if i had a dollar for every time i’ve seen “ai” in SaaS marketing, i would be a billionaire. unfortunately, all i’ve gotten from it is a massive headache. to spare me any more pain as a product marketer and as a human, let’s look at two brilliant marketing strategies.
strategy no. 1 - don’t even talk about ai.
we all know perplexity from their splashy ad during the nba finals — and if you don’t, it’s one of my favorite startups to talk about right now. “perplexity calls itself a "swiss army knife for information discovery and curiosity," but it's essentially an ai-powered search engine. think of it as a mashup of chatGPT and google search.”
in all their marketing collateral, there is hardly a mention of ai. of course, they are inherently an ai search solution, but why need to say something we already know? their tagline “where knowledge begins” and the “know-it-alls” referring to their users, is a departure from the ai-marketing hysteria. i think its incredibly well done and is true to their identity they have created regarding finding “true knowledge.” i personally love this approach - they know what we want to see, and how we want to see it.
strategy no. 2 - reframe the ai conversation.
enter my gospel: the apple marketing philosophy of 1977. it is a piece of work i believe every marketer should read. it is astounding that to this day, this reflects apple’s ethos perfectly. apple is known for delivering simple, easy-to-understand, and beautiful products.
apple is locking down on privacy for their ai approach. their differentiation around being the private cloud secure solution is clear. “most consumers do not understand how ai works and when it works on the device versus cloud. apple has made it simpler for consumers to understand what is happening with their ai request, which is a smart move differentiating itself from the tech-spec nature of ai so far.”
people judge a book by its cover1. so tell them what you want the book to say. it’s really that simple.
📚 what i have been reading lately, linked here for you:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/06/14/apples-bold-entry-into-the-ai-arena-the-launch-of-apple-intelligence/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/10/business/brands-avoid-term-customers/index.html
https://www.forbes.com/sites/committeeof200/2024/06/18/how-do-brands-tell-authentic-stories-in-the-age-of-ai/
https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/ai-startup-perplexity-drops-hollywood-caliber-fake-movie-trailer-as-its-first-ad/
https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
see apple marketing philosophy tenet 3: impute
Wow! These insights are truly helpful.