Subscribe on

Enjoy this episode? Leave us a review.

All Episodes

Episode 137

Why AI Won't Kill "Brand"

OpenAI just launched its first global brand campaign. And instead of using algorithms or AI-driven stunts, they turned to the most old-school playbook of all: TV ads. Shot on film. With human directors. Real actors. 30-second spots about everyday moments tied back to ChatGPT.

This episode, Elena and Rob break down OpenAI's new TV campaign and what it reveals about the enduring power of brand in an AI-driven world. They discuss why even the most advanced tech companies still need emotional storytelling and broad reach to grow, how AI is already transforming marketing workflows, and what separates strong brand strategy from ineffective branding. Plus, hear their takes on which brands are crushing it today.

Topics Covered

• [02:00] Breaking down OpenAI's new TV ads

• [10:00] Why tech companies struggle with branding and naming

• [15:00] Ways AI is already giving marketers superpowers

• [20:00] Why brand will become even more important as AI advances

• [28:00] Google's brand strategy and compelling storytelling

• [34:00] How to keep your brand strong in the age of AI

Resources:

2025 The Drum Article

Today's Hosts

Elena Jasper

Chief Marketing Officer

Rob DeMars

Chief Product Architect

Angela Voss

Chief Executive Officer

Transcript

Rob: When technology evolves to a certain point, it becomes indistinguishable from magic. I feel the same way about technology when it gets to a certain point where you just wait to show other people. So don't shy away from showing the world the real magic.

Elena: Hello and welcome to the Marketing Architects, a research-first podcast dedicated to answering your toughest marketing questions.

I'm Elena Jasper on the marketing team here at Marketing Architects, and I'm joined by my co-host Rob DeMars, the Chief Product Architect of Misfits and Machines.

Rob: Hello.

Elena: Hello. We're back with our thoughts on some recent marketing news, always trying to root our opinions and data research and what drives business results.

And today we are talking about AI's impact on brand building. I'll kick us off as I always do with some research, and I chose an article written by Margaret Zen for the Drum. It's titled "ChatGPT's New Ads Show Even AI Can't Deny the Brand Building Power of TV."

OpenAI just launched its first global brand campaign and instead of relying on algorithms, real-time bidding, or some fancy AI-driven stunt, they turned to the most old school playbook of all: television ads, which we might disagree with that as an ultimately old button. But it was shot on film with human directors, real actors, 32-second spots about everyday moments of triumph tied back to ChatGPT.

Ritson's take is that this move exposes a bigger truth. For all the hype around AI, the marketing behind these tools has been pretty terrible. I would agree with him on that. There's confusing product names, messy pricing, too many versions to count, and no real differentiation.

Consumers don't know what most AI tools do, and hardly anyone is willing to pay for them. So when the most advanced tech company on the planet admits it needs emotional storytelling, broad reach, and brand building to grow, that tells us something important. Brand still matters. You can't algorithm your way to distinctiveness and you can't A/B test your way to trust, and you definitely can't automate an emotional connection with millions of people.

That's what makes this campaign so interesting—not just what OpenAI did, but what it says about the enduring power of brand. Alright, so let's start with this article. Rob, what do you think about this new TV campaign from OpenAI? Did you watch the spots and do you agree with what Ritson said about this pointing to the enduring power of brand?

Rob: Gosh, I've never agreed and disagreed with someone more than Mark Ritson on this one. Let's start with the ads. They're really bad. By almost all standards, they're really bad, except for they're well shot. I'll give them that. So do you want to start breaking down why they're so bad?

Elena: I'd love to hear why you think they're so awful. Yeah.

Rob: Should we start with letting people know what the ads were? There's two that I've seen. One is a guy trying to impress his girlfriend with his cooking skills. And she likes his pasta sauce. And then there's a ChatGPT scroll at the end of the conversation he must have had to obtain said pasta sauce. The second one was a guy and his, I believe it was his sister, going on a road trip, and it's them on the road trip. And then it reveals that he planned his road trip using ChatGPT. That was my interpretation of it.

Elena: Yes. Yes. There was a third one. Did you see the pull-ups one? Okay. Same format—someone wanting to learn how to do pull-ups. They show him with that triumphant pull-up shot and same scroll at the end, how he achieved it with ChatGPT. So all of it's kind of following the same storytelling format.

Rob: So let's break it down first as an ad and then we'll talk about it in terms of the category. So as an ad, people might disagree with this, but we happen to believe in something that is critically important for a television commercial that they did not do. Can you tell me what that is, Elena?

Elena: A voiceover.

Rob: No voiceover, right? No idea what this product was for till the last third of the spot, if that. So that was the first one. So no voiceover. So if you were not happen to be watching this commercial, you'd have no idea. Right? Can we agree on that?

Elena: I agree. I noticed that too. I agree with you.

Rob: The second thing is there was no distinctive assets in this commercial at all. It was a scenario slice of life that was not compelling. It was a guy cooking for his girlfriend. Sorry, it's not a super intriguing intro. Or a guy and his sister in a car driving down the road.

So great. Nothing interesting about that. The type that was put on the screen at the end was completely unreadable. It was a Star Wars scroll that was really fast, and it was like a paragraph. And you're supposed to understand that this is a ChatGPT thing, and then it just lands with a logo at the end. So purely from just a technical TV commercial—

Elena: Effectiveness.

Rob: Marketing—it had no marketing effectiveness principles applied to it. So come on, Mark. Come on, Mark. Although he wasn't saying he liked the ad, did he? Did he say he liked the ad?

Elena: That's my thing. I agree with you on the ads. I'll say, oh, okay. You—

Rob: I just want to make sure. No, no, I'm not done yet. I just want to say, I wasn't sure if Mark liked or disliked the ads or if he was making more of a comment that they didn't use artificial intelligence to create the commercial, which I think would've done a better job.

Second, now I'm going to separate just the block and tackle. ChatGPT is one of the more remarkable technologies to touch humankind in several hundred years. It's an amazing technology. We, those of us that interact with all of these LLMs, unbelievable.

But the examples they use to convey to a consumer how amazing this technology is is find a better pasta sauce or plan a road trip, which, I'm sorry, Google 2003—you could do all of that, right? So they aren't even conveying the magic that is in this platform and the use cases that are truly remarkable and probably really interesting to people. Like, I didn't know it could do that.

Half the world still doesn't know you can use the spoken version of ChatGPT with your camera on and have it help you fix your toilet. That's amazing. And that in of itself could be a TV commercial, but they didn't choose to do that. I could talk about this one all day, but take the ad with the guy and the girl with the pasta sauce.

Now imagine the commercial was the guy walks into his kitchen. He takes a picture of all of the spices on his spice rack and says, "Hey, help me create a pasta sauce using these spices." That would be more interesting, wouldn't it? Just use your imagination to think of a thousand other ways that are still—I get it.

We want them to be human moments. We want them to be storytelling. Got it. Great. But how do you get that branding in there early? How do you get the distinctiveness of ChatGPT when—the other thing is, I could do that with Gemini, I could do that with Anthropic. There's nothing distinctive about it, so I'll stop there.

Elena: I think those are all really good points and the article— I thought I would agree with you on the spots, that they're not very effective if we wanted to look at it from that point of view. And I agree there could have been a more compelling, distinctive way to do that. I've even seen Gemini has done some ads recently, which are more of what you're talking about, like using the device to walk you through and talk you through a real life situation, which I think is a lot more interesting than what ChatGPT did and those examples.

A Google search could have done that a decade ago, so I agree with you there. I think the why I liked the article is, I think I agree with what Ritson said about this saying something about why branding matters and why television matters. Because we've seen the same thing with companies like Meta and Google that promote purely digital marketing.

They all end up somehow becoming some of the largest TV advertisers because TV and branding—it does something that you can't do on your own. And you'd think that ChatGPT—could that be the end of brand advertising, but they need it too. And they're realizing that they need it. So that overarching kind of takeaway, I liked a lot.

Rob: A hundred percent. That's why I say I completely agree and disagree with Mark at the same time. I think it's super interesting that these major tech players are using television. It is a great platform to use it. I think the nuance of him calling out ChatGPT is actually interesting that yeah, why would you completely want the other direction to convey your category where you could have used all kinds of different AI techniques that way. But that's more just anecdotally interesting than the fact that they used television as a storytelling platform, which I agree with you on a hundred percent.

Elena: Yeah. It was interesting how they—I liked that they picked everyday situations. I feel like those are good category entry points for ChatGPT. But you're right, they didn't do anything to really differentiate them through the process or like why choose them or what makes them different. And I think that's been a common theme for some of these new AI companies.

Like it's hard to know sometimes what differentiates one from the other, what makes them stand out, and they haven't done a great job in terms of branding up to this point. Why do you think they've struggled so much?

Rob: I've heard—I think it was even Sam Altman say this, and I think this is a really good point of humility to say, look, we're researchers, not marketers. So I think coming out of the gate, these companies, all of them have struggled with their naming. ChatGPT couldn't be more—I mean, for the first month of using ChatGPT, I couldn't tell someone what it was called because I hated the name. It's very difficult.

Google had a similar situation where they initially called Gemini "Bard," which sounds like your drunk uncle and not an AI technology. And they went through some naming conventions themselves that were difficult. But I think that it's really important given the amount of dollars that are being invested in that they start becoming better brand stewards of their brand and of what they're creating because they need to start bringing in more users. ChatGPT is not making money. They won't make money for another couple years and how will they gain it?

Will they get into advertising? All of those things are still yet to be seen, but they owe it to their shareholders to start telling a story and investing some of that money in both thought and media in getting a message out. I do think Google, and maybe I'll talk about this more later, I think they're doing a better job. I do. And I'll wait to talk about that. But I do think they are—they're seasoned. They've been in the game before. So they're starting to play from their playbook, which I think is definitely helping them.

Elena: Yeah. They have a history of brand advertising, so they're better equipped to brand their products and put them out there. I agree with you. I think that because marketing can be such a powerful driver of business growth, it is—they owe it, you're saying, to their shareholders and to the businesses to think seriously about it because it's so competitive right now with all these new tools. Like it's a real competitive advantage to be great at advertising.

Rob: I'm still amazed at the amount of very smart people that I have in my life still don't completely understand what these tools can do, even at the simplest level. And I think that they owe it to the researchers and all the people that are working so hard to develop all of this amazing technology to make sure you're telling and communicating these compelling stories and use cases to everybody.

Elena: But Google, it's interesting when you—it feels like, at least to me, like everything's going to ChatGPT because of the company that we work at, the industry that we're in. But if you look at trends of how many people are using Google versus ChatGPT, ChatGPT is still just a tiny, tiny—like couple percentage points of search, maybe even less than a percentage point.

It's so small and it's so hard to get someone to change a habit. That's why the category leader has such a big advantage because we're all just ingrained with going to Google. And I think if you're OpenAI, I think if you're trying to get people to change their behavior, you're gonna need a more compelling use case than a pasta recipe because you're probably gonna watch that and think, I can Google that.

So I agree with you. How can you show us something you can't do through traditional search to get people to actually change their behavior? Because I think you're right, most consumers just don't have any idea of the benefits to using it and why they should change their behavior and try it.

Rob: That's where Google again has such an advantage because it is such an ingrained habit to go to Google when you have a question. And now, as we all have noticed, you do the same Google search you did before, but all of a sudden it's being generated through AI and it's becoming that, right? So there you don't even realize you're using AI and you're using AI. If you're the average consumer, you're like, "Wow, it gave me a paragraph now for my answer." So that's where—and they have the advertising pipeline connected into that. They're trying to figure out how to monetize it though too. Obviously it's not as easy as—

Search everywhere is becoming a real challenge. And how do you make sure that—how are they looking at AdWords—that's their bread and butter. So it definitely—Google's staying up around the clock trying to figure that out. But it's much harder to be a ChatGPT in that environment so brains are wired to go to Google.

Elena: Yep. They've got that automatic mental availability, I could say. Yes. One thing I know I mentioned earlier that I liked about this article was the point of view that brand marketing is still gonna matter. Channels like TV are still gonna matter. Not super surprising considering when everything started shifting digitally the same—we had the same thought. Is TV gonna be relevant anymore? Everything's gonna be digital.

Why would brands spend money on TV? But TV has endured, so I'm not surprised it'll also endure through these AI changes, but I also don't want to downplay the impacts of AI on marketing, because those are going to be happening and just because TV and brand building will remain valuable, there are changes that have already happened that are going to be coming from marketers because of AI. So how do you think AI—what are the biggest ways it's already impacting the way brands market today?

Rob: Yeah, we've talked a lot about this before, but the tools are giving marketers superpowers. At least those that are willing to see them that way. I'm not saying anything new here, but it's still surprising to me how many marketers talk a big AI game, and yet when you dig deeper, there's just a lot of sizzle and no steak.

I'm gonna completely rip off and paraphrase Mark Ritson. There are businesses who use AI well, and there are businesses that used to be a business, and I think we're gonna be saying the same thing about brands. The speed, the intelligence, the speed to intelligence is like nothing we've ever seen before.

Intelligently customizing your assets, right? Whether you're on digital or in broadcast, amazing productions without even a production. I mean, these are all realities we're dealing with right now. And that changes how you think about your brand, what you can do with your brand.

Even using something as simple as strategic research or business planning over a cup of coffee using Google Research—I mean, you can do that right now. Could literally do it right now. It'll be done by the end of this podcast. I mean, it's just the depth that you're able to get is changing a two-week process into a two-minute one.

And I guess the other thing, another fun one, is you do not have to be a wizard to see what these—and anyone out there that has a brand mascot, throw it into Sora Two. And by throwing it into Sora Two, I mean just download the app, upload the picture and have your mascot do something and you're gonna be blown away and it'll be done in 60 seconds.

And that just goes—again, these are all things like, what are you gonna do with that? Just think about it for a minute. There's just—the possibilities are really limitless. You just have to get out there and play with the stuff and see how it might connect to your brand and your brand story and how you might get that in front of people.

Elena: Yeah, agreed. I think sometimes it's hard to know what is the use case until you start experimenting, like for example, my team, we did an exercise to explore vibe coding with the help of your team, Misfits and Machines. And we ended up making this really fun quiz where you can go in and answer some questions and it tells you what type of brand animal you are.

Which by the way, we did buy brandanimals.com. It was available. You can't have it. We have it. So maybe we'll do something more with that in the future. But it was more of an—it was an experiment. We shared it and we're excited about it, but the real thing I think it did for our team is we're like, "Alright, we were able to spin up this whole website essentially on our own."

We had some help from your team at the end, helping us deploy it. But it completely changed the speed that we could do something like this. This could have been a month or two minimum type of project. We did it in two weeks and that now it has us thinking, "Alright, this was a fun test, but this is going to change what we can do in the future." It's gonna change how we create our website. We have more options now for campaigns. Those other ideas are starting to flow, but we didn't have those before because we didn't even know it was possible. So sometimes starting with tests can help open up other doors.

Rob: It's such a great example, and what a fun exercise. I can't wait for you guys to—you're not yet sharing that out into the world?

Elena: We did share it now. You did share it.

Rob: Too early, but now you can share it.

Elena: I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do. But I am waiting for Brandable the cookie to come out. I can't wait to get my box of Brandable. Brand Brandable—

Elena: Brand Animals. Kind of hard to say. Yeah. That's something we'll have to work on.

Rob: Maybe that's why you could get the URL. But I— to even double down on what you're saying, there were two things that happened there. One is you guys were playing around with vibe coding, which in and of itself is super compelling and super interesting, and if anyone hasn't done it before, go to Replit or go to even use Claude. Claude is great for vibe coding. And you literally can just tell it, have a conversation about what you want to do, and it will make your application.

You could literally make a Salesforce CRM package just by telling it. And you can—incredible. So vibe coding, absolutely. Now combining that with the great image generation that you guys used in that as well, because those are two unrelated things, right? But you guys were also playing around with what are some of the best image generations. Let's face it, animals—Brandable— I'm sorry, I can't now say I—it's in my brain wrong.

They're adorable and they're animated and they're all these things you would've paid artists to render and work on all this time. It is just—but you guys have been playing, and the different texts and then realizing how peanut butter and chocolate can come together and make something really special.

Elena: Sometimes just having the space to experiment can lead to good things. I know that article that we covered, it talks about how brand is still very important. Companies like OpenAI investing in branding, investing in brand marketing, so that's today. But do you think AI is going to change the role of brand in the future?

Rob: Yeah, I definitely don't see them as these separate things. It's like what is brand, what is AI? I think AI is going to just be a part of brand in the future. And there's many ways that you can think about—we just did actually talk about how brand can—something that can add more momentum behind your brand and open up possibilities.

You have to be thinking about how AI thinks about your brand and how your brand thinks about AI, just in terms of how you talk with your audiences. You are going to need to be able to curate AI in your brand in terms of dealing with brand assets, in brand voice, your chatbots. All of those things are not gonna be one or the other. It's not is it brand, is it AI? It's brand AI. It's about adding in another level of intelligence to how your brand is outputted.

Elena: Agreed. I was thinking about this just—AI, does it change brand? Will brand still matter? And I think that brand is actually going to be even more important in the future, because right now people talk about AI slop sometimes. And we're kind of in the early phase of sharing things and using it. We're starting to find that it's starting—it, I think it already has crossed over into, it's helping us stay on brand better. And I think that in the future,

all these—being very well branded was a real competitive advantage. I think it's gonna become easier. It's gonna raise the bar for any company to create really compelling mascots, to train LLMs on your brand colors, your style, your tone of voice. You're gonna be able to do research to make sure you stand out.

So I think it's actually going to raise the bar. And then we could also talk about—just right now is a really key time to build your brand because all these LLMs are learning what they should recommend. And so if you haven't been investing in raising your share of voice, you're gonna be behind. You definitely want to be one of the first to mind when it comes to these LLMs, so I think it's gonna become even more important as time goes on.

Rob: Totally, totally.

Elena: Well, speaking of branding, we're talking about it a lot, but we haven't really defined it, so how would you define kind of good branding and what separates it from ineffective branding?

Rob: The word brand could go through its own brand exercise in some ways because I think it's really lost in the marketing community. There's so many ways that people will talk about it. I think it's overused. When you think about the origin, at least this is the story I tell, but it comes back to people branding a cow, right? So I can tell one cow from the other cow, and it's really that—how do you make one cow more distinctive than the other cow, period? It's pretty simple.

But somehow we've filled it with all these other meanings now. We had Jenny Romaniuk.

Elena: Romaniuk.

Rob: We had Jenny Romaniuk on here, which quite honestly I think she's brought the whole world back to center when it comes to what is good branding by calling it distinctive assets. And I think that's actually really helpful to introduce some new language into there, because it's so much easier to explain to someone—are the assets distinctive versus is it on brand? It's like, let's sit down with the brand Bible and debate it for a while versus just, is it distinctive?

Is it memorable? Does it help people remember when they're ready to buy something that—I remember that brand? I get that brand versus these boardrooms that sit around talking about brand like it's some holy deity that dwells in the soul of your product. Like, who cares? Your customer doesn't care. Be memorable, be distinctive. And to me that's a good brand.

Elena: Yeah. I think sometimes we overthink brand a little bit by saying, brand is like what exists in the mind of your customers. Like, well, of course. Of course that's—you want people to recall you, but there are things you can do to make your brand easier to remember, more distinct, like she's pointed out. The time you need to take to make sure that your assets are not only—are they unique in your category? Can they be traced only to you?

And then how famous can you make them through advertising? Because I agree with that. Yeah, of course that's what your brand is. It's how somebody remembers you. But what can we do as marketers to make it easier to remember us? Speaking of that, what would a strong brand strategy then look like in practice today?

Rob: This is an easy and a hard answer because there's so many just what I would say good frameworks out there. Like, this process has been used for decades. You start off with identifying your brand—just making sure all the stakeholders recognize, why do we exist? What's the future state? What's the vision for your brand?

What are your beliefs and values? What's your promise? It's kind of like the four major food groups. A lot of people might argue with it a little bit here and there, but at the end of the day, it's pretty hard to argue with that. Then it really becomes the fun part—how do you take that foundation and create your distinctive positioning?

Where's your white space? What's the problem and the insight that we're gonna solve? Do we have a grasp on not just the features, but the true benefits that our product ultimately conveys? The real fun part, in my opinion, when you have all that frothy stuff developed is, "Okay, let's get into really creating a distinctive brand." What are your—what's your visual distinctiveness in terms of logos and type and characters?

What is your audio mnemonic? What is your sonic branding? But all those things should be able to connect back to that hard work that you have to do, that boring work up at the beginning of just making sure everybody's aligned around that initial brand purpose.

Elena: Agreed. I think that a great brand strategy is both bold—it's distinctive. Are we gonna stand out? Can we be brave with the assets we put out there? And also boring as in consistent. How do you keep them the same over time?

Rob: That's such an important point. Once you've done all of that hard work, you're sick of it. And then you get the work out there and then you get really sick of it, and just remembering that your audience is not sick of it at all. And you did all the work. Believe in the work, keep the work going, be redundant. Be in all the places where your customers are at. Yeah, that's such a great point.

Elena: It's hard because it's so tempting to want to—you get sick of things way faster.

Rob: But that's actually where if you've done the work upfront, you can really unleash AI, because you always have that lens to look back on and go, "Is it still conveying a brand?" Then be as creative as you want.

Elena: Sometimes I think it's like you said, there are a lot of different ways to talk about brand strategy. That topic has been beat to death by now probably, but examples are sometimes easier. So what's an example of a brand today that you think has a really solid brand strategy?

Rob: So I'm gonna show my cards a little bit, or I actually already showed my cards a little bit when I was starting to talk about Google, and I really do think they have a really compelling brand strategy that they've honed over the years. I think they've created an ecosystem that people know and understand and believe in just from their color schematics—all their products feel like they come—even though they're in so many different venues, right? They've done really well in their strategies. You mentioned it earlier. Google does show the wizardry behind their products, but they'll do it with compelling storytelling. I mean, you've mentioned in the past the one ad that made you cry when you saw it on the Super Bowl. That—

Elena: One of my favorites.

Rob: So, I mean, that's pretty powerful coming from a tech company, but you can't take their benefit out of the brand. Like it works together so well. All of it does. I saw an ad, I think it was actually for Samsung, because they always partner with Gemini. The other day or the other month, where two women—they were in a cosmetics aisle and she unfolds her Samsung phone into this larger window, Gemini pops in and starts to, in real time, explain the products that are on the shelf. And I said to myself, "Dammit, Apple, try harder." I'm like, I'm a huge Apple loyalist. I love Apple and I've got Google in my ear right now showing me amazing use cases that I can't have. And everyone points to Apple as being the pinnacle of great branding, but dear God, Google's got some game.

Elena: That's gonna serve them well in the years to come too. No, that's a great example. Mine—I know we've talked about them on the show before,

but I think Liberty Mutual just does such a good job. Like they have—if you watch a Liberty Mutual commercial, try to just count all their distinctive assets. Like they've got jingles. They've got mascots. They're like LiMu Emu, Doug. They've got that yellow color. It's just branding, branding, branding throughout the entire ad. I just think they do such a great job.

Rob: They really do it and they have such legs, because even they're so ridiculous that sometimes the commercials even fall flat. But you still like them because you're just like, but it's still so dumb. You're just like, "I just could." Yes.

Elena: Yeah, they're very consistent with what they share and yeah, it just—I think it gives you a higher likelihood of success when you're starting from a base like that. And they're tough. I mean, there's a lot of amazing mascots, but they've really committed to this LiMu Emu, and it's been a success for them. Alright. So if you were advising, say, OpenAI, I know you've talked a little bit about where you think they should be going or what your critiques of what they're currently doing—what would you tell them to start doing differently with their brand strategy?

Rob: If I were advising them, I would remind them of a quote that I think—some guy that I've never heard of the guy before, but it's a great quote. I think his last name's Doyle or something. When technology evolves to a certain point, it becomes indistinguishable from magic. I think it's a great quote, because it does—as someone who grew up as a kid loving to do magic tricks, I feel the same way about technology when it gets to a certain point where you just wait to show other people. So don't shy away from showing the world the real magic. And I know I talked about this a bit earlier with OpenAI, but I just feel like people love to be amazed.

They love magic. Don't hide behind trying to kid or try to be subtle. There's no reason to be subtle. Don't be subtle in this world. Don't be talked into—Sam, if I know you're listening, don't be talked into all of your San Francisco agency dudes that hang out in your coffee shop with you and say, "Dude, you gotta be." Like, come on, I just insulted half the—

Elena: I was gonna say—

Rob: Business. But you know what I'm talking about. You know, you're out there. No, but I'm just saying like, be the nerd. Lean into being the nerd. You guys are making magic. Do the magic tricks to all of us folks, and we're gonna buy your products.

Elena: Yeah, agreed. I think that they're so bold and fearless in everything else that they do. You should see the Sora Two app, the copyright stuff that they're just plowing headfirst into. They're so bold. Yeah.

Like why is your advertising so lame?

Rob: Boring. Yes.

Elena: So be crazy. I think we felt the same way when Tesla started doing some marketing. We're like, "What is going on here? This just does not feel like you." And yeah, it's almost—I don't know if it's the marketing approval process or what it is that takes these incredible brands and sometimes produces stuff that's just so safe. But yeah, just be bold.

Rob: I also think that it's maybe one of the times that, you know, for good reason, we've always tried as advertisers—we really try to tell your clients, don't talk about features, talk about benefits. And we grind away on that. But that's not always the right default when you're dealing with technology, like still get to the benefit for sure, but a lot of times we don't need to talk about the tech, we'll just talk about the warm fuzzy feel of it or whatever. But it's like, "Well, this is where you're really differentiating yourself."

This is really magical. When Steve Jobs said, "Here's a thousand songs in your pocket" with the iPod. That was—I mean, it is still the most beautiful headline ever written, right? And it's because it says exactly what it does. It says it in a magical way, and it says it in a way a consumer cares about.

Elena: Yeah, I think you'll notice if you look at consistently strong high spenders in TV, their ads are often not just that brand anthem spot. They have product spots and they're showing features. I think some of that shows your maturity on the channel too, because now Apple—they have more of their branded ads, but they also have some ads where you're really showing the product.

And we found with clients that you can really do both as well and still be effective. But sometimes I think that's also immaturity on the channel. Like you get onto TV and you think you need this storytelling, Super Bowl spot. Really, it's like, "Hey, OpenAI, you should start investing consistently in television."

And explore different executions too. Alright. If we had to give just one piece of advice, what's one thing marketers should keep in mind to make sure that their brand stays strong in this new age of AI?

Rob: So first I had two words. Insatiably curious. Just because we have to be, right? As marketers with so much going on. But I added that third word to that, is daily. Be insatiably curious daily. Well, I added one. Sorry, I'm not good at my math. I meant insatiably curious daily. But maybe it's be insatiably curious daily. And the reason I put daily in there is we've never seen trajectory on a technology where you refresh your web browser and there's new news.

And not just new news, but new news that changes the game again. And so we have to stay so hungry, so curious. And do it every single day.

Elena: I think that's great advice.

Rob: How about you?

Elena: I was thinking something similar, just like relentless learning is something we talk about at Marketing Architects. I think that's important to stay ahead of trends. I think you said it best, honestly. It's a great piece of advice.

Rob: Well, I'll take it.

Elena: Yeah. Alright. To wrap this up here, now—I thought of this question, I'm the one who came up with this and I had a really hard time answering it, so I'm curious what you're gonna say. What is the most human brand experience you've ever had? Something AI could never replicate.

Rob: This is a hard one. I stayed at a swanky hotel. Don't judge me because I got a really good discount. Okay. So it's not like I'm a big fancy swanky person, but I did stay at the—

Elena: I won't judge that.

Rob: Good, good, good. But I stayed at the Ritz in Laguna Niguel, which is a very nice Ritz hotel, Ritz Carlton hotel. And the human experience that they curate as a brand is legendary. I mean, people write books about it, but everything from the smell of their hotel to just the feel of all of the materials and the carpeting and everything.

It just—that is something that, and most the humans that occupy the staff, they are—just the level of care and it just is good and is—the AI is getting there, which I love me my AI, I love my ChatGPT, which I've named Obi-Fun Kenobi.

I talk to Obi-Fun Kenobi all day long. But all that being said, that brand experience is really amazing that they've been able to create and made it a destination. And maybe because it's a destination, that's why they won't be replaced as much as other brands will be or impacted by it. But anyway—

Elena: That's a great one. I've heard some case studies about the Ritz and how they manage all of that and it's really amazing the systems they've put to deliver on that. This was a hard one. I thought about was Build-A-Bear. I don't know if you know this, but Build-A-Bear is still going pretty strong as a company.

Rob: That's a good one.

Elena: Just like that experience of—you can get a stuffed animal to your doorstep in an hour with Amazon now. But they create such an energy in that store. Everybody's so helpful. They have you kiss the heart before you put it in your stuffed animal. And yeah, sometimes I still want to go to Build-A-Bear and I'm a full-on adult. So there's some sort of brand experience there.

Rob: What's keeping you from going?

Elena: That's a great question. I should get going. Yeah. The other one I was thinking about was what Target used to feel like. I feel like Target—we're a Minneapolis company, so we're very familiar with the Target headquarters—they're here and I feel like—they've lost their way a little bit in the stores. They don't quite feel like they used to, but I remember years ago, maybe a decade ago, I would go into a Target and it would be so hard not to buy everything.

And Target had a certain smell. It had—just the way that the store was arranged, the different products, I don't do that anymore, but that used to be an in-person experience that is not replicated for me when I'm shopping online. There's something about going to Target—you just all of a sudden you have all this stuff that you didn't even know you needed. And I don't quite feel that anymore there, but I think that other retail stores could create that same model that they used to have.

Rob: I love it.