Leanne Tomasevic, Partnership & Strategy at Electric Twin was part of The Marketing Society’s inaugural The Accelerator Day, held at The Financial Times in September. She shares what came out of the day for her and why synthetic data should be the thing we are thinking about the most.
"We don't even have synthetic on our roadmap. We need to change that." That's what the person sitting next to me said, halfway through the sessions. This person had just realised what was possible and had started thinking about all of her work where a synthetic audience could be valuable. And that is why the day was invigorating. Because of what AI enables and the feeling of excitement for being able to work in a new way with new and better results that was simply not possible before. While AI can seem new and overwhelming, it's remarkable how quickly that changes when you can experience it in front of you. A few simple, immersive moments with someone showing you rather than telling you, and suddenly you're on the side of making things happen. Experimenting. Empowering yourself with new tools instead of being wary of them.
Learn by doing - not reading about it
Our Chief Science Advisor, Michael Muthukrishna, always says AI is much easier to understand through showing people than it is to explain it. Similar to how it's easier to use a system than it is to tell you about it. He compared it to mathematics, programming, or riding a bicycle. None of it is something you quickly learn by reading about it. You learn it by doing it. Behaviour change theory tells us the same thing: you don't think your way into a new identity to create change, you act your way into one. You don't wait to become someone who understands AI before you start using it. You start using it, and understanding follows. That's what happened at the AI Accelerator. People left having lived inside AI for a few hours and that's why a senior marketer turned to me and said we need synthetic on our roadmap.
The AI accelerator was such a positive force for brand and marketing teams. It gave people permission to put fear in a corner and get curious instead. This was made concrete by Wingstop, who shared how their use of Electric Twin synthetic audiences helped them create a lunch time offer that went from insight to execution in a record four weeks, with the customer voice being present in meetings jumping from 20% to 40%. Virgin talked through a similar experience of using synthetic audiences to narrow down 64 brand partner options across 13 categories to a shortlist at zero additional cost to the business. Neither replaced their real research; they used it to know faster which questions were worth asking and going to create the biggest impact.
What's possible when you remove the old constraints
So much of how marketing works today is structured around how the world used to be: slow, expensive, and constrained by what we could feasibly find out. Once you outmanoeuvre that constraint, you stop feeling limited by what you know and start feeling free to explore what you want to know. What made the day special was the opportunity to sit around a table, close enough to talk. Conferences rarely give us that; too often they can feel like a string of panels we half-watch. This one made us all feel more connected. More present. More confident to own and drive a tech-led future.
If AI feels out of reach right now, don't focus on more reading. It's ten minutes with someone showing you rather than telling you. Reach out, ask me to show you, and you might see yourself differently by the end of it.
The Electric Twin are partners of The Marketing Society.
