How Boots is operationalizing creative effectiveness

The gap between creative and media is closing, with large scale creative data and next-gen measurement tools combining to predict commercial outcomes, not just clicks. Boots' Peter Grant, CreativeX's Anastasia Leng and DAIVID's Ian Forrester join the pod to share the lessons from a pilot experiment at health and beauty retailer Boots, and what its taught them about the future of creative effectiveness. Hosted by WARC's David Tiltman.Guests:Peter Grant, interim media and marketing effectiveness director, BootsAnastasia Leng, founder and CEO of CreativeXIan Forrester, founder and CEO of DAIVIDChapters:[00:00] Boots, CreativeX and DAIVID’s Real‑World Test[03:55] Boots’ effectiveness journey[05:49] 3,500 assets at scale: how CreativeX built creative observability for Boots[07:43] What is a creative quality score?[09:32] Inside DAIVID’s model: attention and brand recall metrics[11:41] Human ground truth vs synthetic data panels[12:52] Linking creative signals to real‑world commercial outcomes[14:55] Results of the testing on Meta and YouTube[17:22] Diagnosing boredom, confusion and underperforming creative at scale[20:02] How Boots uses creative data to reinvest, not cut, media spend[22:02] From one‑off analysis to always‑on optimization[24:34] Feeding signals into GenAI and creator workflows[27:26] Fixing long‑tail content waste in digital media[30:18] Common language for creative and media teams[38:06] Boots’ 18‑month vision: operationalized creative effectiveness For 40 years, WARC has been providing the marketing industry with rigorous, unbiased evidence and expert effectiveness guidance. The WARC Podcast publishes a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe to The WARC Podcast here: https://www.warc.com/en/warc-podcasts Sign up to daily WARC News for free: https://www.warc.com/en/latest Book a demo: https://www.warc.com/en/subscribe