Matthew Bernardini is CEO and co-founder of Zenapse, who leads the company’s vision and oversees the development of its proprietary AI Foundation models into categories-leading products. With his background as a product marketer, data strategist and technologist, he brings a convergence of entrepreneurial experience – gaining four successful exports, as well as corporate expertise from organizations such as JPMorgan Chase, Omnicom and Capgemini.
Throughout his career, Bernardini has maintained a strong interest in artificial intelligence, psychology, consumer behavior, game theory and statistics, and these people continue to be interested in his leadership at Zenapse.
Zenapse is an AI-powered platform that promotes customer acquisition, engagement and retention through emotionally intelligent experiences. Supported by the world’s first large-scale emotion model (LEM), Zenapse uses psychological insights and goal-based optimization to help brands connect more deeply with audiences. It can be deployed quickly and is easy to use, reducing costs and increasing ROI in a few hours (rather than weeks).
Zenapse is built at the intersection of emotional intelligence and AI. What is the “aha” moment that leads to the creation of large emotion models (LEMs)?
Zenapse has a senior founding team with background in product development, advertising, marketing and customer experience spaces, and has over 100 years of merger experience in companies such as Capgemini, Omnicom and JP Morgan Chase. In our careers, we have seen a new paradigm shift in marketers, where AI changes our thinking and interactions with consumers.
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, customers expect personalized and resonant experiences across all touchpoints, but traditional marketing solutions lack the speed and insights needed to make real-time decisions and the effort to meet these expectations. Meanwhile, from product decisions to advertising campaigns, leaders struggle with the high cost of hiring multiple team members to accomplish this job.
To meet this need, we built the world’s first large-scale emotion model (LEM) that helps marketers increase revenue and sales by bringing emotional intelligence into the consumer experience. By targeting their communications to consumers’ value and interests rather than individual “brand-first” information, brands can create more meaningful interactions, resulting in higher engagement, sales, retention, retention and customer acquisition.
How do you define a large sentiment model (LEM), and how it differs technically and functionally from a traditional large language model (LLM)?
Our Large Emotional Model (LEM) is a predictive AI engine powered by a dataset built on the knowledge of over 200 million consumers with more than 200 million data points. Through AI-driven psychological insights (i.e., beliefs, emotions, and emotions), companies can understand what drives customers to switch—whether it’s the features or benefits of a product, special promotions and incentives, images or calls to take action, and then allow them to prioritize brand experience content in order to bring the brand experience content to the consumer’s preferences.
In contrast to our LEM, which focuses on emotions and behaviors, with the Large Language Model (LLMS) focusing on text and functions (NLP) related to natural language processing (NLP) without a deeper understanding of the beliefs and values of different audiences.
We work closely with Google through their Google startups and Google Cloud Marketplace programs and Comcast Lift Labs to ensure our solutions are ready and meet the needs of the world’s most demanding marketers.
Why do you think emotional intelligence is the “missing link” in most marketing AI platforms today?
One simple answer is that marketers can’t really understand their customers because existing old technology focuses on demographics and behavior. We integrate seamlessly with tools from companies like Adobe, Salesforce, and Google to deliver extraordinary results.
95% of consumer decisions are subconscious and driven by emotions. However, for decades, brands have used demographics (e.g., postal code, race, income) and behavioral data to inform marketing campaigns. Although this type of data has its purpose, most purchase decisions are driven by emotions and these data points cannot be captured. As a result, marketers struggle with limited accuracy and effectiveness, often resorting to universal solutions.
Now, with our LEM, brands can leverage psychological insights to build this complete picture and increase sales and revenue. The proof of concept of the role of emotional intelligence in marketing is the number: we are helping home brands increase conversion rates by 40-400% and engagement rates up to 80%.
What is your most common misunderstanding of the role of AI in understanding human emotions?
One of the biggest misunderstandings is that AI replaces marketers here. At Zenapse, we are taking a different approach – we are helping marketers develop marketing and advertising through emotional intelligence and artificial intelligence, which can help them diversify their perspectives by connecting and understanding their customers’ abilities at a deeper, more emotional level.
Traditional movements often rely on incorporating consumers into a wide range of demographic definitions such as age, income, and postal codes, which ignores the nuances that humans really care about. With our LEM, marketers can adjust around what matters most to everyone.
Rather than guessing what might resonate, our platform helps marketers confidently create experiences that really resonate because it is built on emotional intelligence. This does not replace human touch – it makes it more powerful.
In your opinion, what distinguishes hype from real innovation in the AI + EQ space?
We are entering a new era of marketing that is defined by emotionally intelligent experiences, rather than personalization at the surface level.
Consumer behavior has changed dramatically. Nowadays, most consumers prefer personalized experiences – they want brands to know what they care about. This provides brands with an opportunity to leverage AI by creating deeper connections with consumers.
The difference between hype and real innovation is data quality. Our LEM is built on knowledge of 300 million consumers and 6 billion real-time data points, which gives brands a comprehensive understanding of who their consumers are – they were unable to do that before.
What types of psychological signals and real-time data power of LEM, and how do these models simulate into the data lake?
The psychology behind our LEM is based on four pillars:
- belief – We divide beliefs into individual categories, including how they value money, knowledge, family and belonging, etc.
- mood – Consider how you react after you see an ad or promotion. Will it bring you joy or anxiety?
- Activity – From gardening to gaming, we consider all different types of real-world and digital activities
- Behavior – Events and actions performed by consumers in the company’s experience, such as filling out forms, watching videos or making purchases.
Consumers, like their minds, make decisions with their own hearts and minds, so we know that solving emotional components is the key to unlocking real value throughout the customer life cycle.
LEM is described as utilizing 600 million data points of 300m+ consumers. What are the safeguards and ethical considerations to ensure privacy and transparency?
Privacy is the center of our product development. Our entire technology ecosystem is SOC2-compliant, and our datasets do not capture or retain any consumer personally identifiable information (PII). Our data is aggregated and anonymous. We also maintain clear internal policies and governance practices to ensure ethical use of AI at every step of development.
Can you guide us as Zencore, ZeninSight and Zenvision in driving emotionally smart customer experience?
Zencore is our proprietary consumer psychology model and the engine that powers LEM. ZeninSight is the data basis for emotional intelligence experience. Zenvision translates these insights in real time into predictions about messaging or content that will elicit a given psychological segment and provide marketers with actionable advice. Together, these tools form a full-stack solution through emotional intelligence.
How does Zenapse adapt to emotional predictions in verticals such as retail, telecommunications and healthcare? Are there any surprising industry use cases?
We have partnered with companies like Comcast, Sam’s Club, Aeropostale, Bread Financial, Bayada Education and Action Karate to increase conversion rates for digital brand experiences by 40-400%. Although emotional drivers vary by verticality, the framework remains consistent: we deciphered what is important to a given consumer and helped brands align their experience accordingly.
What is your long-term vision for LEM?
Currently, we focus on using AI to help marketers and advertisers better connect with customers, and as our data continues to get better, our LEMs will get better. We recently expanded our platform beyond our website to support CTV through partnerships with LG AD Solutions and its Innovation Labs. Our goal is to expand the platform’s key consumer touchpoints to 2028 – video games, cars and connected homes, to name just a few.
How do you see emotionally intelligent AI reshape the next digital experience?
The ability to deliver a real-time, hyper-personalized experience on all digital platforms has become stronger than ever, creating new opportunities for partners. Artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence will continue to be adopted, and as these technologies and insights become more complex, they will be the driving force behind all digital media marketing efforts.
Our team is working to stay ahead of the curve. We recently announced a partnership with LG AD Solutions’ Innovation Lab to help CTV advertisers deliver an emotional experience in LG’s 200 million smart TV ecosystem, and we are working to bring our insights to other screens such as networks, mobile, mobile, AVS, AV, music, movies, more cars and more
We see the future of digital experiences shaped by AI and emotional intelligence. Businesses that cannot adapt to this shift risk will be left behind by competitors, who will respond more quickly to changes in consumer preferences and behaviors.
Thank you for your excellent interview, readers who hope to learn more should visit Zenapse.
