4.4 Open-ended Assessment

Overall analysis revealed consistent feedback, both positive and negative in sentiment, across organic and synthetic video types, including expected critiques centered on both the argumentative rationale for the business proposal and the spokesperson’s delivery, suggesting that viewers were generally impressed and put off by the same overall features and in with generally the same effect across video types. While criticisms ranged from business specific questions to video editing choices, these criticisms were applicable to all videos, given that they were identical in content and form, save for the spokesperson present.
However, another primary theme emerged in textual analysis of the open-ended responses. Isolating the open-ended answers to the weakness questions, partitioned to only those answers from respondents who rated the effectiveness of brand-image below the general average, produced useful unique additional data that identifies spokesperson’s performed, delivered persona as a critical factor in pitch success.
More than 1 in 5 (22%) of respondents with sub-average ratings commented in the open-ended weakness question that the spokesperson was a weakness of the video. Over half of those responses (60%) explicitly mentioned the synthetic nature of the avatar with comments such as “felt like a computer talking” and “She was more like an AI robot” and “It felt robotic or AI in sound and the man seemed very disingenuous.” The other 40 percent commented more broadly on a flat, disengaged delivery with comments like “weird voice” and “narrator was monotone and boring” and “the announcer was stiff.” The explicit focus on the spokesperson in these sub-average open-ended responses suggests that the synthetic avatar as spokesperson is a mediating variable.