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- [00:00]
A
I wish brands had personality again. Everyone's so scared. Everyone's like, oh, this is my, you know, my turf. But those were awesome.
- [00:12]
B
Welcome to Culture and Code, a podcast about the biggest shifts in culture and tech. I'm Rei Namoto, a creative entrepreneur and founding partner of Ianco, a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo and Singapore.
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A
And I'm Tara Tan, managing director and designer, turn investor at Strange Ventures, an early stage fund focused on the future of computing.
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B
All right, so today's topic is a timely one. It just happens. Within the past week, week and a half or so, two of the biggest AI companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, they both launched advertising campaigns. The campaign from anthropic launched about 10 days ago and it's this what I would call antemic spot where they talk about the idea of thinking in a somewhat philosophical and to some extent you can argue that inspirational way to encourage people to keep thinking. And also indirectly indicating that Anthropic and Claude is for a certain type of people who like to think deeper. That's at least what I took away from this one spot. And then, you know, the campaign around it. And. And then just two days ago, OpenAI launched a series of spots with, you know, other advertising execution, supporting, sort of reflecting real life and real life moments and how people might be using ChatGPT just to get like, tips on life. One is about a guy asking for a recipe that would impress a date but keeping it cool. And you know, ChatGPT gives a set of instructions to play cool. So I thought it was the way they approached announcing or either marketing themselves slightly differently, but different enough that it's creating a debate. So I'll stop there and, you know, what you've seen on your feed, which is, I'm sure, different from my feed, and what your reaction and impression might be.
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A
Honestly, I did spend a ton of time on it, as in just reading through the takes on my feed. And I mean, I'd be more interested to hear what you think versus what's on your feed.
- [02:21]
B
I think within the past like six to nine month, as these AI companies are growing pretty rapidly. You know, OpenAI has been around less than 10 years. Anthropic was started by some of the original OpenAI people, so hasn't been around that long either. But for them to reach a point where they are starting to invest a lot of money into advertising. The first time that I noticed one of these companies putting a lot of money behind what they say was during the super bowl back in January and OpenAI had a spa that announced the arrival of intelligence Age. And it was this sequence of black and white footage, somewhat abstracted with like the evolution of different types of inventions throughout humanity. And then claiming that we are entering the intelligence age. Which I don't necessarily disagree, but it was somewhat philosophical and I thought it was cool, but I questioned how many people cared about it, to be completely honest. Yeah. And then nine months, fast forward the series of spots from OpenAI, which, like I said, are reflections of different life moments. One is about, like I said, a guy and a girl. It's unclear they are an official couple or not, but guys cooking. The girl is tasting pasta that he cooked. And then on screen there's just a simple prompt that says, I need a recipe to impress my date, but keep it cool. Something like that. And then it then shows a scrolling block of text that is the instruction to create that dish. And then the camera just pans out outside of the apartment and there's just the logo. OpenAI and ChatGPT. So it's pretty minimal in terms of what it's showing or expressing. But I think what it's trying to convey is that ChatGPT is a useful tool that can support you, that can give you ideas, that can take you to different places. Another one is a guy just doing pull ups and then again, you know, this guy just huffing and puffing, doing pull ups. The prompt on screen asking a question about how to do pull ups. Again, simple, mundane, everyday moments. I don't know if these prompts are real prompts that people entered into ChatGPT, but they seem real, they feel pretty authentic.
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A
Yeah, yeah, I guess. As a recovering ad ad or ad man, what do you think is behind these recovery? Yeah, yeah. As a recovering admin, what do you think is behind the sort of, you know, the way they design the ads and the messaging? Because obviously it's all quite crafted.
- [05:18]
B
Yeah, very crafted. Very crafted. Yeah. I thought that I've always had a cynical point of view towards advertising throughout my career, even to this day. And even with that cynical point of view towards advertising, I was actually pretty impressed how even though these are staged stories, how authentic they felt. And even though the specific scenes in these particular OpenAI spots didn't apply to me directly, they resonated. Or I could relay, oh, you know what, this is how people are using ChatGPT, or some people might be using ChatGPT. I use it differently, obviously, but I could relate. And there was a hint of emotional resonance that these film based storytelling pieces did well, to connect. And it was showing the capability of the product without being like, feature heavy. Because a lot of tech ads tend to be feature writers demonstrating this feature.
- [06:22]
A
That feature, which is definitely very deliberate. Right. They did put a very human first approach to this advertising campaign. What I read was that they hired the stylist from Euphoria. So it definitely has that vibe of, you know, relatable, raw, authentic. And I would say, you know, AI has an image problem. Like it has an image problem. Right. Generally, like the industry, everyone's like, wow, so cool. But, you know, what you see in the news is billions being thrown everywhere, destroying the environment, data centers, you know, it's quite dystopian. So I do think they have an image problem. And clearly these ads are designed to address that by giving it, you know, humanizing the technology in many ways.
- [07:04]
B
I mean, on that topic, in the past year, there have been multiple cases of parents suing because their kids use ChatGPT or their AI tools to get instructions on how to commit suicide, basically. So the image issue is I don't think it's going to go away. And I wonder if that was somewhere in the conversation, either explicitly or at least implicitly, to sort of overcorrect the image problem. I mean, there are different types of image problem. The image problem that you're talking about from financial side or environmental side, in my case, it's, you know, that's a social issue with people's mental health and things like that. So there are multiple types of image bombs. Right.
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A
Bernard Leaf Spirit has always come across as quite a hard and cold technology. Right. Like, the people who are leading it tend to be billionaires with a lot of power, a lot of money, and I think in this time and day and age, it can feel very dystopian. But people do find usefulness in it. And I think that they are definitely trying to humanize the technology through this series of campaigns, which is interesting from.
- [08:15]
B
A storytelling perspective, creative perspective. What I appreciate about the OpenAI spots was that it wasn't trying to say too much. It was pretty. Each spot was quite simple and it was just reflecting an ordinary scene in a simple, direct way that didn't require a lot of frills and shiny things to tell from that perspective. I thought it was well done. It was tastefully done. I would say the challenge and I think the test for the brand of an AI moving forward is, is that just a facade to other things that they do and how they behave as a corporation and whether these spots will be lipstick On a pig type, performative expression versus real reflection. Reflection of who they are. And I think that would be the test in the next, you know, 3, 6, 9, 12 month. And you can spend millions of dollars saying things that you are this or that, but if your actions don't reflect what's shown in these spots, either directly or indirectly, you know.
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A
Yeah, I mean, I would say that. I mean, I would say the human stories are true. I found it to be very helpful, you know, and I wouldn't say like they're overplaying it. I do think that it is a little buried generally under the news cycle, like these, you know, sort of smaller human stories that have added meaning. Right. To many of our lives. Like it's definitely a kind of a groundbreaking technology in that sense.
- [09:47]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, even within the past couple of days there have been multiple headlines about OpenAI this particular campaign. One was a smaller one, I would say. There were other, you know, features and partnerships and other things that were either talked about as much or if not more so. And like I said at the beginning, I don't necessarily subscribe to the advertising doctrine as a way to create perception. I do think just having read some of the interviews and the analysis and things like that, I do think their heart is in the right place, or at least it seems like their heart is in the right place. So what will be interesting is, you know, what is this going to move a needle one way or another or say a month from now the world has moved on to something else, which is very possible. Yeah. And then just to touch upon Anthropic and Claude, which launched about like a week or a week and a half ago. I think it's a valid approach. I want to be a little bit careful because I know the people who've worked on both of those campaigns and you know, there are a lot of individuals that I respect and creatively speaking, both of them have a certain caliber and certain quality at the same time. Just in general, you know, the effectiveness of advertising is. Has changed quite a bit and that the format of advertising or format of marketing has changed quite a bit. So these quote unquote spots, the effectiveness, I think is, is not where it used to be. You know, even five years ago, I.
- [11:22]
A
Think it still reaches the audience that they want to reach. Right. So like they're not trying to reach the tech audience with this.
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B
Oh, definitely not definitely our tech agent.
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A
Adjacent audiences, obviously these are targeted towards much more mainstream folks and that's why the storytelling, the format, you know, the super bowl, like ads kind of, you know, target that sort of mainstream.
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B
Definitely.
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A
It's, you know, much more of a broader base. And I do think for that effect, I think that it achieves what they're setting out to do, which is to expand their market beyond people who are using them already or are already in the tech industry. So not really people like us, right? Yeah, I would say so. I think it's clearly sort of marketed towards that general population.
- [12:08]
B
Yeah. I think just a slightly larger topic is, is there technology and tech brands from your perspective, from an investor's perspective, looking at both small companies and paying attention to big companies, how much of it is purely the validity and the benefit of the product versus impression or perception plays a part?
- [12:34]
A
Huge. I mean, I would say, you know, hype can be a very catalyzing force for both private and public companies. So I think we sometimes underestimate the power of brand and brand mind share. Right. In terms of. Especially those who are creatives and have been working in the field. And we create the ads. I understand. So we know how the sausage is made. But really, it has immense power, immense power in the financial and capital markets. This is why OpenAI dominates news cycles, is because every time they have a news cycle, on that back of that news cycle, they raise a massive funding round.
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B
Right, Right.
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They do an incredible partnership. You know, same thing I talked about sort of that financing deal that Oracle made with OpenAI. It's a $300 billion deal for them to open OpenAI data centers, and their stock market on the back of the news cycle shot up 48%, 45% in a day.
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B
Oh, my God.
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So like billions of dollars. And on the back of that, they raised an $18 billion corporate bond.
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B
Right.
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A
So, like, there's a lot of capital that moves when brands move market. So I would say power of advertising, power of storytelling is so important. And the best founders and CEOs know how to wield it in a very powerful way.
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B
Yeah. On that note, like, Sam Altman is really capable in generating news on a constant basis, whether it's in the form of investment or partnership or other things. Advertising just happens to be a very small portion of it. Do you notice any other big or small companies that do well in terms of creating that awareness or news?
- [14:20]
A
I mean, there was a huge golden era of the Microsoft, Apple, Apple, BlackBerry. That was so good. I wish brands had personality again. Everyone's so scared. Everyone's like, oh, this is my, you know, my turf. But those were awesome.
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B
I'm talking about. I'M a Mac, I'm a PC.
- [14:40]
A
Yeah, that was great. Yeah, the, the Mac versus PC and then the BlackBerry versus Apple. The famous campaign where I think, what was it? BlackBerry did this little short and I'm sure we'll be able to show it where they shot a BlackBerry into an apple, like a physical apple, like a BlackBerry, a fruit. It's like a bullet. It's like a bullet that went through. Boom.
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B
Yeah.
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A
So good. And it was like something like shots fired or like it broke through. Broke the apple.
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B
Oh yeah, okay.
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A
It was like a bullet. And an Apple responded and did the same, exact same setup and said something like reality check or this is like, this is fact. Right? A BlackBerry cannot beat an Apple. It was such a fantastic campaign. But yeah, anyway, I was going to say like, you know, there was this era of like incredible ads that really carry brand story and brand personality and I would love to see more of that. I mean I live in San Francisco where the billboard ads are horrifically boring. Do you want more GPUs? Like seriously on the highways? The ads had zero imagination. They pitch you like want to inference faster.
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B
Oh my God.
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A
That's literally on a billboard.
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B
Yeah, that's literally like when I used to live in San Francisco this more ten years ago still. One billboard that I remember was actually from Google and it was a white background. It just had a sequence of numbers and I think they may have a Google logo on the corner but that was about it. You couldn't really understand what the sequence meant, but it was basically a way to recruit people, particularly engineers, to Google. So if you figured out what that sequence was, then you've earned the right to apply and, and only if thousand people saw it. Maybe only two people were interested enough or curious enough to explore and then you know, they went to apply for, you know, maybe it didn't even have a logo.
- [16:51]
A
It's like a developer easter egg. Yeah, there's some still some little campaigns. I think there was one recent one by a tech startup that did something very similar. They had like a developer easter egg that they had to crack, you know, to get to sort of the grand prize. But yeah, generally billboards in San Francisco are not interesting. Yeah, not interesting. And I like long for that era of tech brands actually having personality. Have some personality. That's okay.
- [17:21]
B
On a positive note, I mean we can debate the effectiveness of advertising and whatnot, but what I did appreciate about the effort from both anthropic and OpenAI is to infuse more humanity, to infuse more Emotiveness to the way they express themselves, because the world is dominated by CPUs and, you know, dollar signs and all those kind of things. And it was especially the OpenAI spots. To me, they were refreshing in seeing something from a. What could be a very functional product, you know, to have a little bit of emotive layer to it so that it wasn't just the speed or the number of, you know, lines or what have you.
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A
Yeah, it's a very, very deliberate move. Yes. I would argue, quite effective. Because it worked on you.
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B
Well, I mean, the fact that we were talking about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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A
So it's effective. Right? There you go. So one thing I had in mind was why didn't OpenAI make its ad with Sora? Why did it use real people?
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B
That is a good question. That is a good question. And I mean, on that note, and this is kind of technical, geeky detail, but they shot those films literally on 35 millimeter film. So it's not shot on digital camera. It's on. Shot on film camera, which, again, purely from a creative production perspective, It's. That happened 20 years ago, even 10. You know, I rarely meet creatives who are shooting on film. Maybe like, you know, Christopher Nolan, who insists on shooting on.
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A
There is some irony here. There is some irony here that.
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B
That is a point that I did not pick out. But they technically could have made the film with their own product, but they went the opposite way. Is a point that actually I haven't seen a lot of people talk about.
- [19:16]
A
You know, it's. It's very funny. I. I refuse to get LASIK surgery. I am very myopic and related. And the reason why is whenever I went for, you know, sort of a consultation or I met a LASIK surgeon, they were always wearing glasses. Always wore glasses. So I asked them, I said, why didn't you do Lasik? And they were like, oh, there's like a 0.01% chance, and I can't lose my eyesight. And I was like. I was like, I'm not doing it until you use products.
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B
They sell these procedures, but they don't do those procedures on themselves.
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A
These doctors, they often wear glasses. LASIK surgeons often wear glasses.
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B
That's so funny.
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A
I was like. I was like. From that on, I was like, I'm not quite convinced. Maybe not yet. I mean, obviously it worked very well for a lot of people, but it was very telling for me that, yeah, these surgeons still wear glasses.
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B
That is. That is super, super funny. You wear contact or You, I guess, glasses.
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A
Yeah, I do, I do, yeah.
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B
Yeah. I wear contact lenses as well.
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A
Yeah. So now next time you go for a LASIK consultation.
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B
Yeah. Well, that tells you. That tells you why. Why OpenAI didn't make their films using their own product.
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A
I mean, there's probably lots of reasons, but, yeah, I guess the reason was not to show off the technology, but to show off the humanity. Right. That was. That might have been the goal.
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B
Cool. So just to wrap up the conversation, I can share my key takeaway. And like I said, I am cynical about these kind of things, particularly the industry that I was part of for a long time. But I did appreciate the reflection of humanity in a way that was crafted really, really well. A couple other things that I appreciated was that the idea was quite simple. They weren't trying to say complicated things or a lot of things. They were just trying to. Trying to keep the story very simple and very straightforward. And then lastly, again, this is more from a creative perspective, but the executions had a good level of restraint, meaning that there weren't a lot of, like, frills added to it. They were shot straight on, not a lot of camera movement. And I think all of them are like just one shot and then. And, you know, starting with a simple line of prompt, there was no even, like, tagline or catchphrase. It was just the OpenAI logo and ChatGPT. That was it. So I really respected and appreciated the simplicity of the idea, the level craft, and then the restraint that they demonstrated in the final execution. So that's my takeaway. And it was nice to be reminded of those, you know, basic things.
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A
Yeah, I don't know. You know, I don't have a very clever takeaway. I guess my two things are, yeah, I wish tech brands brought back personality. You know, it was such a good era. Such a good era. And it was playful, it was cheeky, and it was all in good fun. And it was competitive.
- [22:12]
B
Yes, it was competitive. There was rivalry.
- [22:14]
A
Yeah, it was great. Yeah. My second thing is it's really made me realize how quick this technology is going. Like, ChatGPT was launched probably just a little under three years ago, and now we're kind of getting to the mainstream. So that's really quick.
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B
Very quick.
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A
Yeah, very quick.
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B
Cool. Awesome. All right.