A new TV advertising campaign for dog GPS-tracker brand PitPat aired yesterday (Sunday 13th September) – and is believed to be among the first UK ad campaigns where creative has been developed and refined using real-time synthetic audience quantitative testing at every stage of production.
“The Wanderers”, produced by AI studio Scary Robots, features a cast of AI-generated talking dogs talking about their love of wandering off and exploring, across a 40-second television commercial and a series of shorter sponsorship bumpers. The campaign is airing on UK channels including Dave, Gold, Alibi and Drama.
Instead of waiting days or even weeks to test early concepts or the finished campaign with target audiences, Scary Robots used Electric Twin’s synthetic audience platform throughout the creative process to test and iterate creative quickly, sharing live audience feedback with the PitPat team. The technology was used to test scripts, messaging and edits against a synthetic panel of UK dog owners before the ads were finalised, turning a research process that would typically take weeks into a continuous feedback loop that could run seamlessly alongside production.
The synthetic audience was built by Electric Twin: a platform using AI, machine learning, social science research and brands’ existing audience data to simulate how real people behave. It achieves up to 96% accuracy and is widely used by organisations including News UK, Sage, Centre for Net Zero and Virgin.
Daniel Wimborne, Executive Producer & AI Products at Scary Robots, said:
“We’re thrilled to launch The Wanderers with PitPat, a playful campaign that gives dogs the chance to explain why they disappear in pursuit of stinky smells and new adventures. It embodies what Scary Robots is all about: combining human creativity with AI technology to produce bold, entertaining work. We were also delighted to partner with Electric Twin, whose synthetic audience platform gave us always-on access to a highly tailored PitPat audience. This allowed us to test the creative with dog owners, gather instant feedback and add another layer of audience insight to the creative process.”
How did Scary Robots use synthetic audiences?
Scary Robots worked with Electric Twin to build a synthetic audience panel of 1,141 UK dog owners across 6 demographics, who were able to answer 150+ questions about attitudes to dog trackers, adoption barriers and PitPat brand perceptions. They used this audience to test seven pieces of creative: six 10-second bumpers and the 40-second long-form TV commercial. The audience spanned current PitPat customers, lapsed customers (who’ve bought a tracker but no longer use it), category sceptics and prime prospect buyers. Across the production process different user profiles were asked if they understood what the ads were selling, what the product is, whether they would buy it, the need it would fulfill, and which messaging they found most impactful.
The testing surfaced invaluable findings that shaped the final cut. It found that recall of the campaign’s key safety message – that the tracker helps find a dog that runs off – jumped from 51% to 74% in the versions where the message was spoken aloud by the dogs, rather than implied visually through a GPS map graphic.
The “no subscription fee” line emerged as the strongest single message in the campaign, reflecting PitPat’s own research showing 62% of dog owners are wary of subscriptions and a third say fees have put them off buying a tracker in the past.
What also varied was dog owners’ reason for buying. Lapsed tracker owners and prospective customers were most interested in using the product to find dogs if they’re lost and for peace of mind. Meanwhile sceptics – the biggest segment and the hardest group to move, with dogs who are good at recall or never off the lead – were most interested in keeping dogs fit and healthy via activity tracking: a key insight when it comes to converting this group.
Two creatives led the pack on brand warmth: 46% of testers came away with positive brand perception from the “Good Walk” short and the long-form advert, compared to 35-42% for the rest of the content tested.
These findings, among others, were used to inform the final creatives which will air later this month.
Andrew Nowell, CEO at PitPat, comments:
“Any technology that enables us to test and optimise our marketing output in order to ensure we’re resonating with our target audience is something I am more than happy to explore. We’re really excited to be working with Scary Robots to be among the first-movers using synthetic audiences to deliver impactful campaigns, and we’ve been really impressed with the results Electric Twin has delivered on our audience so far.“
Alex Cooper, CEO and co-founder at Electric Twin, said:
“It’s been great to work with Scary Robots – an agency that’s putting AI at the forefront of their creative work – to help them deliver something truly impactful for PitPat. Using our product brands can engage thousands of people quickly and accurately, to a depth that simply isn’t possible with traditional processes like surveys and focus groups. In an industry as fast-moving and competitive as advertising, such technology has real potential to become a critical step in the workflow.”
A second campaign featuring talking cats – built by Scary Robots for PitPat and optimised using Electric Twin’s synthetic audience technology – is slated to air in January 2027.
The convergence of tech and brands 