𑜀ark van der Velden

Regarding the Super Bowl Ad War. I am a VP of Marketing at an AI company. Last Sunday we spent $14 million on two Super Bowl commercials. We are not profitable. We have never been profitable. We owe investors more than we've ever made. But we needed to tell 130 million Americans that we're better than the other AI company. That's also not profitable. The other AI company is also not profitable. We are two unprofitable companies spending $7 million each to argue about who is less unprofitable. My CEO called the other CEO's product "expensive" and "for rich people." Our product is $20/month. Their product is $20/month. The difference is philosophical. The argument is financial. Our company has $1 trillion in obligations. That's "trillion" with a T. We owe Oracle. We owe Microsoft. We owe Nvidia. We owe more money than the GDP of most countries. But we can afford Super Bowl ads. Investors call this "market positioning." I call it "spending money we don't have to insult money they don't have." Meanwhile, 244,000 tech workers were laid off last year. Intel cut 34,000 people. Amazon cut 20,000. Microsoft cut 19,000. Salesforce's CEO said: "I need less heads with AI." Those heads are watching the Super Bowl. They will see our commercial. They will see two AI companies fighting about who's more ethical. About who has fewer ads. About whose chatbot is nicer. They will not see anyone hiring. Our commercial mocks the other company for putting ads in their chatbot. "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude." We are an ad. Complaining about ads. In the most expensive advertising slot on earth. The irony costs extra. Approximately $7 million extra. Their CEO responded on X. He said we serve "expensive products to rich people." He's the CEO of a company that charges corporations $100,000+ for enterprise AI. We both serve expensive products to rich people. The difference is which rich people. Google announced they're spending $175-185 billion on AI this year. That's more than our entire company is worth. They also announced 750 million Gemini users. We announced a Super Bowl commercial. Wall Street is "favoring Google versus OpenAI" now. Probably because Google makes money. We make commercials. The commercial will air during the third quarter. By then, the other company's commercial will have aired too. Americans will watch two trillion-dollar-aspiring companies fight. While 244,000 people figure out what to do next. But we're not thinking about that. We're thinking about brand awareness. We're thinking about share of voice. We're thinking about "owning the conversation." The conversation is: "Who gets the jobs?" The answer is: "Neither of us are creating them fast enough." But the commercial is really well produced. Our agency won awards. The music is by Dr. Dre. "What's the Difference." The difference is we spent $7 million to ask. Anyway, we're really excited about the future of AI and its impact on the workforce!