OpenAI’s CMO on the brand’s Super Bowl spot, the AI Bowl, and Anthropic’s ads

Each Super Bowl there are typically a few dominant themes. Some are questionable (ahem, Toilet Bowl), while others are expected (the Beverage Bowl and, maybe, the Wellness Bowl).

It’s no surprise that this year could also be called the AI Bowl, as companies like Google, Amazon (with spots for Alexa+ and Ring), Anthropic, and OpenAI used the game to make a pitch for AI tools and how they can fit into people’s lives today. OpenAI, which is in the process of rolling out advertising in its flagship tool, ChatGPT, also went head-to-head in the game with competitor Anthropic, which, in its ads, disparagingly depicted what ads in AI chatbots could look like. All told, per iSpot data cited by Adweek, 15 out of 66 ads “featured AI.”

Ahead of the Super Bowl, Marketing Brew caught up with OpenAI CMO Kate Rouch to get a sense of how OpenAI planned to show up at the Big Game for the second year in a row, as well as why brand execs quickly and publicly responded to competitor Anthropic’s spots.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was the thinking going into this year’s campaign? Were you definitely going to be a Super Bowl advertiser again? This year we wanted to also really communicate to people what’s happening, right now, in this moment. It’s not just business as usual. We’re seeing this technology really move at an extreme exponential pace.…Our perspective is that this is a tool to extend what’s possible for people, and we see that in the data like for ChatGPT…The Super Bowl is a great place to have fun and whatever, do the kind of typical Super Bowl thing. But what we’re really doing is trying to say, “Hey, this is a time when all Americans are sitting together, watching the same thing, having the same discussions.” There aren’t that many moments like that in our culture anymore in our media environment, and we really want to use that time to try to put a vision for the future out there—that really the best way to predict the future is to create it, and that we can all participate in creating what’s next, as opposed to maybe sitting back in fear.

Is that part of the reason why you guys did a POV shot for the Super Bowl ad? Yeah. Really core to this strategy is the thesis of participation, and that this isn’t for somebody else, somebody smarter than you…Now you can do these things that maybe were once really, truly were out of reach. And the ad itself actually even has a little participatory Easter egg in it. So we hope that some people will find that and play along with us and actually participate in the ad in that way.

The ad was made by your in-house team. Did you guys shoot all of this practically, or did you use Sora to make the ad? We always use Sora and ChatGPT pretty heavily in our concepting and production…But we so strongly believe in people and that these are tools to extend, not replace, people. That’s really been a conscious decision of how we’ve made our advertising this whole year. The ChatGPT campaign that’s live, we shot on 35mm film.

There are three other Super Bowl ads that were shot on film…There are a lot of AI hype people who say the advertising industry is dead, and they’ll post a video made with some AI tool. And Open AI, one of the companies that is making AI tools, is focused on the practical and the real. It’s a funny juxtaposition. It’s a conscious choice, because our strong belief is in people and that this is a tool that [can] aid people and extend the agency. When we have better tools, we can do more in the world. I mean, that’s a little reductive, but like at the end of the day, that’s what we really believe. Really creative people, actually, are going to be more at a premium, more empowered…Now, we also believe there’s a real role for AI tools in creative, and that we can also [do] a lot more there.

The AI ads seem to be addressing this moment of how people work with AI tools, and what that means for them for their life. How were you thinking about it when approaching the Super Bowl?...Was there some thinking of assuaging people’s fears or getting people more comfortable with AI? Honestly, not really. People are doing incredible stuff with this every day, and I think the more you’re actually engaging, the more grounded and real the conversation is. Anytime we’re having a conversation that’s abstract, we just can get into a lot of fear and projection. Our strategy is really, let’s actually just show real people and what they’re doing…People are inherently creative, entrepreneurial, and smart. Our strategy is to make them the hero of the work and give people credit a little bit.

I do have to ask you about the big response that you guys had to the Anthropic ads. I saw Sam Altman on TBPN, and then your post and [Sam’s]. Why respond at all? You know, it was a moment of passion, I will say…Listen, the creative is really effective and funny and well done. But it’s also untrue in terms of what it’s depicting in terms of a very dystopian, fear-based scenario of how ads could go wrong…This is actually a really important moment we’re in. We’re now talking about going after the free model of the internet. Access to these tools is actually so important, and your access to them shouldn’t be based on your ability to pay for them, for one. And then two, we had been really clear that as we bring advertising to the free tiers of ChatGPT. It would never influence answers. It would always be super clearly marked. So I think it just felt not honest…I just really responded in a moment of passion. We can debate the merits, but this matters.

I did want to ask you about the particular Texas line [which you stated that “ChatGPT has more free users in Texas than Claude (trademark) has globally.”] that you and Sam both mentioned in your responses to the Anthropic ads. Honestly, [it was] just to help people conceptualize, frankly, the difference in business models…[There’s] no big reason beyond just trying to help conceptualize the difference.

What is the message that you hope people take away from this AI Bowl? I really hope that people feel inspired to use ChatGPT, Codex, to do things they couldn’t do before, and to experiment in new ways…The people are having that conversation in the room, feeling like, “Wow, maybe I could do something that I didn’t know I could with these tools.” That’s a really healthy, really good place to be for our ads, or any ads. That’s really our perspective. We want people to feel like they, too, can participate and try new things. That’s a huge win, if that’s the conversation that people are having.