On November 7, the ARF Creative Council held an immersive event exploring the powerful role of sound in branding. At this event, the Council unveiled its thoroughly-researched white paper on sonic branding. Members of the Council provided a preview of the white paper. They covered what sonic branding is, how it has evolved, how it works at a neurological level, how leading brands have successfully used sound to build and reinforce brand memories, and how brands can get started on their sonic branding. Practitioners of sonic branding revealed how they go about creating sonic signatures and even played a possible sonic signature of the ARF. The event began with a quiz in which 10 audio clips were played and the audience was asked to identify the brand associated with each sound.
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In the rapidly evolving digital content landscape, media firms and news publishers require automated and efficient methods to enhance user engagement. This study introduces the LLM-Assisted Online Learning Algorithm (LOLA), a novel framework that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with adaptive experimentation to optimize content delivery. Leveraging a large-scale dataset from Upworthy, which includes 17,681 headline A/B tests, the study investigates three pure-LLM approaches and finds that prompt-based methods perform poorly, while embedding-based classification models and fine-tuned open-source LLMs achieve higher accuracy.
LOLA combines the best pure-LLM approach with the Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithm to allocate traffic and maximize clicks adaptively. Numerical experiments on data from the website Upworthy show that LOLA outperforms the standard A/B test method, pure bandit algorithms and pure-LLM approaches, particularly in scenarios with limited experimental traffic. This scalable approach is applicable to content experiments across various settings where firms seek to optimize user engagement, including digital advertising and social media recommendations.
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This study explores the effectiveness of cause-related marketing and how brands can enhance consumer trust by attributing their charitable actions to customers rather than the brand itself. The research shows that when brands share the credit for good deeds with their customers, it reduces perceptions of bragging and increases brand trust. This beneficial effect is particularly significant for brands with high integrity.
The findings are based on three studies involving American adults, which demonstrate that attributing donations to customers (versus the brand) reduces perceived bragging and increases donation intentions and brand trust. The study highlights the importance of brand integrity in moderating these effects.
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