DDB Worldwide turns Les Binet into an AI chatbot to democratize marketing effectiveness research and put it at the heart of every brief

DDB Worldwide launches private Beta of LesGPT: an AI chatbot trained on decades of marketing effectiveness research by renowned econometrician Les Binet, including his acclaimed work with Peter Field and Sarah Carter.

For decades, Les Binet has been one of the most cited researchers on marketing effectiveness. As the head of effectiveness at adam&eveDDB, Binet has analyzed hundreds of campaigns over the years, determining their effectiveness for growth and profit, both in the short and in the long term. He has also worked with IPA (Institute of the Practitioners of Advertising) and published influential research based on the analysis of their extensive database of campaigns. All of this accumulated expertise on marketing effectiveness will now be available in the form of an AI chatbot – making Les Binet a part of every DDB project. Select clients can get invite-only access, as well. 

Said LesGPT creator George Strakhov, Global Head of Creative Technology and DDB EMEA CSO: “Too much marketing these days is just trying to be flashy or trying to only optimize for short-term efficiency and has deprioritized effectiveness. But at DDB, we strongly believe that effectiveness should be at the heart of every brief because our work only matters if it moves the people and moves our clients’ businesses. To help bridge this effectiveness gap for our clients and eventually, for the whole industry, we decided to take the world’s leading expert on marketing effectiveness (our very own Les Binet) and create a “mini-AI version” of him, that can scale across every client, every language, every time zone, and every brief. We used Microsoft’s secure implementation of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model and augmented its knowledge with a curated knowledge base of Les’ published and unpublished work over the past couple of decades. The result is a chatbot that can advise you on all things marketing effectiveness, can help you reason about your marketing mix and most importantly can help you ask all the right questions about how to measure and maximize the effects of marketing.”

LesGPT is now available in private Beta – both on DDB’s internal RAND | DDB platform and on OpenAI’s GPT store.

Strakhov, who has recently been promoted to Global Head of Creative Technology at DDB Worldwide, has been a driving force of DDB’s innovation in the AI and creative technology space.

“Scaling our human intelligence, creativity and expertise is one of the most exciting applications of AI.” Said DDB Worldwide Global CEO, Alex Lubar. “We have so many brilliant people around the world and if we can unlock even a portion of their expertise and make it available to all our clients at all times, it will make a massive difference. LesGPT is an example of DDB moving in this direction. Obviously, nothing can replace the real Les Binet, but even 30% of Les present in every meeting, helping write every brief can improve the impact that work has. And that’s what LesGPT is all about. All our global employees now have access to LesGPT and we are providing access to select clients. Ultimately, we would love for the whole industry to benefit, test, learn and improve with us, because making sure that modern marketing is not just efficient, but also effective is something the whole industry needs to focus on much more.”

About Les Binet

Les is a world-renowned expert in marketing effectiveness and evaluation and has probably won more awards in this field than anyone else. In 2014, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising awarded him The President’s Medal, the highest honor it can bestow, in recognition of these achievements.

Les has written extensively on how advertising works, how to make it work better, and how to evaluate it. As well as his many journal articles and case studies, he has published six books, several of which are now regarded as required reading for marketers.

His work with Peter Field has attracted international attention. As the CMO of Unilever put it, “Les and Peter have made a huge contribution to our understanding of how marketing driver growth and profit for brands. Marketers everywhere should pay close attention.”

In recent years, Les has focused on how the digital revolution is changing the rules, publishing a series of reports under the banner “Marketing Effectiveness in the Digital Era”. He has worked extensively with most of the leading brands, both as a researcher and as a thought leader. In particular, his work with Google on “share of search” as a marketing metric is currently causing a stir in the world of market research.

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