less polished more like user generated content that does something, an agency or even an in-house marketing team might produce.

Jen Neumann: Using AI is far more than just generative AI of create me a clip of this, it can be altering content, even using content aware, fill or filling, B-roll when you don't have it.

Jen Neumann: There are a lot of ways to use it and not make it feel at odds with what you're creating authentically.

Erik Martinez: Were there any other key insights that you got from the survey results in terms of how consumers [00:17:00] feel about AI or what we should be doing as brands to address those concerns or opportunities?

Jen Neumann: I think a brand has to ask itself about its positioning, right? Am I positioned as a cheap product? Am I positioned as a luxury product or servicer? Whatever it is, that brand represents. And then you have to make sure that you align your content strategy with the expectation that would come with that level.

Jen Neumann: If your brand is about selling as many. Mass produced items as possible, then really you got a little bit more of a green light on this, right? that marketing tends to be fast, loose, and a little sloppy anyway, and it works out. If you are a higher end brand, then you have to be quite a bit more careful about it because what we see in our results is that AI can make a brand look cheap.

Jen Neumann: AI can make a brand look like it is trying to be something it isn't. So where does my brand fall on this spectrum from, cheap, [00:18:00] mass produced to, that more bespoke, handcrafted aspect then you have to figure out where and how do I leverage AI to help me meet my goals, but not, be antithetical to my brand position.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, so what I'm hearing you say is, at the end of the day, what we're talking about is humans in the loop. From strategy to execution and then using AI to enhance the process In this scenario, what do you think is the best way for creative teams or marketing teams to use AI every day to improve the overall experience for not only the consumer who's the most important part of this equation, but the marketers who have to do all this work?

Jen Neumann: The first thing I suggest is that a marketing team sits down and they make sure that they have an AI policy that reflects their brand values, [00:19:00] has to align with it. And you know, like I said, you have this wide spectrum of people just trying to sell as much as they can, maybe a bargain product. You buy this because you are looking for the least expensive alternative, to that more luxury end of the spectrum.

Jen Neumann: So the first thing is align. Sit down. Understand what your tools are that you're going to use. Understand your red lines and then make sure that how you are using AI lines up with the position your brand lives in the market and that you're trying to get to. Most brands might be in a certain position in the market, but they're trying to get to another one. So if you're trying to, convince people that your product, which is more expensive than another product is worth it, you may have to think twice about over- leveraging AI in that case.

Erik Martinez: One of the things we've talked about a lot in the past is the viewpoint of the people in the marketing organization or the brand taking a position [00:20:00] on how they feel about AI.

Erik Martinez: The beauty of a survey is that it gives us some insight into what consumers are thinking, but at the end of the day, it doesn't necessarily tell us how they're really gonna react.

Jen Neumann: What will be interesting is over the next two years, brands that, heavily rely on it, how that changes their sales trajectory. Do they sell more but get more returned because it doesn't work out in real life. Any new technology takes a long time before guardrails or natural selection settles in, and we're gonna see that some brands might get burned on over- leveraging it.

Erik Martinez: Let me pivot the conversation off the survey for a moment. This is a conversation I've had over the last two or three months with various people about the notion of Agentic shopping my definition of that is you, the consumer, regardless of the product or service that you're consuming, never visit the website. [00:21:00] What you actually do. Is you're chatting with your chat bot, whichever chat bot is your favorite shopping agent, and you say, Hey, I want X, Y, Z with these parameters and this price, and the agent goes to the website and grabs all this information and brings it back to you probably from three or four sellers, or you might even give it the parameters. Does that change the conversation that we're having about, leveraging AI because AI will be to a certain extent in the middle. You have any initial thoughts on that?

Jen Neumann: My initial thought is, this is all fascinating and I'm very curious how it plays out. I've been thinking about this a lot because it cuts out the, you go to the website it's a beautiful experience and easy to navigate. It cuts out some of that.

Jen Neumann: Do I think that everything's gonna be done through agentic shopping?

Jen Neumann: No. it still matters, but there will be agents that purchase things on our behalf. When you do that, it doesn't really matter what you're creating and if you're using AI to do it because the agent is going [00:22:00] to come back and say, here are your three options pick one.

Jen Neumann: Now, maybe you'd choose to look into it further, or maybe you're like, I want the one in the middle. That's great. Purchase it. What I'm curious about is the accuracy of that in the long run and, how good it will be now versus later? Will it get better? I do think it is a little hard to trust that agentic experience at this point in time, especially things like buying flights for vacations and booking hotels, you get somewhere and that's all screwed up, that might be the last time you try Agentic shopping.

Jen Neumann: Agentic shopping is going to change how much marketing content is needed. A human might make a decision just based on what's presented to it, but it's not going to see all that work that we put all our hearts and soul into as marketers.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, but I think we've been through this curve before, right? When search engines first came into the world and they were. Fairly easy to game of, manipulating the results I remember one gentleman telling me many years ago that his company was [00:23:00] doing page search for Target, and they would just bid on the term dirt and the ad they would show up would be about vacuum cleaners. They related dirt to vacuum cleaners.

Erik Martinez: Today, that would never happen, right? That connection would not be made. If you look at Google as an example, Google has enough information to inform Gemini and their AI results very, very well whereas somebody like OpenAI doesn't necessarily have all that background context. I think it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple of years. One last question related to that.

Erik Martinez: If this Agentic shopping world starts to happen and the adoption rates start to increase very rapidly. I believe that one of the areas that people need to be concerned about is where their ad dollars are going, because I think the attribution of a sale now becomes really hard because you're not gonna have that direct connection for [00:24:00] you taking action, clicking on something. The agent's going out and bringing this back to you.

Erik Martinez: Which leads me to believe that top of funnel advertising becomes way more important again.

Jen Neumann: I think a lot of Agentic shopping will still offer options for the person to choose from. there will be some aspect of, do you want me to find this and just purchase it on your behalf for non considered purchases. Sure. I think that's gonna start happening.

Jen Neumann: For considered purchases I think that's where that top of the funnel awareness because you are still going to come down to potentially a decision on something.

Jen Neumann: But that's where having heard of or having experienced a particular. Brand or service. And knowing about it, having some level of familiarity, can help tip the scales. But I mean, to be completely honest, Erik, we're all babies in this, new world together, right? We're all gonna figure it out.

Erik Martinez: I think all of that's true, and you're right, we are all infants in this, and as rapidly as it's moving, it is also not moving [00:25:00] as rapidly as everyone thinks.

Jen Neumann: Yeah.

Erik Martinez: Those working on the technology see the rapid change in growth. I think most people know their phone and stuff has some of these tools integrated, and it's not as pervasive as you think it might be. People are using it for sure. But how they're using it is still pretty simplified.

Jen Neumann: Let me ask you this, if you and I are in a peer group together, and I'll see you, next week. Would you just, tell AI to purchase your flight to Cabo and uh, book a hotel for you?

Erik Martinez: The answer is maybe. I think it would depend on, for example, Chat GPT just launched their Atlas browser, right? Perplexity has started to integrate some of these shopping capabilities. I have not played with all of them yet.

Jen Neumann: I've only played around with Commet and I thought, actually Gemini might do a better job than Commet at this point.

Erik Martinez: Right, because Google again has how many years and how many billions and trillions of data points to serve up a relevant result. So [00:26:00] I think at this point it sounds amazing. I would absolutely love that. Hey, I'm flying from Kansas City to Cabo on these dates. Give me the best flights by price, gimme the best flights by time and. I think I would probably go ahead and trust it to make that purchase after I saw the results set.

Jen Neumann: Right. And that's, I think about it the same way you would think of having an assistant. Like, Hey, just book me what you think is best because they don't know the nuance of my travel or that I am an absolute freaking passenger princess. I think Agentic purchasing will get there on that more nuanced stuff but it won't necessarily be pulling the final trigger on that.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I think that's a fair statement. Let's pivot back to data for a second, and the survey. Do you have plans to do some additional versions of the survey, what types of things are you guys thinking about?

Jen Neumann: When we do market research for clients, we have big budgets to do that. This was a house project, I'd like to administer this survey in a wider market [00:27:00] than what we did. This was sort of a first blush.

Jen Neumann: It turns out that half of our connections in this region are in marketing. I would like to get a wider view and there are some questions that, even since we launched that survey and pulled the data in, things are changing. I wanna know about the use of these alternative browsers. I'm really curious, about just, you know, Google was kind of caught on its back foot by all of this, with AI in general, and they are making rapid advances, and I have a lot of faith that Google, might still, get knocked off the throne a little bit, but they're gonna pick it back up.

Jen Neumann: So, running a survey, adding in a little bit more about, search behavior would be good and seeking this one out in a wider market. I'd like to expand it and get a little bit more data behind it.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, I wouldn't discount what you've learned yet. to the point you said, we're all infants in this, and any data points help inform or at least educate. One of the biggest challenges with AI is that there's not enough education [00:28:00] about what it is, what it isn't, how it works, what it is capable of, what it's not capable of. Like those conversations are still evolving and while tech companies are literally every week, every day in some cases throwing out new things at the audience, I think it's a little overwhelming. We all need to take a step back and say, what does this really mean for our business?

Erik Martinez: And goes back to what you were saying, we really need to have a viewpoint. From that viewpoint. We can then decide what the next steps are.

Jen Neumann: I think it'd be interesting to rerun this research in another year as well, because it's still in its infancy. My biggest takeaway is that erosion of trust, if you look at the Edelman's Trust barometer, which I think is just an absolutely fascinating piece of research that comes out every year. Trust is at this all time low. But you know, companies actually have the highest level of trust. Well, what if we're eroding that? Not to be dark, but like, okay, who can you trust? Like already next to no [00:29:00] trust in media and government. NGOs, nonprofits, and corporations have more trust.

Jen Neumann: But if we erode that trust, by overlying or over leveraging AI and where we're getting to this point where, and again, like it's, sorry this has gotten dark, but who can you trust? The pendulum could swing the other way.

Erik Martinez: Yeah, It could swing the other way.

Jen Neumann: I know this isn't a philosophy podcast, but I do have this feeling that it could be overdone at some point in time and that could cost brands too. We are all trying to thread the needle on this right now, figuring out the right ways to use it, the right way to be transparent about it and help our clients be successful. Help brands be successful, but not step in it. and produce something that gets people in trouble.

Erik Martinez: And then I think the big discussion is what's the best way to go about doing that? You started to say a word earlier, which was test, experiment. You're gonna have to do some controlled experiments to see how the audience really respond, whether that is in a [00:30:00] focus group setting or in a real world setting.

Erik Martinez: Jen, do you have any last thoughts for the audience that you'd like to share?

Jen Neumann: Yeah. I think, most of the people who listen to your podcast, Erik, are in our field one way or the other. Client side, agency side, wherever they might be. Align your usage of AI and your philosophies of AI with your brand values. Make sure that that's not outta whack.

Jen Neumann: That's so true in anything you do in marketing. When something's not aligned with your brand values, then it becomes obvious. Same is true for AI, so sit down and spend some time, analyzing that and thinking about that. Making sure that what you're doing aligns with where your brand is and where your brand's trying to go.

Erik Martinez: I think that's fantastic advice. Jen. If anybody wants to reach out directly to you, what's the best way?

Jen Neumann: Find me on our website. It's, thinkDeNovo.com and, um, it's pretty easy to reach out to us from there.

Erik Martinez: Well, Jen, thank you so much. This has been a fun conversation we talked about data research, and then philosophical, ideas. I think these are relevant [00:31:00] conversations at the moment because I don't think any of us has a true sense of where this is headed yet.

Erik Martinez: Thank you again for coming on the show and sharing your insights.

Erik Martinez: That's it for today's episode of the Digital Velocity Podcast. Thank you for listening and have a great day.

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