The newcomer introduces themselves to the community.
The brand runs its first ad.
The product’s packaging is encountered by a new customer.
You rarely get a second chance to make a first impression.
For software companies, that first impression is the user interface, and then it’s the experience of actually engaging with the software. That’s a huge opportunity (and obligation, and risk) that software companies encounter–the product is the ad.
LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT have grown faster than any other products in the history of the world. They have done this despite awkward brand names, unsophisticated interfaces and plenty of glitches. Yet the experience is so remarkable that we can’t help talking about it–even if we’re not sure exactly what to say. As a result, like the eight men in a dark room with an elephant, our stories are all different.
Whether you’re a job seeker, a freelancer or the head of marketing for a company with lots of funding, there are questions to answer before you make your first flyer, your resume or your very expensive YouTube ad:
What do we intend to remind people of?
What genre are we playing in?
What problem do we solve?
What problem does our existence cause–for competitors, for users, for bystanders…
What’s our position in the marketplace? Is it one that we can stick with, and one our competitors can’t come near?
Could we tell this story, run this ad, stand behind this position for years?
Could our competitor run precisely the same ad, or are we saying something we can own?
Who exactly is it for–not just the brand, but this ad. Who are we trying to reach?
What’s the change we seek to make?
When people tell their friends about us, what do we want them to say?
What cultural touchstones are we putting to work to advance our story?
Where is the tension in our story, the part that makes it sticky?
[The ad doesn’t exist to entertain your fans. It’s here to make a change happen.]
Some great brands have been built with ads or stories built on these questions. Maxwell House, the Mac, Marlboro, Prell, Betty Crocker, Avis, Volkswagen, the Gap, Burger King… it’s not about having a slogan, it’s about having a resilient story and a firm foundation to stand on. And then telling that story in a way that sticks, that spreads and that resonates.
My take is that the AI companies, racing as fast as they can on the tech side, have more money than vision when it comes to telling a coherent, sticky and generative story. They’re starting to spend the money, but they’re not creating much of value.
You don’t have to be a giant business to benefit from a consistent and powerful position, supported with a story. But it’s a good place to start if you want to get there.
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