AI is quietly rewriting how the consumer insights function works, from the personas researchers build to the way trends get validated. In this episode, Aby Varma speaks with David Jacobson, Global Senior Director of Applied Consumer Science at The Coca-Cola Company, about how AI is reshaping synthetic personas, audience segmentation, creative testing and marketing agents, and why human judgment still decides which AI insights make it into a campaign.

TOPICS COVERED

  • Synthetic personas: what they are and why they work best for early-stage idea filtering, not final validation
  • Building trust in AI-generated insights: the 80-90 percent accuracy benchmark and the risk of polished-but-shallow AI reports
  • Why data quality, not just model quality, determines whether synthetic research holds up for a global brand
  • Separating a real trend from AI noise, and why one data point is never enough
  • How AI is making personalized creative economically viable at a scale that wasn't possible before
  • What's changing in creative testing, from more polished early stimuli to AI-assisted evaluation
  • How AI agents are starting to automate the repetitive reporting work behind consumer insights

GUEST BIO

David Jacobson is Global Senior Director of Applied Consumer Science at The Coca-Cola Company, where he applies AI across nearly every stage of the consumer research process. He brings 25 years of marketing strategy experience, including roles at Publicis Sapient and PwC.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpjacobson/

HOST BIO

Aby Varma is a global business and marketing leader and the founder of Spark Novus. He guides business and marketing executives through their AI journey from early adoption to long-term self-reliance in a strategic and responsible way that supports innovation and business growth. Aby is the host of The Marketing AI SparkCast podcast and creator of the Marketing AI Pulse community platform. He also serves as Head of Marketing for TEDxAtlanta and is a member of the Forbes Communications Council.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abyvarma/

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