Marketing Research Director
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Gabb + Qualtrics
Building a smarter brand: How Gabb stress-tested its messaging with AI-powered insights
The challenge
As a leader in safe tech for kids, Gabb wanted to ensure its product and marketing decisions were grounded in a deep understanding of parents' concerns and behaviors. They faced a common challenge with traditional research: it was slow, sometimes expensive, and at times struggled to provide a clear view of niche audiences. They needed a faster, more cost-effective way to get reliable insights to support their brand and product strategy, without sacrificing data quality.
Putting AI to the test for faster, more confident decisions
To address this, Gabb partnered with Qualtrics on a research program using a synthetic panel. The program’s objective was to compare how well AI-powered synthetic data would align with human panel responses on parents' perspectives about children's tech use. The goal was to determine if this new approach could provide a trustworthy, scalable solution for their pre-research testing and audience understanding.
The program focused on key areas of parental concern, including device ownership, parental control triggers, and attitudes toward social connection and screen time. The survey was fielded simultaneously to a traditional human panel and used to model synthetic responses, enabling a direct, side-by-side comparison.
Key takeaways and a path forward
The program successfully proved that synthetic data can provide reliable, directional signals for a fraction of the time and cost. The results showed broad alignment between synthetic and human data on core measures, including most means, top-box scores, and overall distributions.
Key learnings included:
• Directional Accuracy: The rank order of what triggers a parent to tighten controls aligned well across both groups, providing a reliable basis for strategy.
• Cultural Radar: The synthetic data served as a "cultural radar," accurately mirroring public discourse on topics like the "anxious generation." This provides a more cautious, yet valuable, baseline for stress-testing messages and safety narratives.
• Optimizing the Research Approach: The program confirmed that a blended approach is optimal. Gabb can now use synthetic data to quickly narrow down ideas or triage concepts, then validate the most promising ones with human panels for high-stakes decisions.
Embracing nuance: How AI data complements human research
While some predictable differences emerged in niche demographics and questions about subjective topics like confidence and uncertainty, these variances were explainable and offered new strategic advantages.
For example, the synthetic data's tendency to avoid "I don't know" responses provides an excellent tool for building hypotheses and aligning stakeholders on key themes. The program moved Gabb from simply dabbling in synthetic to becoming a synthetic explorer—seeing clear applications for early-stage testing and trend detection.
98%
faster time-to-insights
Enables more confident decisions for emerging themes and a tool for pre-testing innovation concepts
50%
estimated lower cost compared to traditional third-party panels
Synthetic data became our “cultural radar,” cutting research timelines from a week to hours while giving us confidence to test messaging against emerging trends. The blended approach lets us move faster on early-stage testing, then validate high-stakes decisions with human panels.
Garred Sheppard
Marketing Research Director
Gabb
About Gabb
Gabb® is safe tech for kids. Founded in 2018, Gabb is a rapidly growing tech company focused on keeping families Safely Connected™ by providing safephones, safewatches, apps, and software for kids and teens. Gabb believes introducing young minds to too much technology, too early can have long-term negative effects on their development and mental health. Gabb’s flexible safe technology meets kids and teens where they are, allowing them to focus on their personal development and growth without the risks associated with social media and other harmful digital influences.
Industry
Technology,
Media
Organization Size
Medium
Region
AMER
Products In Use
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