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Why the best campaigns die before becoming an ad and what product insertion does about it

Have you ever imagined all brands disappearing overnight? Would you miss any of them? Would anyone miss yours?

That question was put to consumers around the world in the Havas Meaningful Brands 2025 report. The answer was striking: 78% simply wouldn't care. And that number is growing — up 5 percentage points from the previous year.

The statistic says less about product quality than it does about branding. When brands look increasingly alike, they become increasingly disposable.

But nobody sets out to build a forgettable brand. So why does it keep happening?

The physical product: the most tangible brand asset and the hardest one to move

Every creative professional knows this gap: the distance between what a brand can imagine and what the budget allows it to execute.

Most brand intelligence initiatives focus on consistency in language, tone of voice, color palette, typography. The physical product — the packaging, the object, the thing people actually pick up and buy — tends to get left out of that work.

Because placing a product in a new visual context, a different aesthetic, a seasonal campaign, an unexplored territory, means a whole new process in practice. Briefing. Production. Approval. Revisions. Sometimes an agency. Sometimes weeks.

Most concepts don't die from lack of talent. They die in the budget conversation.

The brand ends up repeating itself not by choice, but by operational constraint.

What it actually costs to look like everyone else

A System1 and IPA study published in 2024 analyzed more than 4,000 ads from 56 brands over 5 years and reached a clear conclusion: the most creatively consistent brands generate 28% more large-scale business effects — revenue gain, profit, market share. A product confined to the same contexts leaves all of that on the table.

A Kantar analysis of 40,000 brands in the BrandZ database found a direct relationship between perceived differentiation and consumer willingness to pay more. Brands seen as unique command a price premium and face less sensitivity to being swapped for cheaper alternatives. The Dentsu Creative 2025 report, which surveyed more than 1,950 senior marketing leaders across 14 markets, put it plainly: 79% of CMOs recognize that optimizing for the algorithm creates a sea of sameness.

The cost of invisibility is measurable. Brands don't look alike by accident. They look alike because of budget.

It's a gap that shows up in practice every day: at Pupila, where more than 133,000 assets have been generated with brand intelligence, the product is consistently the last asset to be cleared for new contexts.

What is Product Insertion

Product Insertion was born from that friction.

Product Insertion is a Pupila feature that allows any physical product, packaging, or brand asset to be placed into new visual contexts automatically, with brand identity applied by the brand intelligence already trained for that account.

Here's how it works: you upload your product, and the platform automatically applies your brand's visual identity rules to new contexts. At Pupila, brands using the feature generate campaign variations in minutes, not weeks.

Same product. Different worlds. All unmistakably yours.

It goes beyond design optimization — it's an invitation to explore territories that used to exist only as concepts.

In practice: what changes for consumer brands

For consumer brands, Product Insertion removes the operational bottlenecks that were slowing creative production:

  • Placing the same product in different seasonal contexts — summer, Christmas, Valentine's Day — without engaging a production house
  • Creating regional variations with adapted aesthetics without a new approval process
  • Testing visual concepts that used to sit in brainstorms because they were "too expensive to try"
  • Generating more campaign frequency without increasing the production budget
  • Maintaining brand identity in any context — the brand intelligence already knows what's on and off brand

Distinctiveness isn't a differentiator. It's survival.

In a market where 78% of brands can disappear without anyone noticing, the question is no longer "how do we differentiate?" It's what's stopping your brand from showing up the way it already knows it should.

Most of the time, the answer is operational. And operational problems have solutions.

Product Insertion is available now on Pupila. Start creating here!

A closer look

What is Pupila's Product Insertion?

It's a feature that allows any physical product or packaging to be placed into new visual contexts automatically. The platform applies your brand's visual identity rules without requiring new production or creative approvals.

How does Product Insertion work in practice?

You upload the product. The brand intelligence already trained for your account applies the brand's visual rules to new scenarios automatically. The result: campaign variations generated in minutes.

What types of brands can use Product Insertion?

Consumer brands that need seasonal, regional, or channel-specific variations without engaging a production house for every campaign. It's especially useful for brands with physical products and a consolidated visual identity that need to scale creative output without losing consistency.

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