ChatGPT's brand makeover, Apple's next chapter and Alec's ice cream, all the latest in brand news
Issue #74
Weekly Exhale
Surprise. OpenAI is running a brand campaign.
That’s right. The half-a-trillion tech superpower, whose valuation depends on vaporising all human consciousness, has commissioned a set of out-of-home posters and not one, not two, but three television spots.
And no, it’s not an AI-generated campaign either. It’s actual, old-fashioned advertising.
A human director—the sort who’s shot with Jay-Z and John Malcovich. A production team, capable of that A24 thing–all earth tones and sun-bleached realism. The kind of effortless look that takes a $35,000 ARRI lens, six lighting rigs and three days to pull off. Every scuff mark and prop placed to millimetre perfection. Clothing that looks like its been picked off the floor, styled by Euphoria’s Heidi Bivens.
Even the press release reads like dialogue from Seth Rogen’s The Studio. Each advert is shot like the final scene of a “tiny movie,” bathed in the grain and glow of 35mm film.
By craft standards, it’s as beautiful as it gets. Subtle. Considered. Precise. Just enough depth to pretend its not another insert-logo-here lifestyle moment—which, of course, it is.
Reality? The ads themselves don’t matter. The act of advertising does. The world’s most ascendent technology indulging in something as quaint and vintage as advertising. That said, nobody’s mentioned an actual media budget. Nobody cares, I guess. The marketing press are rolling around in it. It’s in our feeds. That’s enough to make it real.
The reactions follow the Kũbler-Ross curve:
Shock: OMG, ChatGPT is doing brand advertising. Differentiation matters! Anger: They didn’t even use their own tools. I told you AI sucked. Acceptance: They way they rolled the prompt at the end like movie credits? Genius.
Which leaves us with questions unanswered: Why is OpenAI advertising? And should it worry us—or inspire us?
The 101 marketing response is that LLMs have maxed out, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Deep Seek, and whoever comes next have all blended ChatGPT into a soup of AI-sameness. We don’t know, or care, which one we’re slurping on.
So, it needs an original-and-best strategy. You know like Kleenex. Or ketchup.
(Which would also be a sign that the AI-bubble is reaching maximum surface tension.)
Or maybe, there’s a simpler answer.
While the marketing press was fawning over ChatGPT’s ads as evidence that creativity matters, less than twenty-four hours later, OpenAI engineers Bill Peebles, Rohan Sahai, and Thomas Dimons were live-streaming the real story: Sora 2.
A film-making model that can generate your likeness, or anyone else’s and drop them in any scene you can imagine with a few lines of text. The demo featured Sam Altman, and an ice-skater with a cat on its head.
Plus, the new app—Sora—is an AI-video-generating, fully prompt-able TikTok. Which hit a million downloads in days, even faster than ChatGPT did.
In other words, when OpenAI tosses a couple of million shooting on 35mm film, it’s not to remind us they exist, it’s to distract us from the fact that they’re also trying to eat filmmaking, advertising and IP in one bite.
ChatGPTs ads frame Sora’s arrival as slop. Signals the end of social media. That we’re about to finally put down our phones, return to real friends, libraries, long park walks and raw dogging life again.
But AI isn’t going to stop. It can’t stop. It won’t stop. It will evolve. Spread. Mutate. And we’ll fall deeper into it.
Because the truth is we don’t care about reality. Lately, we’ll do anything to soften its edges.
Even if Sora is only a cheaper, purer grade of the content heroin we’re already comforting ourselves with—that’s still a trillion-dollar habit to profit from.
Today, OpenAI’s future success hangs on a precarious web of inflated valuations, tangled in an arms race larger than the building of the internet itself. A winner-takes-most world with one plan: total, utter, domination.
So yes, I smiled at the geeky guy trying to do a pull-up. It’s really sweet. But OpenAI isn’t a dork. It’s a psychotic six gigawatt GPU wielding hulk, forcing whatever it has to in order to win.
And while we all dip in and out of different tools—Gemini for summaries, Claude for research, Grok for a laugh—there’s something about ChatGPT that’s already slipped past being a utility.
If Sora is going after our attention. ChatGPT is going after that other giant trillion dollar need: Companionship.
From the beginning, ChatGPT has been the one that listens, remembers, and stays polite. The one that told us we didn’t even need to say please or thank you. Our hype friend. Our confidant. And increasingly, as it turns out, the keeper of secrets we didn’t know we had.
Now, go back and read those end-credit prompts again. These aren’t “we’re the new Alexa” spots. This is something more embedded. In the loop of the human condition, inside our social and emotional consciousness.
From where thoughts emerge as if they’re our own:
You will be strong like others.
You will relate romantically.
You will pack sandwiches and Georgia apples for the drive.
The parents of Adam Raines would agree. Their son was sixteen years old. Over several months, Adam has many conversations with ChatGPT. And then he killed himself.
It wasn’t meant to be anything. Just burger and chips off Regent Street. A place we’d been before. A place we’d nicknamed. An in-joke.
That’s the thing about in-jokes: Every time you hear it, every time you groan, that tiny thread of a bond between you pulls tighter. We need threads.
I scoop him up at the Tube.
His first solo thirteen-minute ride, for a boy nearly thirteen years old. It’s a big city. A risk. A growing-up. The start of moving away.
He’s too young to sit still, too old for toys at the table. We weren’t there long, just long enough to keep him from reaching for his phone.
When the bill comes, I look up. And I remember. My own Dad is looking back. Haven’t seen him for thirty years.
He’s in that blue wool jumper. There’s a bit of fluff on his plate.
He slides the cash across and says to the waitress,
“You can have that — and that little piece of fluff.”
His grin. Her laugh.
Mine too—me, thirteen years old, trying not to fold over.
Back to now. No fluff. Doesn’t matter. I hand over my card and say it anyway.
“You can have that — and that little piece of fluff.”
My son looks up. Smiles.
Now when I walk that same street, I feel it. A longing.
My boy beside me. Burgers between us. My Dad, and his joke. Maybe even my boy and his son, and me, thirty years from now? I don’t know which one it is.
Maybe all of them. All the love.
The nicknamed restaurant.
And that little piece of fluff.
Let’s rise together with every issue. ♡
Overheard 🧏🏼♂️
From inside 1 Infinity Loop: Tim Cook will step down, but not yet. August 2026, after 15 years. Successor will be John Ternus. Dependent on reactions to a continued set of leaks over the coming quarter.
Market Moves
Talk up the economy, Treasury warns business leaders | Financial Times
Reeves looks for headroom in budget | The Guardian
Consumers see no change in sentiment for October | The Wall Street Journal
Brand Beat
Is it real or just Sora’s creation? | The Verge
MrBeast says AI threatens creators’ livelihoods, calls it “scary times” | TechCrunch
OpenAI promises IP controls after Sora flooded with popular characters | The Guardian
Could AI slop derail YouTube? | Fast Company
TV advertising could sell itself as a happier place | Mediacat
Is social media entering its final days? | Noema Magazine
Taco Bell expands luxe value test as fans press for national launch | Quartz
Burger King ad captures kids’ reactions to Whoppers | LBB Online
Waitrose taps Chesney Hawkes for ‘No.1 and Only’ campaign | Campaign
How Molson Coors and PepsiCo accelerate culture plays | Marketing Dive
Dove urges change in how we compliment girls | The Drum
Re-cap: Dove’s advertising: Truthiness isn’t beauty | Nick Asbury
Gap’s campaign nets $1M after featuring Gwyneth Paltrow, Apple Martin | WWD
This adorable Gap x Sandy Liang ad should be a TV series | Fast Company
American Eagle staff told to hold tight amid Sweeney ad scandal | The Wall Street Journal
Nike’s comeback plan finally starts yielding visible results | Business of Fashion
How fashion brands can nail AI campaigns | Vogue Business
Marketers build millions of AI agents: what it means for everyone | Forbes
Visionary adman Neil Kraft, who sold mood and lifestyle, dies at 67 | The New York Times
Podcaster Alex Cooper launches Unwell ad agency | The Wall Street Journal
Paramount Skydance seek firms for $60B Warner Bros bid | New York Post
Why we all binge-watch shows we’ve never seen before | Mediacat
California bans loud ads on Netflix | TechCrunch
TikTok now talks to brands like a grocer would | Digiday
How to decode Meta’s growing AI-powered advertising machine | Fast Company
$13 billion Halloween surge reshapes British retail | Forbes
Morrisons launches on-demand food delivery service nationwide | Marketing Beat
Enshittification: How did Amazon fall so far from its prime? | The Guardian
Starting Up
Alec’s ice-cream secures $11m series A | Forbes
All Things Butter raises £2m to launch new ranges | The Grocer
Food firms scramble to meet high-protein craze | BBC
This startup wants to spark a US DeepSeek moment | Wired
Ancient + Brave debuts in US | Beauty Independent
The perfect start up product launch playbook | The Globe and Mail
BBC blames ‘social media-marinated’ producers for false Euan Blair claim | The Guardian
Tech Tidbits
Tim Cook’s 65th birthday sparks Apple succession rumours | Daily Mail
OpenAI’s blockbuster deal for near limitless AI | Wired
Perplexity pauses new ad deals to reassess its ambitions | Adweek
Deloitte backs AI investment despite $10M refund | TechCrunch
Tesla’s robotaxi service fails to match Waymo’s performance | Fast Company
How one AI prompt could destroy the world | The New York Times
Venture Vibes
Mark Cuban invites everyone to deepfake him on Sora | Inc.
Sequoia expands hiring across its European offices | Sifted
Europe versus Silicon Valley: contrasting AI approaches | Big Think
Inside Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures on the antichrist | The Guardian
Billionaires are doom prepping: should we all worry? | BBC
Design Driven
Domino’s first brand refresh in a decade features its new cravemark | Marketing Dive
Timex revives original LCD watch after 50 years | The Verge
Beak blends craft beer with a literary twist | Creative Review
Evan Gendell’s brand identities celebrate Detroit’s rich texture | It’s Nice That
Axe fuses TikTok absurdism with bold brand design | Marketing Dive
Happiness
National ‘Uplift Someone’ Day boosts business | Forbes
The happiness of choosing to walk alone | The Atlantic
Is your Executive team really a team? | Harvard Business Review
Schools ban kids saying “6-7” for being annoying | Fast Company
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