The Most Effective PR Campaign in History

When the CEO of a company asks Congress to make laws against its industry, that gets attention; surprisingly, it does not include a healthy dose of skepticism. The testimony of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, to the US Senate reads like a press release. After pages describing the benefits of their product, it concludes with, “OpenAI believes that regulation of AI is essential, and we’re eager to help policymakers…”

They continue with a series of three suggestions. “First, it is vital that AI companies–especially those working on the most powerful models–adhere to an appropriate set of safety requirements…” This is reminiscent of the 1977 ad campaign by Tova Borgnine that led with the headline, “We are giving away 10,000 samples of our perfume to prove it is safe in public.” A piece of marketing genus that skyrocketed sales from $20,000 per month to over $800,000.

Before OpenAI, Sam Altman was President of Y-Combinator, a top startup accelerator and early-stage fund. Companies entering the program learn through talks from a who’s-who list of founders. Graduation is a pitch to raise a Seed round. Thus, Sam has heard and been part of many excellent pitches. He knows what works and what does not.

OpenAIs Strategy

Generating over $1.3 billion in 2023 revenue, OpenAI is up from $28 million the previous year. The majority of which comes from subscriptions. Their core strategy is to leverage themselves as a leader in the artificial intelligence space. What better way than to be at the forefront of historic AI legislation?

A startup pitch begins with a brief background, goes into a why now scenario, and then introduces the big idea. OpenAI launched ChatGPT with an “in-depth blog post breaking down the intricate details of this model and providing readers with a comprehensive understanding of its capabilities and potential applications.” This provided the background and big idea. However, the “why now” was merely implied.

While ChatGPT was gaining traction, it needed to be at a pace sufficient to justify the $100 billion valuation — the “why now” was solidified when Sam Altman made an urgent plea to lawmakers. Sam’s statement to the Senate summarizes this, “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. And we want to be vocal about that,” he said. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.” As a result, OpenAI positioned itself as the leader in AI.

Altering Minds

A nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays (1891–1995) is credited with inventing public relations. Bernays used his uncle’s psychology research to make people want things they do not need by appealing to their unconscious desires. He explained, “Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group.”

“Torches of Freedom”

In 1928, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to create more women smokers. At the time, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. To combat this idea, Bernays hired debutants to light up during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. Ahead of time, he contacted the press with the slogan “Torches of Freedom” and associated it with the women’s rights movement. As a result, female smoking increased by 7% during that year.

The crucial part of this strategy includes the use of influencers. For American Tobacco in 1928, it was young women from affluent families smoking in public. For OpenAI, it was the tech leaders joining them with concern for AI safety. Names like Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Evan Sharp, Co-Founder, Pinterest, and Chris Larsen, Co-Founder, Ripple to name a few, signed an open letter that marked OpenAI as the company to be concerned with.

While on the surface, it seemed adversarial, this letter provided endorsements for OpenAI’s technological supremacy. After all, Elon Musk is an investor in OpenAI and a friend of Sam Altman. Elon even told the staff of OpenAI to speed up its research before leaving in 2018.

Conclusion

As a co-founder of an AI company, we research potential competitors. One of our indirect competitors is OpenAI. A critical part of business planning is competitor strategy. While most competitors use some form of public relations, the extent of OpenAI’s ingenious tactics was almost unbelievable. As we dug deeper into how they shape public opinion, the Senate hearings were revealed as a masterful strategy — the letter from Elon, a stroke of genius.

How do you position yourself as the leader in an industry? The answer is to become the name for it. People often use product names in place of more general terms. For example, “Kleenex” for tissue. Today, one can only discuss AI by mentioning OpenAI or its main product, ChatGPT. Thus, the story of how they did it is a master class in public relations.

About Estimand

Founded in April 2023, Estimand Inc. is a Delaware Corporation with principal offices in Raleigh, North Carolina. We began as a paper on causal AI that evolved into the first company to instantly reveal the factors behind global financial risk. You can learn more about Estimand by visiting our website: https://estimand.ai.

References

- Altman, S. (2023) Written Testimony of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2023-05-16%20-%20Bio%20&%20Testimony%20-%20Altman.pdf

- Christensen, W. (2012) Torches of Freedom: Women and Smoking Propaganda. The Society Pages. https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-women-and-smoking-propaganda/

- Efrati, A. (2023) OpenAI’s Revenue Crossed $1.3 Billion Annualized Rate, CEO Tells Staff. The Information. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openais-revenue-crossed-1-3-billion-annualized-rate-ceo-tells-staff

- Future of Life (2023) Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter. Future of Life. https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/

- Kang, Cecilia (2023) OpenAI’s Sam Altman Urges A.I. Regulation in Senate Hearing. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/technology/openai-altman-artificial-intelligence-regulation.html

- Rivas, N. (2023) OpenAI’s Game-Changing Business Strategy: A Blend of Digital Marketing, AI, and Superior Infrastructure Management. No Good. https://nogood.io/2023/08/08/open-ai-marketing-strategy/

- US Senate (2023) Oversight of A.I.: Rules for Artificial Intelligence. SUBCOMMITTEE ON PRIVACY, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE LAW. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/committee-activity/hearings/oversight-of-ai-rules-for-artificial-intelligence

- Wei, K. & Tan, K. (2023) Elon Musk told OpenAI to move faster right before he left the company in 2018: NYT. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-told-openai-to-move-faster-before-he-left-2023-12